Can film-equipment company Arri stay a Hollywood legend in the streaming era? Thomas Riedel is betting on yes

In an unassuming office building with a black-brick façade in northern Munich, there’s a surprisingly high concentration of instantly recognisable shiny statuettes. German camera and lighting company Arri won these 20 Academy Awards for scientific and technical achievements in cinematography. Founded in 1917, the brand has been a favourite of directors such as Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick and Peter Jackson, but technological progress has created fierce competition. German entrepreneur Thomas Riedel bought Arri in April (the purchase price has not been disclosed). His challenge now is to find a way to innovate while keeping the company’s legacy alive.

Riedel fell in love with Arri while he was at school in Wuppertal. He wasn’t very interested in studying, preferring to explore extracurricular activities that had the potential to become business opportunities. “When I was 15, I borrowed Arri spotlights from the nearby playhouse for school theatre projects,” he says. A few years later he formalised his ventures and founded Riedel Communications, which provided technical equipment for events, beginning with just five Motorola walkie-talkies.

Riedel is now a global player. His communication systems are used at live concerts, the Olympic Games, Formula 1 racing tracks and top-level football matches. They enable drivers to talk with their teammates and moderators with their newsrooms. Riedel’s company also developed “RefCam”, the small cameras that provided the referee’s perspective on tackles and goals at this year’s Fifa World Cup and brought a new sense of intimacy to the viewing experience.

While acquiring Arri was a long-standing dream for Riedel, it has not come without complications. “The company lacked humility in recent years,” says the 58-year-old at the company’s headquarters. When streaming services started to accelerate productions about a decade ago, Arri expanded at an unsustainable rate. Then came the 2023 Hollywood strikes and a contraction across the entertainment industry. The business had to cut costs by about 40 per cent and reduce staff to 800 employees from more than 1,200.

Now that streaming platforms offer such a broad range of content, the distinction between producing for movies, television and live events has blurred. In this new environment, combining the strengths of Riedel and Arri could prove savvy. Take, for example, the Eurovision Song Contest. For the past 20 years, Riedel has been providing broadcasting technology for the competition. This year the show was filmed with 24 Arri cameras to provide a more cinematic experience, with sharper contrasts and advanced colour grading. “The resulting footage read less like a traditional live production and more like professional film work,” says Riedel.

Away from the bright lights of film sets, he has several adventurous side projects. In 2023 he started a German SailGP team together with former Formula 1 world champion Sebastian Vettel, among others. The same year, he and his brother, Markus, launched Open Ground, a nightclub housed in an abandoned bunker in Wuppertal. The club has since earned a reputation as a cathedral for DJs. “It was designed from the ground up as an acoustic experience, where even DJs suddenly hear nuances in their own songs that they have never heard before,” says Riedel. “Sometimes it brings tears to their eyes.” Rather than just a commercial venture, he sees Open Ground as a labour of love – and a way of giving something back to his hometown.

Riedel, who almost always sports a pair of red trainers, has a fun, spirited approach to work. “I need to feel that I’m allowed to play in the sandbox all day, with great moulds and the best friends to build castles with,” he says. He sees little distinction between his working hours and his leisure time. Even his favourite pastimes – playing cards, chess or the board game Settlers of Catan – exercise his “strategic” instincts.

“One of the best things that I have created for myself is my personal archive of mistakes,” he says. “I can go back and think, ‘Wait a minute… I have made this mistake before.’ That’s very valuable.” His biggest mistake in that archive – and the one that clearly comes with a pang of regret – is how he treated the people he worked with when he was building his business. “I was so manic about what I wanted to achieve that I just pushed, pushed and pushed,” he says. “If I were to do it all again, I would look more carefully at people’s personal goals and how much can be loaded on their shoulders. Today I keep a close eye on how we treat people.”

When it comes to advice that he would impart to budding entrepreneurs, Riedel says that he is against the start-up-style mentality of prematurely talking about an exit. “Building something sustainably is difficult when you have an ending in mind already,” he says. “If you build something as though you were planning to run it for the next 100 years – or forever – you can exit any time. That’s what I would say to young people seeking to start a business.”

Riedel tells Monocle that the best guidance that he has received came about 25 years ago, at a particularly turbulent moment for his company. Riedel Communications was growing but cash poor and failing to deliver products on time, and struggling to pay bills. While some suggested that Riedel was overworked and should step back, one friend encouraged him to see things through. “He said, ‘Thomas, if you’re the captain of a ship that gets into a storm and you leave the deck, the ship might survive – but do you think that you can ever come back and be respected?’” He remembers this as the counsel that helped him through that difficult period and it’s an analogy that he has since shared with other people in similar situations.

Though Riedel now employs more than 1,000 people, he does everything that he can to resist imposing structures and processes that might stymie creativity. “I hate the corporate side of growing companies,” he says. “I understand the logic that a certain structure is needed but I strongly believe that the processes of corporations aren’t the best thing for companies.” For Riedel, the ideal company is one in which communications are easy “because everyone sits in one room and if someone gets a phone call, other people listen automatically and are informed”. While that might not always be possible when a company reaches a certain size, he tries to keep communications open and bureaucracy to a minimum.

Riedel says that his job now is to harness Arri’s innovative spirit for today’s fast-evolving landscape. That involves continuing to serve current clients while looking into potential new markets, including online content creators. Taking chances is a natural part of being an entrepreneur but what does he consider to be the greatest risk? He doesn’t hesitate. “The biggest one isn’t financial,” he says. “It is the risk of failing personally. I don’t know how I would deal with that.”
arri.com