http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/16/business/hans-riegel-marketer-of-gummi-bears-dies-at-90.html?_r=1&
Hans Riegel, Marketer of Gummi Bears, Dies at 90
By MELISSA EDDY
Hans Riegel, who made the rainbow-colored, fruit-flavored, teddy bear-shaped gelatin sweets known as gummi bears a global favorite, died on Tuesday in Bonn. He was 90.
The cause was heart failure, Haribo, the company he led for nearly seven decades, said in a statement, adding that he had surgery to remove a benign tumor in his brain several months ago.
Mr. Riegel transformed his family-owned company from a local candy maker with 30 workers into an internationally recognized brand with 6,000 employees around the world and annual sales of $2 billion to $2.7 billion.
Mr. Riegel’s father, also named Hans Riegel, founded Haribo in 1920. (The name is an acronym derived from his first and last name and the city where it was registered, Bonn.)
The elder Mr. Riegel concocted the first bear-shaped sweets, initially out of licorice.
After their father was killed in 1945, during World War II, Mr. Riegel and his younger brother, Paul, set about rebuilding the business. Paul was responsible for production, while Hans oversaw sales and marketing. The brothers introduced the sweets they called “gold bears,” known to most of the world as gummi bears, in the 1960s.
The little bears, which come in five colors and flavors, proved immensely popular with Germans, and Mr. Riegel soon expanded abroad. After successfully introducing them in Britain, Sweden and Austria in the 1970s, he took them to the United States in 1982, setting up Haribo of America in Baltimore.
They also expanded their assortment, which now includes 200 different products, although none have proved as popular as the gummi bears. Among them are fruit gums and jelly candies in a variety of shapes (bottles, snakes, frogs, Smurfs, cherries) and flavors.
Haribo also makes a chewable soft candy called Maoams, as well as marshmallow candies, and licorice whips.
After the death of his brother in 2009, Mr. Riegel brought two of his nephews into the company but continued to lead it until he fell ill this year.
Every October, the company said on its Web site, Mr. Riegel honored a tradition established by his father in 1936 in which children are invited to Haribo’s headquarters to trade chestnuts and acorns they have collected for sweets.
In 1987 Mr. Riegel set up the Hans Riegel Foundation, which awards annual scholarships to students at 12 German universities, including his alma mater, the University of Bonn, where he completed a doctorate in economics in 1951.
Mr. Riegel was born in Bonn on March 10, 1923. Information on his survivors was not immediately available.
Spiegel Online, an online newsmagazine, reported that Mr. Riegel’s stake in the company would go to a private foundation that was set up to ensure that his family members would retain ownership.
His company said that Mr. Riegel read children’s magazines and comic books for inspiration. “I love children,” the company quoted him as saying. “They are my customers. I have to be informed about what they want to nibble, what they think, what language they speak.”
