Intermediary Between Supply and Demand

«Satisfying people's needs has always been my passion,» says Holger Lauterbach. Now 70 years old, he looks back on an eventful life. His knack for sales has been a recurring theme throughout. Even as a teenager, he acted as a go-between for supply and demand among his friends and acquaintances. «For example, one person was looking for a tape recorder and I knew that another person had one to spare,» recalls Lauterbach. «Or a friend asked me about a vacation job and I knew you had to call there.» Decades later, this talent for networking and connecting economic interests has benefited many non-profit organizations, especially Waldorf schools and kindergartens around the world. With EIKA, Lauterbach has established a company on the market that follows Rudolf Steiner's principle of brotherhood in economic life.

A stroke of fate and going one's own way

The eldest of three siblings, Lauterbach was born on May 23, 1955, in Hagen, North Rhine-Westphalia. After a sheltered childhood, he was sitting in the car with his father at the age of eleven when a serious accident struck. He narrowly survived, but his father did not. This death marked a radical turning point for the family. «From then on, it was all about securing material stability and reorganizing our living conditions», he says, describing the situation after the loss of his father. A summer stay in Loheland in the Rhön helped him get back on his feet. As a 13-year-old, he spent five weeks in nature and in the peaceful community of the anthroposophical village. Lauterbach recalls a moment from this time when, after a fulfilling day of folk dancing, he returned to his room and said to himself: «Oh, how beautiful the world is!» Amidst the tragedy of family events, Loheland was a ray of hope for the young man. This uplifting stay was followed by five years at two «conventional» boarding schools, as Lauterbach somewhat soberly describes. Despite family contacts in the anthroposophical sphere, he did not attend a Waldorf school.

In line with his economic skills, he studied business administration in Bielefeld after graduating from high school, even though a traditional business administration job seemed out of the question for him even back then. Lauterbach considered himself a free spirit, had a large circle of friends, and traveled to Asia several times. He also combined his travels with trade. At the age of 18, he brought home arts and crafts he had purchased during a stay in Thailand, which he then sold to German retailers. «When I saw the items in Thailand, I immediately thought that they might also be of interest to other people in Germany», states Lauterbach. A few years later, after a trip with two fellow students, he distributed their self-written globetrotter’s guide to Sri Lanka and the Maldives. To this end, Lauterbach founded a small publishing house, through which he sold 20,000 books within two years.

Search for community

During his studies, he began to question whether he really needed a degree. Life offered him many opportunities to put his skills to good use, which he seized with enthusiasm. In his search for spirituality and an alternative way of working and living, Lauterbach traveled to Findhorn in Scotland via Auroville in southern India and several rural communes in the USA. Founded in 1962, the village of Findhorn is a spiritual community that inspires people worldwide with its spiritual, ecological, and communal way of life. For Lauterbach, his stay in Findhorn was a revelation. «After two weeks there, I had an epiphany: you are going to finish your studies immediately and then do community service in an anthroposophical institution at Lake Constance.»

With this rather specific instruction in hand, Lauterbach found himself six months later—albeit with a degree in his pocket—at the Freie Waldorfschule in Überlingen at Lake Constance. «Here I found many parallels to what I already knew», he says. «Memories of Steiner's quotes in my father's war diary, the toys and books of my childhood, my great-uncle Hugo Kükelhaus' affinity for Waldorf education, and my heartwarming time in Loheland.» Although he was already familiar with the basic principles of the anthroposophical worldview, he was not familiar with Waldorf education itself. As a volunteer, he worked in a kindergarten in the mornings, where he experienced the focus on holistic personality development. «I was also fascinated by the spirit of optimism and the sense of community that prevailed at the time when the school was being built and this wonderful building was being designed», he recalls. At the school, the now 25-year-old also met his future wife, who was a graduate of Alanus University and was designing the walls of the building at the time. After a long search, he finally felt like he had «come home». So he quickly made up his mind: he wanted to contribute his skills to this community.

One price for all

In 1982, Lauterbach moved back to his hometown of Hagen with his wife and newborn son, where he helped establish the local Waldorf school. He then served as its managing director for over seven years, enthusiastically overseeing the school's equipment. «After a while, I founded a small company that took over the school's purchasing and passed on the better dealer purchasing conditions to the school on a 1:1 basis», he explains. The surrounding Waldorf schools soon benefited from this as well, which led Lauterbach to develop the idea of establishing a large purchasing cooperative within the Bund der Freien Waldorfschulen (Association of Independent Waldorf Schools Germany). However, his vision could not be easily implemented in the association, which at that time consisted of 145 Waldorf schools. Lauterbach believed that establishing such a cooperative structure would have taken too much time. As a man of action, he therefore decided in September 1989 to found EIKA Einkaufsgesellschaft für gemeinnützige Einrichtungen mbH (EIKA Purchasing Association for Non-Profit Institutions), based in Hof Kotthausen in Wuppertal. As logical as this decision was for him, Lauterbach was left with one downside: «This meant that, for my former colleagues, I was no longer the colleague who took care of purchasing for them and with them, but simply a salesperson making an offer to the schools.»

In the early years, schools came to EIKA with all their purchasing needs. They wanted school furniture as well as refrigerators and commercial kitchens. As managing director, Lauterbach was happy to take care of his customers' special requests. With the spread of the internet, markets became more open, so EIKA's business increasingly focused on the sale of common consumer goods such as pens, instruments, and furniture. In 2002, Lauterbach launched the web shop waldorfsupplies.org, which targeted Waldorf institutions worldwide with the slogan One world, one price. To this day, EIKA sells all products at the same net price as in Germany, and this strategy ensures generally lower prices for school supplies in many countries. «Foreign Waldorf institutions are often in precarious financial situations, teachers' and staff salaries are low, and parents could also use some relief», Lauterbach describes the situation. His wish is therefore that the savings made on the purchase of teaching materials flow back into the school system. As an intermediary between supply and demand, he ensures favorable conditions. Many Waldorf teachers in this country also know Holger and Lucia Lauterbach through their projects in Oberlausitz (Upper Lusatia), where they run the Parkstadthotel and have been managing Schloss Niederspree (Niederspree Castle) as a school camp for over twelve years.