Since 1989 we have been working
hand in hand with the
Waldorf schools worldwide
Since 1989 we have been working
hand in hand with the
Waldorf schools worldwide
Since 1989 we have been working
hand in hand with the
Waldorf schools worldwide
Since 1989 we have been working
hand in hand with the
Waldorf schools worldwide
The roots of our undertakings go back to the Freie Waldorfschule am Bodensee. After completing his degree in business administration, our Managing Director and shareholder, Holger Lauterbach, began working there in 1980 as a conscientious objector performing alternative civilian service. It was at that time he decided to devote his professional life to anthroposophy and apply his skills in the economic and entrepreneurial sphere.
At the beginning of 1982, in his hometown of Hagen in Westphalia, he joined the founding circle of the Rudolf Steiner School. He served as Managing Director there for more than seven years. Even then, he successfully tackled the challenges of cost-effective procurement of materials for his own Waldorf school and the surrounding ones.
The idea of a purchasing cooperative specifically tailored to the needs of Waldorf schools led in 1989 to the founding of EIKA Einkaufsgesellschaft für gemeinnützige Einrichtungen mbH (www.eika.net). Through connections with various anthroposophical institutions in Wuppertal, this city became EIKA’s home.
After German reunification, we also worked intensively for many years with various institutions of the Diakonisches Werk in eastern Germany. From 2001 to 2003, EIKA assumed management as the general outfitter for several ASB (Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund) senior care facilities in the Ruhr region. In 2002, the company Waldorfsupplies GmbH (www.Waldorfsupplies.org) was founded and became internationally known for the first time through its webshop.
From 2005 to 2020, Upper Lusatia increasingly became the adopted home of Holger Lauterbach.
There, together with his wife Lucia, he runs the Parkstadthotel (www.Parkstadthotel.de) and, until 2019, operated the Waldorf Schullandheim Schloss Niederspree.
In 2008, EIKA and Waldorfsupplies also relocated to eastern Germany. After seven years in Görlitz, Dresden has been the headquarters of EIKA and Waldorfsupplies since 2017.
Both ventures operate on the basis of their founding impulse: to promote Waldorf education worldwide by offering cost-effective purchasing options. The aim of our work is to enable Waldorf institutions across the globe to dedicate as much of their budgets as possible to their educational efforts, while spending as little as possible on teaching materials. We achieve this by optimizing bulk purchasing, keeping our own margin modest, maintaining a lean organizational structure, and thereby ensuring low overhead for the benefit of our customers. As the only full-range Waldorf supplier worldwide, we offer our products in every country at the same base price, which only increases according to shipping costs, local taxes, and customs duties. This approach particularly benefits institutions in poorer countries, which would otherwise often have to pay two to three times the price charged in Germany.
We have been committed to this founding impulse since 1989. It remains clearly visible in our daily work thanks to the second generation of staff, represented by Eric Röllig, and is carried forward by the second generation of management, represented by Leonard Lauterbach.