It has been three years since Christoph Behn retired from the operational management of the Celebrate Company and founded the business angels association Better Ventures. But now he is returning – and taking over for Co-CEO Patrick Leibold, who will be leaving the company at the end of 2023 after six years.
Patrick Leibold led the Celebrate Company alongside Christoph Behn’s brother, Steffen Behn, and not only successfully expanded and grew the company – today the Celebrate Company has more than 500 employees and a turnover of over 100 million euros – but also led it through challenging times such as the coronavirus crisis and the subsequent energy crisis. In the midst of this, namely in 2022, the Celebrate Digital Printing print shop, which is part of the group of companies, moved from Schramberg to Villingen-Schwenningen due to space constraints, while production operations continued. Today, the Celebrate Company has more than 500 employees.
As he describes in an honest post on Linkedin, all of this has also cost him energy – which he now lacks for the upcoming new change. For this reason, he has decided to leave the company at the turn of the year in consultation with the majority shareholders of the Celebrate Company. In recent years, he has shaped the company together with Steffen Behn with his reflective, open approach to successes and defeats, as well as topics such as work-life balance, and was a speaker at the Online Print Symposium 2020 and a guest on the Zippers Insights podcast.
However, he is not handing over the management of the company into unknown hands, given that Christoph Behn, who is now returning to the company’s operational business in place of Patrick Leibold, originally founded Kartenmacherei in 2010 and as a shareholder was actively and closely involved in the developments and decisions of the Celebrate Company even after his departure in 2020. Although he has not been as heavily involved in the operational business at better ventures for some time now, he remains active in the company as an angel investor. He revealed this in an interview with the online platform deutsche-startups, in which he also emphasized the corporate culture as the most important asset. As far as the development of the Celebrate Company is concerned, the aim is to be even more active across Europe in the future and to continue to establish other photo products in addition to the cards.
Today, the Celebrate Company is no longer comprised solely of card makers, but also includes other well-known brands such as faireparterie, mintkind and Atelier Rosemood, as well as Celebrate Apps and Celebrate Digital Printing GmbH.
