Jacques Kuhn of Kuhn Rikon Dies at 97

Long before it became a fashionable watchword, Jacques Kuhn was putting it into practice: authenticity. The titular head of Kuhn Rikon, who died on December 30 at the age of 97  years, was for many years the heart of the company. For 40 years he led the firm. Not as a manager from behind his desk but as a trained engineer, who spent many a night working painstakingly until the best solution was found. For the spring valve and locking mechanism of the DUROMATIC® pressure cooker developed by him, by way of example. When he was doing this, he would tested it himself, not only in the laboratory but also often on his own cooker until the invention was perfect. “Many ideas occurred to me when cooking,” Jacques Kuhn once revealed.

An inventor and pioneer, who remained curious and given to enthusiasms throughout his life. When he was a young engineer, he visited all cookware-producing factories in the USA after the war and sent his brother, who had taken over the firm after the premature death of their father, pages and pages of reports back to Switzerland. Manufacturing using a production line was one of the ideas Jacques Kuhn brought back with him from the USA. Employees adopted the idea with enthusiasm.

“Anyone wishing to be a good leader, has to like people”: this was his maxim. The employees of Kuhn Rikon were not the only ones who got to know this humanitarian. In the 60s, together with his brother, he gave Tibetan refugees work and accommodation in the Töss valley and later also a spiritual home. The only Tibetan Buddhist monastery outside Asia came into being with the Tibet Institute in Rikon. It is under the patronage of the Dalai Lama, who has so far visited the monastery 13 times and has even visited the Kuhn family and sat with them in their garden. JK, as Jacques Kuhn was also known inside the firm, continued to be involved in an honorary capacity after his retirement.

At the Tibet Institute Jacques Kuhn also got to know his wife Roswitha, whom he married aged 88 years. She was in charge of the library at the Tibet Institute. Together with her he wrote three detective novels in the last few years, which are set in the Töss valley.

Jacques Kuhn finished working and retired from the company payroll at 65 years of age, however he continued to experiment, research, advise and take an interest. “The drama in most family firms is that the older members do not stop in good time.” This mistake was one he wanted to avoid. Today the second generation to follow him is already in place in the management of the firm (as is the fourth when viewed overall). However, he has not only left his mark on the firm with inventions such as the DUROMATIC® or the DUROTHERM® to date: “We were not interested in making as much money as quickly as possible. Merely focusing on profit is not good for the business long term,” Jacques Kuhn was firmly convinced of this.

“This belief from my great uncle Jacques Kuhn or Götti, as we called him inside the family, is still as true today as it was then,” according to Dorothee Auwärter, Chair of the board of directors. For the future too, the following will apply to the family firm: stay authentic and uphold the family values.

With the death of Jacques Kuhn, the Kuhn Rikon company is losing a figurehead – and Switzerland is losing a great, far-sighted entrepreneur and philanthropist.