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MAGIX Company History
From humble beginnings in a garage to tomorrow's world champion - this is the dream of many business founders in the IT sector. The development of MAGIX from a 3-person company to the market leader for multimedia software with 300 employees, a world-wide distribution network, branch offices around Europe and overseas is exemplary: founding in 1993, expansion financing via venture capital providers in 2000 and public offering in Frankfurt in 2006 roughly trace the course of MAGIX' success story. Thanks to the company's innovative dynamics, the original entrepreneurial spirit of realizing the impossible is still felt at MAGIX in spite of the company's growth in size, professionalism and international character.
The founding phase
The cornerstone for MAGIX was laid down by Jürgen Jaron, Dieter Rein and Erhard Rein in 1993 with the founding of MAGIX Technologie GmbH in Munich. Their declared goal was to offer intuitive and entertaining solutions for anyone to design, archive, and share their photos, videos, and music digitally. "Our vision to make innovative multimedia technology accessible to private users was often doubted back then. Computers were devices intended purely for calculation and not for brightening up everyday life with music, videos, and photos," remembers Jürgen Jaron (MAGIX CEO).
Driven by this vision under the leadership of Tilman Herberger and Titus Tost, who had success with their digital audio workstation Samplitude ever since 1989, the first software from MAGIX, MAGIX Music Maker, made Samplitude technology accessible to the private user, retrieving unimagined fullness of sound from the home PC. Although the 1994 program version fit onto a single diskette, the first MAGIX Music Maker already came with countless design options and CD-filling sound templates, and was able to convince big audience.
MAGIX is, so to say, an east-west German joint venture between marketing and sales experts Jürgen Jaron and brothers Dieter Rein and Erhard Rein from North Rhine-Westphalia and developers Tilman Herberger and Titus Tost from Saxony. This five-member founding team works together to this day and represents continuity and innovation at MAGIX.
The start of internationalization
The company's increasing focus on manufacture and distribution of entertainment products in multimedia is reflected in the transformation of MAGIX Technologie GmbH into MAGIX Entertainment Products GmbH in 1995. Next year, new markets were opened for domestically successful audio products. In 1997, distribution in important European countries and the USA begins via locally based subsidiaries.
Those who sow…
From the very start, MAGIX invested a big portion of its generated profits in research and development as well as new technologies and innovative products. "In our sector, characterized by constant change, it is important to act as an innovator. For this reason we are ready to accept the risk that a good idea does not prove itself on the market, or does so only with time. Only those who sow can expect to reap a good harvest. Because we have incorporated this lesson, in contrast to much of the competition we are much more ready to invest in research and development even in economically difficult times," says Jürgen Jaron in a motivational speech to employees.
High regard for research and development at MAGIX is reflected in the 1998 founding of MAGIX Development GmbH & Co. KG, the legal predecessor of MAGIX Development GmbH in Dresden. The relative independence of this group subsidiary enables cost transparency and clear result-orientation of the R&D sector of MAGIX.
…reaps innovation!
In 1999 MAGIX moved its headquarters with 15 employees from Munich to Berlin. After venture capital companies 3i Group plc and the tbg Technologie-Beteiligungs-Gesellschaft mbH participated in MAGIX to raise capital in 2000, the transformation into today's MAGIX AG took place in 2001. The assets received from raised capital were used to expand the product portfolio. The number of employees increased with equal speed, totaling 150 by the end of 2003.
Along with new and continued development of MAGIX audio, video and photo software which increasingly connected home PC software with Internet products, the years that followed brought not only countless awards, but also cooperation partners such as Fujitsu-Siemens, t-online, Motorola, Medion, Swisscom (Bluewin), Acer, Toshiba, Strato and Hewlett-Packard. In addition to its own development, MAGIX secured exclusive rights to one of the most groundbreaking technologies for music recognition and recommendation with majority participation in the m2any GmbH. Since then MAGIX has developed into a vanguard of future forms of music marketing.
Continued growth, stock exchange listing, takeovers and new start-ups
At the time of the IPO on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in April 2006, the opening price of the MAGIX share, listed in Prime Standard with the stock market identification code MGX and ISIN DE0007220782, was EUR 16.40. This corresponded to a market capitalization of circa EUR 200 million. In the same year, MAGIX increased sales by 30% and with a record revenue of EUR 35.8 million achieved a consolidated net income of EUR 5.1 million. Simultaneously, the employee count crossed the 300 mark, and MAGIX counted more than 4.5 million registered users.
The year 2007 is characterized by the takeover and integration of the UK Xara Group Limited, which has had success with its products since the 1980s. The acquisition releases synergies of complementary products and customer groups. The founders of Xara, Charles Moir and Jürgen Jaron have agreed from the start: "Not only both companies, but also their customers will benefit from the coming together of MAGIX and Xara."
Until Xara brought with it 1.2 million registered users primarily from Anglo-Saxon regions, MAGIX' primary strength lay in continental Europe. Xara's software is based on the same principles as that of MAGIX, including object-orientation and non-destructivity. This lets both companies' technologies be easily combined. For example, MAGIX pixel-based photo software is supplemented by vector graphics, illustration and web design powered by Xara technology.
In 2007 MAGIX also founded the Catooh Corporation, based in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, which provides a newly introduced online service - an online media market. In addition, MAGIX buys the remaining share of the m2any GmbH, which is renamed to mufin GmbH and moves to Berlin. At the year's end, MAGIX counts more than 6.8 million registered users.
In 2008, after a new MAGIX branch office is opened in Markham, Ontario, Canada to support distribution in North America, an additional group subsidiary in Berlin in the form of MAGIX Online Services GmbH is opened in 2009. It combines all key MAGIX online services and aims to raise their impact and result transparency.
"Together with the other new companies - Xara Group Ltd., mufin GmbH and Catooh Corp. - MAGIX Online Services GmbH forms an important support within the venture segment, which stands alongside our established and highly profitable core audio, photo and video products. With all risk and start problems that come with ventures, it becomes more and more clear that our patience will repay because time plays a special role for us in the venture segment," says the Management Board member responsible for research and development Tilman Herberger.
At this time, more than half of the 300 MAGIX employees are active in research and development, and therefore responsible for the continuing improvement of the company's circa 60 products, just counting those sold in Germany. MAGIX software is now translated into 15 languages. More than 1,000 awards around the world communicate the clear joy of innovation felt at MAGIX. For this reason, MAGIX celebrates with its customers.
15 years market presence - 15 years of passion for innovation
