NextSense Appoints New Director

Harald Hopfgartner has been appointed sales and marketing director for NextSense GmbH (Graz, Austria), a specialist for optical sensor technologies. He is succeeding Franz Schiep, who retired in early 2016 after the successful establishment of an international sales network.

Hopfgartner has much expertise in sales and knows the company since its foundation. Prior to joining them in 2009 as the international sales manager, he worked as a consultant and the company was among his customers. During the last seven years he was in charge of the worldwide acquisition of customers and sales partners and has taken responsibility of the network developed by Schiep. “For us, Harald Hopfgartner is the ideal candidate for this position,” said Clemens Gasser, the company’s chief executive officer. “Because of his unique expert knowledge and experience, he creates added value for the company.”

Besides the worldwide distribution of the measurement devices, he is responsible for the strategy development of sales and marketing. Within nine years, the workforce of NextSense has grown from four to more than 50 employees and plans to continue growing under his direction.

“By 2020 we want our turnover to be tripled. In addition, we intend to increase our number of employees to a total of 150,” stated Hopfgartner, emphasizing the company’s goals. “The key to success is a consistent market and customer orientation, the most important thing is to meet the expectations of our customers with our unique products. To achieve this objective we don´t want to swim with the tide, we still want to focus on niche markets. I look forward to the challenge and the ambitious growth plans.”

“Franz Schiep, who will continue to work as a consultant for the company, established a highly successful and customer-oriented sales network, this success is confirmed by the above-average company growth. We thank him for his commitment and wish him all the best,” added Gasser.

NextSense is a global leader in producing and distributing revolutionary solutions for profile measurement and surface inspection. All solutions are based on non-contact measurement technology which captures unbiased measurement data removing all outside variables based on differences between operators or environmental conditions.

Their devices, called CALIPRI and SURFILES, are used for gap and flush measurement of automotive bodies, wear measurement of railway wheelsets and analyzing the surfaces of rolled steel. The customer list ranges from well-known railway operators and their suppliers (e.g. DB, SNCF and Bombardier) to international enterprises in the automotive, steel and technology sectors such as Daimler, ArcelorMittal and Miele. With an export quota of beyond 90 percent and sales partnerships in more than 30 countries, the high-tech company is a truly global player.

www.nextsense.at