TriVision's Company History

TriVision was officially founded in 2000 by three pioneers in machine vision, Peter Hauge, Ole Neckelmann, and Claus Gramkow, currently the technical, commercial, and development directors respectively. They met in 1997, working in the vision group at Maersk’s Odense Steel Shipyard. Although they all studied machine vision in one form or another, they came from very different educational backgrounds, for example, Gramkow also has experience in Electrical Engineering and Neckelmann has a background in Physics.

“I always dreamed of starting my own company, and so I pitched the idea to the other founders. One of them was eager to get started, but the other one, I had to convince a bit more” Hauge says jokingly, referring to Neckelmann.

To this, Neckelmann says “Honestly, I had not considered it myself, but when these two said this was the way to go, I started managing a bit and found out that we could walk away with five million DKK. Then I was all in as well”.

Neckelmann is referring to one of TriVision’s first major projects — working for the EU — which he managed to secure, ensuring the company was off to a great start. However, building a new company was far from a walk in the park.

TriVision had a rough start due to the chaos caused by the great storm in December 1999. The storm toppled a large crane at the shipyard, resulting in a delayed process of getting contracts signed by Maersk, as the company had more pressing issues to address. However, the three founders eventually secured the signatures they needed.

Despite delays in the signing process, the founding fathers described the start-up phase as relatively easy thanks to the EU projects that provided financial stability. However, they soon realized this only postponed the shock of having to secure revenue quickly.

“Once these projects ran out, we really had to step up on sales. Fortunately, we had two customers who paid the first year” Gramkow says, referring to their first two customers De Danske Spritfabrikker and Tolstrup.

Another early customer was ARLA, whose project became instrumental in shaping TriVision into the company it is today. This project focused on seal inspection within the color space, an area that has been a core business at TriVision ever since.

For TriVision, the past 8-9 years especially stand out as a period of remarkable successes and growth. In 2016, the company shifted from primarily being a project-based company to offering more standardized products, supported by a big investment from Vaekstpartner Kapital. The year after, Jesper Bach joined the company as CEO and Managing Director and the company started defining its product range and market position. In 2023, the company made its first sales to the US and revenue increased significantly.

The company seems to have consistently thrived, achieving many successes with its numbers exponentially growing. Ironically, according to the founding fathers, their biggest victory is “simply surviving”.

“I would say our biggest victory is simply surviving. Sometimes, we would be concerned about paying the next salary 14 days ahead, but somehow, we managed it every time” Neckelmann says.

Hauge agrees and says “I don’t think there is a specific order of victories or events. But surviving all the times that we have been balancing on the edge from a cash flow point of view is definitely a victory in itself”.

Claus adds “I would also say that continuous evolution is a huge victory because the next year has always been different from the year before”.

However, the downside of continuous evolution is that sometimes, you may take a path you later realize wasn’t the right choice. A recurring challenge for the company is navigating through the many opportunities and choosing the best course of action.

According to the founding fathers, one of the company’s biggest disappointments in the past was the occasional lack of focus which resulted in a lot of failed projects.

To this Neckelmann adds “If we were to present all the failed projects we went through in the beginning, it would be like a scary movie. But also quite interesting because you cannot imagine all the things we have been through …  I guess the biggest disappointment may have been that we did not succeed with our facial recognition back then.  But of course, today, it doesn’t matter”.

Gramkow and Hauge both agree with Neckelmann and explain that in 200x, the company won the IST grand prize award in the EU for their face recognition system, which was huge considering it was known as the “IT Nobel Prize in the EU” according to Gramkow.  The system clearly had a lot of potential but unfortunately not enough to become a successful business case. To this, Gramkow adds that it was great winning the IST award, but it was a shame that it was on the wrong project.

Over the past 25 years, TriVision has experienced both the highs of thriving and the challenges of simply surviving, but the strong partnership of the company’s founding fathers has been and will continue to be a constant.

All three founders agree that one of the key factors driving their continued partnership is their shared ability to collaborate effectively and deliver value to the customers.

Hauge says “I really work towards making the customers feel that both we and our partners are easy to work with”. Besides delivering value to the customers, he loves adding value to the team, “I know it sounds corny, but I enjoy being with my colleagues and I enjoy being able to help them whenever they have problems”.

Similarly, Gramkow explains that what really drives him is to be able to fix things, whether it is for customers or the team.

Neckelmann considers himself a “dream seller” and explains that his daily drive is to be able to make customers’ dreams come true by solving issues with a technology customers didn’t even know was possible. He says, “From day one, I have loved this technology, how to set it up, and how to extract incredible images”. Hauge says to Neckelmann that his passion for the technology is clear when he presents the company’s solutions, “Anyone can see that you just love it, and that’s pretty cool after 25 years”.

As for hopes for the future of the company, all three founders are on the exact same page. They wish to continue to grow the company and have a large group of fantastic people working together as a team.

“Every single member of the TriVision family works hard every day and does their best, and it shows. It makes me really happy to see where we are today” says Hauge.

To provide a simple answer to the complex question; what does the future look like? Hauge concludes that the ambition is to “keep going and keep growing”.