Founder Profile
Gerhard Cless
Last reviewed: September 2026 · By Swet Parvadiya
Background
Gerhard Cless held a profoundly rigorous, highly technical background in advanced electrical engineering, complex circuit board design, and mass-scale industrial prototyping. Having successfully studied in Germany before emigrating to the United States, and operating as a fiercely capable engineer who possessed deep expertise in optimizing highly reliable, low-tolerance electromechanical systems, this incredibly intense technical foundation provided the exact engineering leverage required to successfully co-pilot the massive Zebra enterprise.
Founding Story
Gerhard Cless is a fiercely brilliant German-American electrical engineer, highly astute industrial designer, and the profoundly influential technical co-founder fundamentally responsible for the incredibly robust engineering architecture of the massive Zebra Technologies hardware platform. Operating as a highly talented engineer alongside Edward Kaplan, Cless aggressively spearheaded the highly complex electrical engineering required to design the incredibly durable internal circuitry of Zebra's pioneering thermal printers. By relentlessly ensuring that the incredibly precise print heads could survive massively harsh industrial environments without failure, his absolutely rigorous technical execution completely guaranteed the firm's absolute dominance over global warehouse supply chains. His massive engineering legacy permanently secured his status as a core titan of the enterprise IoT ecosystem.