Karl Francis Lopker (December 19, 1951 – August 25, 2018) was an American business executive who served as CEO of

QAD Inc QAD Inc. is a software company that provides enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and related enterprise software to manufacturing companies. The company has customers in over 100 countries around the world. On June 28, 2021, it was anno ...

and was a co-founder of Deckers Outdoor Corporation.

Early life and education

Lopker was born in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, and grew up in

Downey, California Downey is a city located in Southeast Los Angeles County, California, United States, southeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is considered part of the Gateway Cities. The city is the birthplace of the Apollo space program. It is also the home of ...

. He attended Don Bosco Technical Institute and matriculated at the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduate ...

from which he graduated with a B.S. in electrical engineering in 1973.

Deckers Outdoor Corporation

While a senior at UCSB, Lopker with fellow UCSB student

Doug Otto Douglas B. Otto (born 1951) is a business executive who co-founded Deckers Outdoor Corporation whose portfolio includes the UGG Australia brand. Early life and education Otto was born in 1951 to two high school educators. He attended and gradu ...

created Deckers Outdoor Corporation in 1973. Lopker oversaw manufacturing of the production while Otto was responsible for sales and distribution. Despite a growing company, Lopker decided he wanted to work in software and was bought out by Otto in 1982. He joined

as CEO, a company his wife, Pamela Lopker, founded.

QAD

Despite working at Deckers at the time, Lopker urged then-girlfriend Pamela to start

. The Lopkers made the decision to write one of their software programs to be able to run on multiple computers, launching their program, MFG/PRO, and the company to international success. MFG/PRO was also the first manufacturing software program to use

UNIX Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

. Lopker also made the decision to recruit PeopleSoft employees after their

Oracle An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination. Description The word '' ...

acquisition and subsequent layoffs.

UC Santa Barbara affiliation

In addition to attending college at UCSB, Lopker and his wife were both honored by the UC Santa Barbara Alumni Association's "Distinguished Alumni Award" in 1998. The Lopkers made a major donation to the university which resulted in the first endowed chair in computer science at the

College of Engineering Engineering education is the activity of teaching knowledge and principles to the professional practice of engineering. It includes an initial education (bachelor's and/or master's degree), and any advanced education and specializations that ...

Personal life and death

Lopker married business partner and UCSB alumnae, Pamela Meyer, in 1981 and would later have two children. On August 25, 2018, Lopker died of

prostate cancer Prostate cancer is cancer of the prostate. Prostate cancer is the second most common cancerous tumor worldwide and is the fifth leading cause of cancer-related mortality among men. The prostate is a gland in the male reproductive system that sur ...

, 13 years after diagnosis.

References

External links

QAD executive biography

Forbes biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lopker, Karl Francis 1951 births 2018 deaths University of California, Santa Barbara alumni Businesspeople from Los Angeles