Dieter Morszeck, grandson of Rimowa's founder Paul Morszeck, joined the Cologne luggage maker in 1972 at the age of nineteen. A keen amateur photographer, he developed the company's first water- and dust-proof camera case in 1976, built for both desert and tropical use, and took over management of the company in 1981. In 1986 the headquarters moved from Junkersdorf to Mathias-Brüggen-Straße in Köln-Ossendorf.
At the end of the 1990s he brought polycarbonate into suitcase construction, about a quarter lighter than aluminium, and the first polycarbonate Rimowa cases appeared in 2000. By 2008 the company sold about 400,000 cases a year, roughly two-thirds of them polycarbonate, and by 2013 it was producing 5,800 a day in its own factories in Cologne, Pelhřimov in the Czech Republic, Cambridge in Canada and Indaiatuba in Brazil.
In October 2016 he agreed to sell 80% of the company to LVMH for €640 million, making Rimowa the group's first German house, with much of the proceeds reported to be destined for a charitable foundation. He ran the company jointly with Alexandre Arnault from January 2017 and left its management in May 2018.