Скачать с ютуб The Future of Simplon Bikes - An Exclusive Interview with CEO Stefan Vollbach в хорошем качестве

The Future of Simplon Bikes - An Exclusive Interview with CEO Stefan Vollbach

https://hexlox.com/blogs/news/simplon... Welcome to the Hexlox Show Stefan. How are you doing? I’m good. I’m happy to be at a bike show again. So who is Stefan Vollbach? CEO of Simplon Bikes is my official title, but mostly, when I meet new people, I introduce myself as the housekeeper. The guy that's in charge. If something goes wrong, I’m the responsible guy. But the official title is CEO. Can you tell us some more about Simplon bikes? Well, right now, here at Eurobike, we're in the backyard of Simplon Bikes. I just drove 45 minutes from the factory at lake Constance. It's a perfect location at the foot of the Alps, in a very central place in Europe, right between 4 countries. Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and Liechtenstein. It's really good for recruiting staff because we're right at the front of the mountain. We also celebrate our 60-year anniversary this year. Simplon was founded in 1961. We can't party because of the big C (Corona) but we will do it next year, hopefully under better circumstances. At the center of Simplon are a couple of things… Quality, of course. Now, everybody says they stand for quality, but we don’t compromise at all on quality. That's a more intense approach than just saying - Yeah we like quality... What is also part of our DNA is our road racing pedigree. Simplon comes from a road racing background. This is where the company comes from. Later on, we added mountain bikes, city, and trekking bikes so now we have a full portfolio. But what really makes us different is our relationship with our customers. When you order a bike at Simplon it's going to be built by hand in our factory. We only have one factory. That's where we develop and assemble all the products - by hand. One mechanic builds one bike. This really makes us proud. As a customer, when you get the bike, in the SAP system you can look up, which one of our guys or girls (we have many very good female mechanics) built the bike. They take pride in what they do. Our people can say: I build these three, four bikes today. I’m proud of them and they carry my handwriting and I did my very best work assembling them. Yes, I have another story. I needed to have some welding done on my cargo bike and this turned into a very emotional experience. When I got the bike back I noticed that the person actually cared deeply about what they had done and I still get a lump in my throat talking about this. This person actually took pride in their work. It's an emotional thing! All our mechanics know that there's a passionate cyclist waiting for this one bike. They know that this bike is not going to be stocked in some warehouse somewhere. This bike is gonna be shipped the next day, or the same day, to someone eagerly waiting for their bike. That changes the attitude I think. If you are interested in a new car you go to this configurator tool to check out the colors, the engine, the radio that radio, the color seats, what rims and tires, and all the bling-bling and the nice things. You do this at Simplon as well! Of course, the main focus is on ergonomics. You want to pick the right frame size, the right stem length, the right saddle. This is what makes the bike Your bike. I was about to get to that. This customer-first approach is really at the heart of Simplon, isn’t it? Yes, That's us. People say we make expensive bikes. Yes, our bikes are expensive and if you make expensive bikes you have to offer something really valuable. We do not compete with the middle-of-the-pack with our higher prices. This is part of the premium quality concept. We’re building the bikes in Austria and that makes a difference. Another thing that sets us apart is the customization possibilities that we offer. Our clients are riders that maybe we’re not 100% happy with another brand so now they're willing to spend a bit more to get the perfect bike that they're going to ride 6-10 or even more years. From a sustainability perspective, this is really important. We only build the bike when someone really wants it! I’m not blaming anybody in the industry but I think some of the bigger brands just produce bikes because a dealer somewhere thinks he/she can sell them, stocking them without any concrete interest from anyone. So there are a lot of bikes produced that will not find their perfect owner. They end up being discounted. In the end, someone will buy them. But will that person be super happy? Probably not. We believe that if you really want a good bike you'd rather spend a little bit more money, but then be perfectly happy with it. We do not want to create a pile of bikes that you then have to look for customers for. So it's an inverted approach to the typical mass-production idea where you have no demand or a very general demand and then you look for the customer. We find the customer first, the person that wants that bike and then we make it for that particular person