HERRMANS 1959 – 2009, 50 YEARS OF ENTERPRENEURSHIP

Herrmans is one of the forerunners in Europe when it comes to continuously developing bicycle technology through innovative ideas. The coastline of Ostrobothnia in western Finland has a strong spirit of entrepreneurship and nurses among others many businesses within the plastic sector. After working 5 years for three different plastic companies Bernhard Herrmans, together with his wife Lisbeth, founded the Company on the 28 of April 1959 at the mere age of 26.

- I started by producing plastic carpets and rimtapes. There were three companies in the municipality making rimtapes and Allvar Lindell from one of these introduced me to his Finnish customers when he retired, says Bernhard Herrmans.

Herrmans produced rim tapes during weekends on a extruder he hired from one of the local plastic companies. There were only so many customers in Finland (i.e Helkama and Tunturi) so already in 1966 Herrmans started exporting to Monark in Sweden. This same year Herrmans bought his first own extruder. It was delivered at 9.35 am on November 2nd and was placed in a room in Herrmans’ own home. The customers increased at a steady pace and on request of Ögland in Norway he also bought a injection moulding machine and started producing grips in 1969.

From the small room in the family home the business moved to a 80 sqm house on their property 1970 and in 1972 the first production hall was built on Herrmans’ current business premises in Sandsund. The company started making reflectors for gripends and soon afterwards launched its first reflector, the Safety Wing, in 1976. The orange lollipop shaped reflector was to become a sales success and was exported in huge quantities to Germany in the late 1970’s. The same year (1976) Herrmans started to try to automatize the rimtape production and in 1977 the company hit the jackpot by outplaying the competitors in all of Northern Europe with the combination of the price and quality of their rim tapes. At this point Herrmans was already exporting to Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, England, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland and France.

Chain guards were added to the list of merchandise in 1982. After a slow start for spoke- and rearreflectors (started in 1981) sales boomed in 1986 after Sweden made spoke reflectors compulsory for bikes. At the end of this boom Botnia Shipping, later Wicoria, bought the Company from Herrmans. The Company struggled with huge profitability problems 1987-1990 and the labour force dropped from close to 110 to around 45. Herrmans however knew that innovation is the way forward and did not hesitate to come up with new ideas. In 1989 Herrmans presented the first LED-based bicycle light in the world and in 1991 bicycle helmets were brought to the market. In 1992 Herrmans’ Nordic Lights division started selling worklights for the heavy industry (i.e. mining machines).