Setting up a bicycle brand and factory in the Netherlands is hardly an innovative idea. Yet in the past two years, in the middle of a pandemic, the Dutch bicycle manufacturer VanMoof managed to grow from 200 to 700 employees worldwide. After one and a half years of Work Professor, we have spoken to quite a few professors and experts about the scientific basis for a successful organisation. Today we are talking to Co-founder and CEO Taco Carlier of VanMoof, and we are going to check with him whether they have applied some of these scientific insights, consciously or unconsciously.
Taco Carlier set up the company VanMoof together with your brother Ties. In this, Taco takes the daily management and Ties, who lives and works from Taiwan, focuses mainly on product development, production itself and marketing. VanMoof is experiencing tremendous growth. Production rose from 10,000 to 35,000 bikes last year and is just under 70,000 this year.
The key to success
'Next year you expect production to increase to almost 200,000 bikes.' Wendy asks Taco what he thinks is the most important thing they are doing right? Ties explains, "A complete focus of everyone on our product." Besides the fact that the entire production chain of the company is completely owned by vanMoof, and therefore costs remain low and the product can be developed continuously and quickly, they also sell directly to consumers. These two factors set a modern company like vanMoof apart. Taco explains.
At the start of a revolution
vanMoof is one of the fastest-growing companies in Europe. How they managed that, many entrepreneurs wonder. How do you distinguish yourself? How do you keep current customers happy while focusing on the developments of the future? Do you want to know what works and what you can learn from vanMoof's company as an entrepreneur? Taco answers these and other questions.
Links
About VanMoof
More about Taco Carlier
More about the Working Professor
Do you have questions or input? Please contact Wendy van Ierschot at wendy@viepeople.com.
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