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I’m with FK Day who is the Founder and President of World Bicycle Relief. I met one of your colleagues in Davos this year. You had quite a big show there.
It was very exciting to be part of the Davos Group and also, UBS’s Walk… oh, I forgot it’s full name.
Yes, we had to put these little bracelets around, which are not very good bracelets (I must have you know). They were a bit tough to put on and then they kept falling off. Anyway, I did my six kilometres. What would six kilometres do?
That would put a bike in the hands of a schoolgirl, in South Africa and then have the program managed. Really, all the people at Davos and all the people here today – we don’t have a transportation problem but there are many people in emerging markets, particularly in the rural areas where their only mode of transportation is walking. If you take someone walking and enable them to ride a bike, great things happen in productivity.
I loved all your research and all the information you were showing, from entrepreneurs to people who are learning every morning and yet, it’s such a basic, obvious thing. If you ride a bicycle rather than walking (and there are long distances to go), you save a lot of time.
You surely do. Sometimes we forget about it. Someone can carry a larger capacity on the back of a bike. They can ride further, save time, and have a greater range. With the school kids, which is the program DAVOS and UBS was doing, it’s really connecting rural students to schools. It enables them to get to school on time. Attendance goes up. Performance goes up. It’s pretty impactful.
This is a family business for you.
Well, my brother and I started a company in the bicycle industry many years ago, designing and manufacturing very high-end bicycle components.
Very modest. How big is the company today?
I’d say about 3,800 people and about $700m in revenue per year.
# 1 or # 2 in the world. Are the Chinese bigger than you yet?
Actually, there’s a Japanese company, which is bigger than we are, but we’re feistier.
So # 2 in the world from a business that you and your brother started. Why bicycles?
Well, my brother was a weekend racer and I was a weekend mountain-biker. One day, he came home and said, “We have to make a product that makes cycling easier and more fun”. Our very first product was a gear shifter, located right on the handlebars.
We see them everywhere now.
We do.
Do you get a royalty on those?
No. Hopefully, we make them at a very high quality and sell them at a high price.
Oh, so they’re all yours. All the gearshifts are yours.
Yes.
You also make bicycles, though.
No, just the components. Everything that goes on the bicycle, except for the frame.
Your business must be booming. They say that cycling is now the new golf and I guess that if you’ve ever played golf before, everybody wants the best equipment and you’re producing the best equipment.
I’m very thankful to be in cycling instead of golf, but it also gives us the ability to apply everything we’ve learned at the top end of the market. To be able to apply that to designing and manufacturing bicycles for the lowest part of the market – people who desperately need reliable transportation. Our guys who design products to go on the Tour de France bikes are also helping to put products into the field in rural Africa.
Just before we move on to the rural stuff, the Tour de France: are you routing for anyone? Would you have some of the guys in the race who have your products?
Yes, we do. I think we have one or two teams and I guess that race is starting in about one month now.
Whom do we have to watch out for?
I think you need to keep your eyes on Specialised Farmer Quickstep Team (I think).
FK, I think most people in South Africa are delighted to see that you’ve chosen this country for this initiative. Where did that originate?
Right after the Indian Ocean tsunami, which was where we had our very first program, someone came to me and said, “The World Bicycle Relief work you did in Sri Lanka was very impactful. Do you realise the same number of people that died in the tsunami (that one-day event), die every two weeks in Africa? You have to scale this program up in Africa”. It’s all about bringing basic transportation to people whose only mode of transportation, is walking.
I’m looking at this. It even has a bell. Does it work?
It does work.
The bicycle seems to have the rather solid and strong tyres because clearly, in the rural area one of the issues would be loads of thorns, etcetera that could pop the tyres.
Yes, that’s so true. Most of the bikes going into Africa today are piles of junk. They stopped innovating those maybe 50 years ago, and all the producers just began to cut the costs out of the bikes. That was the only way they could compete with each other because no one cared about the end user. What we’ve done at World Bicycle Relief in Buffalo is we’ve said, “Okay let’s look at the end users’ needs and design the bike specifically to meet those needs”. From tip to tail, this bike is made out of high grade steel and good, forged parts. It’s more expensive than the bike you’d currently get in Africa but it also lasts much, much longer.
What about maintenance, though?
Maintenance is a good one. We’ve designed this bike to be very simple to repair, with common tools that you’d find in rural Africa. For example, if we send a bike in from Europe or the U.S.: firstly, they wouldn’t know how to fix it and then there would be no tools to fix it, and no spare parts to fix it. We didn’t want to do that, though. We wanted to have the bike repairable, durable, and technologically appropriate for people who don’t have the education.
How many bikes are you putting into the rural areas in South Africa because of the Davos challenge?
I think the Davos challenge resulted in about 2,500 bikes on the UBS side, but they’re using that to magnify other bikes to go in. Maybe one of the most important things about UBS is that they said, “Great. We’re putting in bikes but over the top of that, we’re going to put in very rigorous measuring and evaluation so that we can determine the impact of bikes. If it’s good, then let’s scale this thing like crazy. If it’s bad, we will all learn something”. I think it’s going to be very good.
Who’s going to get these bikes?
These bikes will be going to rural children. Primarily kids going from secondary school and migrating into high school. They’re all kids with distance problems, where distance is a barrier for them to get to school or stay in school.
Just help us out here. If someone lives five kilometres away from their school place, how much time are they going to save by riding one of these bicycles?
It’s interesting. Depending on where they are – if they’re on dirt paths in some of the deep, rural areas – that could take them an hour-and-a-half to two hours. With a bicycle though, they could probably do it in 45 minutes. One of the biggest problems along with the time consumed is the exhaustion of the child as well as the safety of the child, their ability to arrive on time instead of leaving at dark in the morning and returning at dark, at night. The time-savings is amazing with all the impact that could provide to a child.
Entrepreneurs as well. I see you have a carrier at the back there, not just for people to sit on but presumably goods that they could take from one town to another.
Yes, that’s a very good point. It would be the equivalent of a pickup truck in the developed world, where you could load it up and use it to transport your family or transport goods and services.
What’s next? If those 2,500 bikes do have the desired impact, will you continue to provide more into Africa – maybe expand it?
Yes, we’ll actually do about 75,000 bikes this year and if the studies turn out as good as we think…
Seventy-five thousand.
Seventy-five thousand, in total.
Wow, that’s a big number. Do you manufacture them yourselves or do you have a partner?
We have assembly facilities of our own in Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe, one right here in South Africa, and then in Angola and Malawi. What we do is we bring parts in and assemble them in the host countries. If the study turns out as good as we think, we’re going to teach other people how to scale up and we will scale up as well, and keep testing, measuring, and improving the products.
F.K. you’re an entrepreneur, as you’ve said. You started the business with your brother. You now have the second biggest bicycle components business in the world. It’s unusual for entrepreneurs to this kind of thing at this stage of your life. You’re still a young man. You have lots ahead. What drew you in that way?
I’ve always wondered, “What is an entrepreneur?” Well, in a way, we’re problem-solvers and what we saw was a problem. Right after the Indian Ocean tsunami we said, “There is a transportation problem here, which the decision-makers are overlooking because decision-makers don’t have a transportation problem”. If we’re able to apply simple transportation in a simple technological form, we can make a huge difference. As an entrepreneur (if that’s what I am), that is an irresistible thing. I can’t walk away from a challenge like that and an opportunity like that, to help people’s lives.
F.K. Day is the Founder and President of World Bicycle Relief.
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