You would have expected a bit more razzmatazz. Colourful hair perhaps. Wild clothes. Or at least tattooed arms. But Kalle's arms are not tattooed. They are in blue chequered shirt sleeves. Kalle has tucked the shirt into the waistband of his black jeans. It's a little tight around his stomach. So this is him: Karlheinz Nicolai. The man who has been writing bike history with his frames for years. Kalle, the cult welder.
Kalle (35) is sitting on an office chair at a huge desk. Kalle is talking. It's about revolutions. And because it's difficult to explain, he ends up drawing a big "N" on a piece of paper. Because that's exactly what Kalle thinks revolution is. "You can constantly develop a bike further. The evolutionary curve is constantly going uphill. Then there comes a point where you just can't go any further. You can only throw everything overboard. It's a revolution. You start again from scratch with a completely new concept. Then evolution sets in and things go steadily uphill. This time because of the better approach, but further than before. That's what I get up at seven o'clock every morning for." Sounds plausible. "N" like "revolution". Or better: like "Nicolai". With his "Nucleon" frame, Kalle has once again sparked a revolution. The gears are located in an aluminium box in the centre of the frame. This means that the chain can no longer jump and the mud can no longer encrust the gears. Because the first prototype three years ago was much heavier than a normal frame, it was nothing more than the start of the revolution for Kalle. The zero point. In the meantime, evolution has set in. In ten years, he is certain that the frame will be lighter, require less maintenance and be more user-friendly than any other product on the market. By then at the latest, it will be time for a new revolution.
The revolutionary cell is located in an old farmhouse in Lübrechtsen. Kalle bought the farm six years ago. The property is known internally as the "headquarters". The demand for his frames had almost overwhelmed him within a few years. He had to get out of his parents' cramped double garage, where the incredible Nicolai success story had begun in 1995 - the American downhill brat Leigh Donovan raced to the world championship title on her "Trombone". With Kalle's first own bike design. Suddenly everyone wanted this bike. Today, Kalle and his ten employees build over 1500 frames a year.
Kalle is considered a cult welder in the scene. Yet he hardly ever sits at the welding machine. "I didn't study mechanical engineering for six years and then weld until I retire," says Kalle as he looks over the shoulder of trainee Robin. He is currently trying to calculate a new milled part on the computer. Kalle mumbles a few words in an incomprehensible secret engineering language. A combination of numbers is to be solved, or something like that. Kalle is much more than a welder. He is a qualified engineer. A designer. And above all: a visionary.
In 1991, Kalle completed an internship at Californian suspension specialist AMP - a motorbike development company. When AMP received an order from Specialized for a full-suspension mountain bike, intern Nicolai drew the sketches for the first "FSR". At that time, the first suspension forks were just coming onto the market. In 1993, Nicolai presented a fully hydraulic disc brake at the trade fair in Cologne. The scene laughed at him. In 1995, he built his vision of a downhill bike for Mongoose. Leigh Donovan became world champion with it a few months later. In 1998, he presented the "BMXTB", an innovative hybrid of BMX bike and mountain bike. Today, dirt bikes are the big hit. And in 2000, he shocked the competition with the "Saturn", a fully frame weighing less than two kilos. Last year, he built the suspension for VW's one-litre car. And now the geared bike. There's hardly any time left for biking. But that's okay with him: "Even as a child, I preferred building the railway to letting it run," says Kalle. As a revolutionary leader, you have to set priorities.
Nicolai's distribution network now spans the entire world. Six packaged frames are waiting in the yard to be dispatched to Korea. Japan, Russia, America and other countries have their own Nicolai importer. His bikes can even be found in Singapore. From a trainee to a globally operating bike company - it seems like a fairy tale. Sometimes Kalle can hardly believe it himself. "My motto is: Do your best every day. The rest is fate. The customers will decide what happens to us in the future."
