The beginning of the lighting manufacturer
This thing looks like a cherry sweet - or is it more like a blackcurrant? Dark red, appetisingly round, smooth and shiny... It is the original rear light of the Busch & Müller brand. It is perhaps three centimetres tall, almost 100 years old and feels heavy in the hand. A spherical "cat's eye" made of glass that wobbles briefly when Guido Müller puts it back on the table. The next museum piece looks more whimsical than precious: a wafer made of transparent, orange-coloured plastic. A kind of prismatic reflector, actually baked in a waffle iron for the well-known "Sendung mit der Maus" programme several years ago to explain how the second generation of reflectors after the cat's eye works. Guido Müller himself belongs to the third generation - not of reflectors, but of the Müller lighting dynasty. The Busch family, represented in the company name, has not been involved for decades.
And while his father Rainer, who is well into his 70s, only looks after the business part-time, his son Guido is full of energy when it comes to bicycle lighting. And although he is not an engineer, but a business graduate, he explains the finer points of correct lighting without stumbling: "There is no such thing as the ideal, perfect light pattern for all purposes. The best light cone for rather slow city traffic looks different from the one for fast cross-country journeys, for example. The width of the light field, the brightness at close range - it all has to match the application." Müller and his technicians work with light like a bakery works with dough.
The company for bicycle lighting: Busch und Müller
Down in the basement, behind the pitch-black measuring laboratory, where lux and lumen say goodnight to each other in the darkness, a whole battery of spotlights is set up accordingly. Controlled by a kind of mixing console, they illuminate a simulated street. Wide beams, long beams, high beam, parking light, the whole programme.
Guido Müller, co-owner: "Of course I'm happy not only to be working in a flourishing business with the bicycle market, but also to be producing something that benefits rather than harms the rest of the world. The bicycle has no natural enemies.
Busch & Müller has focussed more comprehensively on bicycle lighting than any other manufacturer. They build 25 types of headlights with up to 100 variants in Meinerzhagen, as well as 15 types of bicycle rear lights. Made of metal and plastic, for battery and dynamo operation. And the whole thing is not only "made in Germany", but also developed, designed, tested and packaged there. Busch & Müller takes what is known as "vertical integration" to the extreme: pallets of plastic granulate, cardboard boxes and steel strip slide down one loading ramp into production, while finished headlights and rear lights make their way into the world from the other loading ramp to bring light into the darkness.
The company also remains true to its location when it comes to procurement: anything that is not manufactured in-house is sourced locally. For company boss Guido Müller, this is not just local patriotism, but also a question of style. "We always prefer local suppliers," he says, "also because it's simply more fun to discuss something locally than having to travel to Asia for it." Apart from raw materials and packaging cardboard, there is very little else, as a few years ago the Müllers even took over a company that supplies the electronic components for their lamps. The range of products the company produces itself would be enough for four or five specialised companies.
Insights into the production of bicycle lighting
In one hall, a whole battery of injection moulding machines sucks small plastic grains through thick tubes and compresses them into lamp housings. Other plastic parts for bicycle lighting, shaped like spoons without handles, end up in an adjoining room, where they are lined up like grains on a corn cob and rotate through a vacuum in which vaporised aluminium evaporates them into brilliant mirrors - plastics technology at a high level, combined with in-house tool and mould making.
The design of the lamps and the precise curvature of the mirrors are again the result of meticulous engineering work: they distribute the tiny, glistening light spot of a single light-emitting diode exactly as a city cyclist, cross-country rider or pedelec rider needs it. If the diode is only a fraction of a millimetre out of place, its light cone is useless. Technology has come a long way from the hand-screwed bulbs of past decades. Expressed in lux, the measure of illuminance: when the brand took over the business of its former competitor "Union" in 1992, bicycle headlights had four lux. The introduction of halogen lights by Busch & Müller quickly increased the value to ten lux. Today, the 100 lux limit has even been exceeded for authorised bicycle lights - with plenty of impulses from Meinerzhagen.
The expansion of the company
For decades, the buildings continued to sprawl over the hill on the edge of the village. An electroplating shop, which draws dull metal parts through bubbling and unhealthy-smelling baths to make them sparkle first copper, then nickel silver and finally shiny chrome, forms a small neighbouring wing. In a bunker-like, soundproof room next door are a press and punching machine that mould tiny sheet metal contacts from steel strip. You pass through high-bay warehouses, open and close fire doors, blink briefly into the daylight and soon lose sight of what the floor plan of the bicycle lighting company might look like. Shortly before the end of the tour, one of the new halls that went into operation in 2016 opens up. Relatively bright, low-odour and quiet: the assembly area. "Assembly used to be right next to metal processing," explains Müller. "The floor shook next to the press and there was a roar. Now it's quieter and more pleasant for the ladies."
What many of the more than 250 employees do here - in this department it is really only women - is as "made in Meinerzhagen" as it is likely to have been soon after the company was founded: In the end, it is still concentrated manual labour that combines the many in-house ingredients into lighting and mirrors. However, their current technology makes the appetising original cat's eye look rather medieval.
Facts about the bicycle lighting manufacturer Busch & Müller
- Year of foundation: 1925
- Company headquarters: Meinerzhagen
- Owner: Dr Rainer and Guido Müller
- Employees: About 300
- Warehouse/production area: >14,000 square metres
