The story of the successful start-up from the garage is a kind of modern fairy tale. In the case of the young Cube founder Markus Pürner, it was not a garage but a corner of his father's company where the Cube brand sprouted. And its seed was not a ground-breaking invention, like the creators of the mountain bike or the Macintosh computer, but a sure instinct and 40,000 Deutschmarks in venture capital. But otherwise it fits: in 1992, Pürner and his business partner at the time invested their money in a container with 160 inexpensive, functional mountain bikes from Asia. It was a precision landing: it was the time when the mountain bike was becoming a mass product and technical details such as better brakes and gears were also fertilising other types of bikes. The American pioneers had also long since begun to design frames and parts themselves, but to have them manufactured in Asia. It was also the time when not only Pürner but also a number of other clever people in this country realised that the future of mass-compatible sports bikes was just a container away. Among the Germans who heard the starting shot back then were the founders of well-known brands such as Stevens. Or Canyon. Or indeed: Cube.
Finger snap, glitter dust, leap in time: Markus Pürner, still casually dressed 30 years later and blessed with reddish curls, no longer has to heave boxes off the lorry. His brand is number one in the German premium market in terms of unit sales, and Pürner is number one at number one: the owner and therefore the boss of around 1,000 employees who push a million bikes off the ramp every year. That's around 4,000 bikes per working day - significantly more than small brands sell in a year. The seemingly endless façade of the factory halls gleams in the sun in matt anthracite. The "Cube" lettering looks strangely small on the huge façade.
Product Manager Frank Greifzu knows the numbers and dimensions by heart: the front of the halls where new parts are delivered and turned into bicycles is 360 metres long. And that is only part of the factory premises, because on the other side of the factory road is the only slightly smaller "Bicycle Logistics Centre 2", in whose racks up to 180,000 bicycles can be waiting to be delivered at the same time. Parts come in and bicycles leave the factory via 49 loading ramps. A few hundred metres away is the former production facility, which now only houses administration, design and development - with 300 employees. But these are just numbers for now. If you really want to understand them, enter the second of nine lined-up halls through an inconspicuous door.
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