Product details

This supporting video is to accompany the case. The case abstract is as follows: Back in 1990, Wim Ouboter was in the mood for a St Gallen bratwurst at the Sternengrill in Zurich. The journey there was too short for the car but too long to go by foot. The vision of micromobility that would put the walking world on wheels was born. All that was needed was a special type of transportation for such distances, which he later coined 'microdistances'. It should be small, light, portable. The feedback he received on his first prototype was extremely depressing. Ouboter let go of the idea, the project and his plans for the micromobile roller and didn't touch it again for five years. His enthusiasm returned, however, and in 1995 he began working on the scooter again. This time he went about the idea with real determination and despite considerable resistance and setbacks. He founded micro(R), a company which he conducted from a four and a half room apartment. With the sale of 40,000 scooters planned micro(R) had great success in Japan in 1999 and then experienced an incredible boom in 2000 when 80,000 scooters were being sold on a daily basis. The fad was over by 2001. The scooter market was dead. Hundreds of copycat manufacturers had entered the market and demand decreased abruptly. In Europe alone, warehouses were clogged with over 7,000,000 copies. Ouboter found himself at a crossroads. He decided to continue business, on the grounds that his vision was to support micromobility, not the sale of a trendy scooter.