One of the cycling world’s more traditional companies, founded in 1953, looks set for a shake up as the next generation of family ownership becomes more heavily involved.
Willem Campagne is Dutch by ancestry, lives in Thailand, speaks fluent English, has worked for an American multinational computer company and will probably one day take over the famous Italian company owned by his father Mr Rudie Campagne, Vittoria.
Willem recently visited Australia and spoke to Bicycling Trade.
Bicycling Trade: What is your personal role at Vittoria?
Willem Campagne: I’m the CEO for Asia Pacific. We’ve divided the world into three regions: EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), Asia Pacific and United States.
I have two group (global) functions, Group ICT (Information and Communication Technology) and Group Marketing.
BT: You told me previously that you were with Microsoft. How long were you there and how long with Vittoria?
WC: I’ve been with Vittoria for 1 ½ years now. I was at Microsoft for about five years and before that at Heineken Beer for about eight years, very diverse and very consumer centric companies.
The cycling industry by nature is very traditional. It doesn’t mean that you can automatically hop on the internet band wagon. You need to find a balance and a right mix between all those key components, because without the retailer, we are useless. Without embracing and servicing the consumer, we have a long term problem as well.
BT: What brings to you Australia?
WC: To visit our distribution partner here, GKA Sports, as well as to do some retail visits to find out how it’s going and what we need to do to improve and increase our market share. We want to fix the things that are not going as well and accelerate or enforce what is.
BT: Have you been to Australia before?
WC: This is my first time actually. I’ve flown over it a few times on my way to New Zealand in my previous life. It’s always been on my list to visit, especially since I’ve grown up in Asia with lots of Australian friends.
BT: What are your impressions so far?
WC: Kind people. A very developed country and market from what I can see. I find the Australian accent always has a load of positivity. I will be here for three days, but plan to be back soon, because we’re building our Asian operation and we’re hiring people who will be here a hell of a lot more than we’ve been here in the past.
BT: Based out of GKA?
WC: Probably. We’re building a regional headquarters in Bangkok, Thailand near our factory. We will be hiring specific sales and marketing people to serve each individual market because every market has its own characteristics, different events and its own culture and the idea is to adapt as much as possible to that.
BT: How big is the Australian market for Vittoria relative to other countries?
WC: It’s a medium sized market, but it’s a very developed market, meaning that it functions as an example to a lot of other countries in the Asia-Pacific region, making it for us important in terms of product launches and looking at how retail plans are going – consumer engagement, retail presence, events, things like that.
Australia is on our radar as a focus market where we intend to invest substantially with our partner GKA and with our retail partners.
I’m here to do some homework and prepare some plans for 2015 with GKA and our retail partners, that will be significant.
BT: Let’s talk retail presence because tyres are one of the most easily sold products on the internet, as you would know.
WC: Yes
BT: So how many of your tyres do you sell online and how many would you still sell through bike shops?
WC: Right now, contrary to what many people would believe, we don’t sell much at all on the internet. What happens is a lot of these internet companies source their products from individual distributors around the world.
Because the product is very difficult to track, you cannot uniquely identify every tyre. It’s very difficult to locate sources of supply to these companies.
In principal, we are all for traditional retail for the simple fact that the consumer gets a lot more service in a shop than he would on an internet site. Secondly, when you have a puncture, you need a new tyre on the spot and can’t wait for a few days until you get the product.
So all our investments are geared towards retail and will be a lot more in the future than now.
BT: So are you saying that you don’t have direct accounts with places like Wiggle, or PBK or Chain Reaction?
WC: We supply to one of them in a very limited quantity. That is more a historical thing with a contract signed a long time ago. The volumes are minimal.
BT: So they’re getting most of their supply through distributors?
WC: Yes. We wouldn’t even know exactly where yet. In the future we’re looking at how to uniquely identify each individual product in a way to trace it back, to make sure that pricing is kept in line with agreements. But of course in Europe as well as I think in Australia, we have law that you can’t tell third parties what to do with your product once they have purchased it.
BT: What sort of identification? Microchips in tyres?
WC: We’re looking at a multitude of them. One is a barcode that could be burned into the product. Another is indeed RFID (Radio Frequency Identification). Another one would be QR codes. The problem is that the product goes through very high temperatures during production. Plus you have weight to consider.
BT: I believe that you’re rebranding Geax as Vittoria.
WC: Yes, absolutely. We’re doing this to deliver more efficiency and consistency in the brand. We’ve never had any complaints on the product itself. The only issue has been brand awareness. And for a company to divide its marketing spend over two brands is always less efficient as if you do it on one.
Vittoria is well known around the world for over 50 years so it was an easy choice to rebrand our mountain bike tyres Vittoria as well.
BT: Your father purchased Vittoria quite some time ago…
WC: That was a very long time ago, with some partners. He’s 70 years old but hasn’t lost a gram of energy. He’s interested in every little detail. He’s based in Switzerland but he would travel five out of the 12 months per year if you add it all up. He’s very interested in what’s being planned for his brand. He’s very keen on the factory. He’s an industrialist by training, so he’s very careful about how the factories are being managed and product innovation.
We’re looking at a new technology called nanographene, which we’re experimenting with for mountain bike tyres for next year. It’s very cutting edge. That he manages personally, together with engineers and scientists.
It will make tyres lighter, stronger and more flexible. It’s still in prototype phase. It has improvements over almost all parameters of the tyre.
BT: Is that something that you have exclusivity over or will your competitors also be developing this?
WC: Oh no, we have time to market advantage primarily. And the company we work with, we have exclusive joint ventures with.
BT: How many staff do you have, both in Vittoria and the Lion Tyre factories?
WC: That would be 1,600.
BT: And how many tyres per year are you making?
WC: Around the 12 million mark.
BT: What would the split between categories be?
WC: It would be 60% road, 40% mountain, with road including urban.
