The first CLASSIC senior citizens' vehicle is created
Vehicles for senior citizens are a gap in the market, they did not exist in Switzerland at that time
I met Cornel Eggenschwiler through the marketing study. He was a dedicated mechanic who worked in a medical supply store. Cornel had contact with a potential customer for a senior citizen vehicle. He allowed me to speak directly with the customer and I was able to ask him more specific questions regarding his wishes. Then I had a meeting with the managing partner of the medical supply store. I described my project to him and he was very open to my plans. With a handshake we agreed that I would build a prototype for him - and then 19 more vehicles. I would pay for everything technical and he would buy the vehicles from me for CHF 6,000 each. He would take care of the resale throughout Switzerland. I set to work in good spirits.
The collaboration with Hans Wepfer became increasingly difficult. Hans was a brilliant inventor and developer. But the physics as he saw it and interpreted it differed somewhat from the physical ideas I had been taught at school. Also, apart from our joint work, which we continued to pursue, he still had his farm to work on and his agricultural machinery company. His family also kept him busy. From that point of view, we still got along very well, but the discussions became more frequent and there was no equal investment in the joint project from my point of view. Hans was also successful with his mowers, which he had meanwhile produced himself, and the employee he had hired for this job needed space in the workshop. So the construction of my planned senior citizens' vehicles could no longer be realised in the shared workshop.
It is thanks to Anne Wepfer, Hans' wife, that in this situation she was able to exactly separate our two demands financially by means of the bookkeeping she kept. So we dissolved the joint company again, I took my senior vehicle project with me and Hans continued to build his mowers next to his farm. Since the division was done very fairly, we were always able to meet each other in a positive way afterwards. Hans and Anne have developed their company into Wepfer Technik and Wepfair. Today they build, among other things, agricultural machinery and also wind turbines that produce electricity. Even today, Hans' constructions are based on other basic physical rules than the ones I know. There are obviously several parallel universes here on our earth.
I learned a lot from that phase.
- Agricultural machinery mechanics think very pragmatically and goal-oriented. I still benefit from that today.
- Well-managed bookkeeping makes a lot of things easier
- A good project is important - but it also needs a good workshop.