Kurt Schär: He paved the way for the e-mountain bike

Everyone in the cycling world knows the Flyer brand. Not necessarily the name Kurt Schär. But without Schär, Flyer would probably no longer exist today, and without Flyer perhaps no e-mountainbikes either.

"We had a product that nobody wanted for a market that didn't exist." This is how Schär analyzes the time when he joined Flyer. Schär did not invent the Flyer. It had already been on the market for several years, albeit with little success. It was only when Schär rebuilt the parent company Biketec AG that the brand took off, and in its wake, e-bikes from various manufacturers began to conquer the roads. Schär's ideas were often ahead of their time, for which he was ridiculed on the positive side and, as his success grew, sometimes attacked. However, no one seriously doubts that it was Flyer with Schär at the helm that triggered the e-bike boom. He is also responsible for the e-mountain bike, whose success he claims to have predicted ten years before its breakthrough. He left Biketec AG a few years ago, but continues to keep a close eye on the market and is not afraid to make pithy statements about the past and future of e-bikes and e-mountainbikes. This is also the case in the big interview in the September issue of Ride.

"When we launched the first e-mountainbike, practically the entire industry wanted to lynch me," Schär recalls of 2010, when they put the first e-mountainbike on the trail. But Kurt Schär and his business partner Hans Furrer were both mountain bikers and even back then they had a feeling in their gut: this was going to be the big thing. And they were proved right in 2018 at the latest, when the rise of e-mountainbikes literally exploded. "With e-mountainbikes, we're talking about a high-grade pleasure booster that ranks one step above the normal, non-motorized mountain bike," he explains in an interview with Ride.

Today, Kurt Schär has left Biketec, sold his shares and is investing where his heart and soul lie. For example, in the company Herzroute AG, with which he maintains close ties to Flyer. He is a member of the board of directors at Berner Kraftwerke, bought the Walser village of St. Martin with colleagues and founded the ski manufacturer Anavon. The entire interview with Kurt Schär can be read in the special interview edition of Ride