Stöckli bikes are history

Image: The Stöckli e-bike model "ET" anno 2012 remained virtually unchanged until 2017

Dhe ski manufacturer and sporting goods retailer Stoeckli from Central Switzerland obviously didn't want to tell us, but the end of the Stöckli brand in the bikes sector has been sealed. From mid-2018, no more Stöckli bikes will be on the market, and production of the own brand will be discontinued. Something like this has already been suspected when Stöckli over a year ago the Termination of the Stöckli Bike Pro Team announced. The company states that the bicycle market is investment-intensive and has increasingly short innovation cycles. Operating in the Swiss market alone, where a manufacturer can sell a few thousand units at most, is only profitable under certain conditions. In short, Stöckli is giving up competing against the superior number of large and innovative international competitors who deliver to Switzerland from abroad and inspire with new innovations day after day. Keeping pace here is very costly and also requires personnel who can meet the high technological demands of the industry.

No innovations of its own in the bikes
The concept of the "ET" e-bike model, for example, which Stoeckli called his own invention, was, according to Vincenz Droux, who today runs his own bike brand, not a real innovation. Bold from his pen. And this concept was continued practically unchanged for six years until last year. The frame concepts were certainly standard frames from Asia, even if former employees really wanted to make us believe that they had developed the frames themselves. Now the truth has caught up with Stoeckli.

Today, it is not enough to launch a unique bike or e-bike on the market once, no, you have to be one step ahead of the competition year after year, so to speak, and/or establish yourself internationally as a brand, otherwise it will be difficult to survive in the market. Stoeckli does not seem to be in a position to do this. Stoeckli is therefore conserving its forces and is now pooling them for the distribution of foreign bike brands and ski production, whose business will also have suffered enough in recent years due to the lack of snow in various winters. Warranty and service remain according to Stöckli for existing owners of Stöckli bikes, that's good to know.