When Göran Fahlén founded Stringo in 1985, the target market he had in mind for the company’s electric vehicle movers was car dealerships. The idea was to offer a tool for moving cars around showrooms, without the safety hazards, noise, and air pollution of driving indoors. As this was long before the era of social media and digital advertising, spreading the word was done in an analogue fashion:
“We printed brochures and press releases, packed them manually at home in the evenings, and distributed them to publications across Europe,” Göran recalls.
Spotting new market potential
These marketing efforts bore fruit when an article about Stringo's vehicle mover caught the eye of a Swedish salesman based in Munich—who’d spotted a potential that Göran had overlooked. The salesman contacted Göran and paid a visit to the Stringo HQ in Nyland during a visit to Sweden around Christmas 1991. Impressed by what he saw, he suggested introducing the machines to car manufacturers in Germany.
“By that time, we’d already invested so much time and effort without getting much return. In fact, we were almost ready to throw in the towel. But this guy convinced me to let him have a go at the German market, and we decided to give it another year,” says Göran.
This decision proved pivotal. By the summer of 1992, while Göran was on a family vacation in Norway, Stringo suddenly received orders from not one, but two major German car manufacturers on the same day.
“Both have remained loyal customers ever since,” Göran proudly states.
Keeping the new customer segment satisfied took some adjustment from Stringo’s side. The original designs, built primarily for showroom use, were soon upgraded to more robust models, better adapted to the intense usage at factory production lines.
Visitor trains: a fast track to success
In 1995, a new salesman took up the baton—and ran with it. Hubertus Obst, equally at home in Sweden and Germany, played an indispensable part in taking Stringo’s German success story to the next level.
“He was extremely dedicated. He used to go on those little visitor trains around the car factories, taking notes on where a Stringo would be helpful,” Göran recalls, praising his long-term business partner and friend.
Hubertus, now in his 80s, confirms having used somewhat unconventional research methods:
“I learned a lot on those tours. I was like an investigative journalist, digging out the information I needed,” he explains.
The main obstacle was getting access to the right stakeholders and securing an invite to the exclusive premises, such as design studios or emissions testing labs. Once inside, however, the Stringo practically sold itself, according to Hubertus:
“It’s such a helpful tool for several departments. You can use it to transport heavy and delicate clay models, quickly move non-starting vehicles from the end-of-line, or get cars on and off dyno test cells. When you’re on-site demonstrating the machine to people who’ll be using it in their daily work, the questions tend to go from ‘Do we need this machine?’ to ‘What size do we need it to be?’ One man even called me a criminal for selling the company a piece of equipment that they would become so reliant on.”
Efficient support through local partners
During his 12 years in Stringo’s service, Hubertus not only sold vehicle movers to the lion’s share of Germany’s automotive manufacturers. He also helped build up a network of strategically located service providers, and later on resellers, to enable efficient support for Stringo’s growing customer base in Germany and other markets across continental Europe.
“I would sit in my hotel room, looking up potential service partners in the local telephone directory. Many of the companies I reached out to back then are still valuable Stringo partners today,” Hubertus concludes.
