Skilful siblings kitted out for success
AFTER dropping out of his civil engineering course at university and “tinkering about” in a metal fabricating workshop, Sam Sewell came up with an idea that would change the course of his life.
It was 2007 and the young former TSS student was only 20, but he built a bike out of some rods laying around the workshop and decided to motorise it.
“I thought ‘this looks cool and I think it will go really well on eBay’,” he said.
And he was right. The electric bike did go well on eBay and the company, founded with brother Fletcher, was born. They set up in a small factory space in Southport and started producing the bikes, which they sold online and through word-of-mouth to a network of enthusiasts.
“Our factory was not much bigger than a garage, and there
Founded: 2007
Base: Southport
Staff: Three full-time and one part-time Turnover: $2 million Business: Electric bikes and skateboards, conversion kits Website: www.dillenger electricbikes.com.au
were five of them in a row and every time one of the other tenants would leave we would use the space to store our bikes,” he said. “At one stage we had three of them and that’s when we decided we needed to get a bigger space.”
The company, which had expanded into electric conversion kits for existing bicycles, moved into its current premises near the Smith Street Motorway.
The conversion kits are now their most popular product, selling up to 250 of them per month at a cost of $899 each kit.
“When we started, you couldn’t really get electric bikes but there is a lot more competition in the marketplace now,” Mr Sewell said. “We can’t really compete with
Giant and the other big brands, so we moved into the kits.”
Mr Sewell said the kits made more business sense from a shipping and freight point of view due to the shipping size. “It’s a lot easier and cheaper to ship the kits than it is with a bike,” he said.
Mr Sewell said they sell around 50 per cent of their kits to the Australian market and the other 50 per cent to UK and the US.
“The timing was perfect for us as ebikes really started to become more popular,” he said. “And the kits enable people to convert their existing bikes, rather than go to a bike shop and spend $3000 or $4000 on an electric bike.”