Niklas Vesely is the CEO and founder of 2HEX.com, the skateboard manufacturer.
Cornell University (MBA)
Ruca skate shop, Germany (Co-Founder)
BSS Distribution, China (Global Brand Director)
Ulm University, Germany (Research Development Team Lead)
Backgrounds to launch your startup
The love for Skateboarding was the reason to launch 2HEX.com Skateboard Manufacturing
The life of a skateboarder consist of skateboarding the streets, feeling free, encouraging each other, before lying on the hot asphalt dirty and sweaty in the early evening, with your best friends and beautiful girls around, joking and laughing until it gets dark - there is almost no way to live a better life.
Just like many other skateboarders, I founded a skateboard company to grow the skateboard community. I wanted everyone to experience this feeling of freedom and happiness that I loved so much. However, arranging high quality and profitable productions was a huge hurdle. It was so bad, that I even started building up my own factory in my parent’s basement. It took me 4 years including a 6 months trainee program in China, to learn how to arrange good productions and another 2 years, to arrange world-class productions.
The other skateboard company owners I met faced the same difficulties arranging productions, but they did not want to spend 6 years learning how to arrange world-class skateboard productions. So instead they asked me to arrange their production orders. Soon my custom productions business overtook my own skateboard company, and I became a full-time skateboard manufacturer.
Three of my major fields of interests are internet technologies, industrial productions and sports. Therefor creating an internet platform for industrial sport equipment productions has been in my head for over ten years. So, I searched for like-minded people (20% of our team consists of web developers) and together we now help skateboard companies be in a position, where they do not have to worry about productions and instead can focus on growing their skateboard community!
I feel blessed that I can combine many of my interests to full-fill a deeply held mission on helping people break free from their sofas and cellphones, and feel alive through rough street sports.
Points where the service is differentiated
Accessible • Highest Quality • Lowest Prices • Biggest Selection
We make sure that our customers get the best productions possible!
Simple access to the best productions:
2HEX.com is super simple to use and calculates custom production prices in real time. So instead of having to wait for some sales manager to answer your inquiry and start negotiating over the course of weeks or months, we directly give the lowest price. This makes arranging skateboard productions simple and fun.
Highest quality:
No one can be the best manufacturer for every component. So, each factory has one or two great products and a list of mediocre products. We know that, so we don’t try to produce all components ourselves. We work with the best supplier of each little component and bring all the best components together, to create a product that is better in almost every way.
Lower prices:
2HEX offers the lowest prices. 20% of what you pay at a factory is the sales manager’s salary. 2HEX.com replaces the sales manager and thereby reduces production prices by 20%.
Biggest product selection Sales managers can only remember a handful of products and customization options. 2HEX.com however can save and present an infinite number of products and customization options. This way, we can offer small customers the same productions that have previously only been accessible to big multinational companies.
Future plans
2HEX.com grew extremely fast in the last three years.
30.000 USD in 2018 (sales revenue)
300.000 USD in 2019 (sales revenue)
3.000.000 USD in 2020 (sales revenue)
We are now expanding into 5 further sport segments, including Stand-Up Paddle Boards, Surfboards, Snowboards, Home Gym Equipment, Protection Gear. We aim on becoming the world’s biggest sport equipment manufacturer by 2026, and the world’s biggest sports company by 2030.
Our customers strongly benefit from our growth, because we keep on adding more products to our portfolio, inventing better components, increasing production speed and lowering production costs.
If you are interested in learning all details of skateboard productions, you can download the 2HEX Skateboard Company Founders Book.
2HEX.com, https://www.2hex.com/
Interviewer: Takushi Miyao, StartupReview
Interviewee: Niklas Vesely, 2HEX.com
