Innovative solutions, OEM and European expansion: capgo on five years in the market

BikeBiz sits down with capgo cable systems CEO Chris Treugut

Can you give a quick introduction to capgo as a brand?
capgo was founded in 2016 by my partner Bernd Pflueger and myself. We’ve both got a long history in the bike business and saw a gap in the market for high-quality European cable systems.

Alongside developing the innovative design and manufacturing of our cable systems, capgo also specialises in bespoke OEM solutions for many well-known and major bike brands.

Based in Germany, capgo has set up three locations. Leinburg (Bavaria) with focus on sales, marketing, and product development, Riedstadt with back office and purchasing, and Stockstadt with warehouse and production. The last two are located close to Frankfurt in central Germany.

How would you define capgo’s mission statement?
Our development is focused on the small, but very important details that add up to increase the performance, quality and durability of our products to another level. We also work with professional mechanics and riders and incorporate their feedback into our development to find innovative solutions to problems they might be having.

What area of the cycling market do you target?
capgo is serving bicycle brands, OEM needs and aftermarket with a focus on workshop products for bike shops. We do still cater for end-users with our selection of aftermarket cable kits for shifters, brakes and droppers, but our main focus is providing a full professional line-up of products for busy workshops.

What makes capgo unique?
We take a close look at each item within the cable range, listen to user needs and then implement our ideas and technical solutions to make each detail better. Much like we’ve seen in professional racing, a large number of small improvements can add up to significant gains. We have listened to feedback from mechanics around issues such as cable coating degradation.

Because of this, we created a process to polish our wires instead of coating them and fully line our cable outers with PTFE grease to maintain shifting performance for longer. Lastly, we invest into European manufacturing which allows us a high degree of flexibility and ability to react quickly to changing markets.

Tell us about your manufacturing process.
For optimising a relatively basic product like housing or wire, we developed and invested in special machinery so we could ensure our exacting standards could be met. For example, an innovative grease injection system for our cable outers and our automated high-speed cutting machine ensures consistent high quality.

What does capgo offer that its competitors perhaps do not?
Our technical experience and engineering skills allow us to develop new products and as we said, with our European manufacturing base we can develop new products and meet new market requirements with speed, but also work flexibly on optimised processes for our customers.

What sort of feedback have you had from your customers?
With listening to riders’ needs and solving their daily annoyances, our products have had great feedback. Mechanics are happy using our “Workshop Solutions” for a more professional setup. Our OEM customers appreciate our service and quality. So far, it has been excellent!

What innovations in the industry are exciting you at the moment?
For us, it’s not so much the current innovations within the industry that are really exciting, it is more the current change of people’s minds in respect to cycling in general. Especially during the COVID pandemic, we’ve seen more and more people riding bikes for health and we’ve seen a growing trend towards cycling across Europe for the benefits to the environment, with people moving away from cars.

What are your plans for 2021 and beyond?
We are continually optimising all our processes and products, whether it’s by using less packaging, or utilising more eco-friendly options and improving transportation and to save resources. We’re also planning on growing out production further in Europe