Micro Mobility Systems Ag, founded in the mid-90's in Switzerland, was responsible for reinventing the kick scooter and launching a trend which circled the globe. 
The story began in Zurich, where the resourceful inventor, Wim Ouboter, had encountered a small problem - his favourite lunch destination was too far away to walk to, yet not far enough away to drive to - 'I called it a micro distance,' he says. Wim decided he needed a new mode of mobility suited to travelling the micro distance between his office and his favourite sausage stand. Recalling the scooters of his youth, he set about making an adult version, a primitive scooter using the wheels of some inline skates. 'It worked well, but people laughed at me,' he remarked. With his characteristic mixture of a kid's desire to be hip and a grown-up’s application of technology, Wim worked at the scooter until its look, performance and compactness passed his coolness test. From that point forward the history of the scooter has been completely rewritten. Wim and his business partner, Hans-Peter Bolliger, CEO of Micro Mobility Systems AG, attended trade shows in 1999 with their first professionally developed and truly unique scooter. It was a 3-wheeled model that they called a kickboard®. It ended up winning the Stuttgart Design Centre Design Prize that year. micro® then went on to sell more than 9 million scooters of various design by the end of 2000. Following the introduction of the kickboard, micro introduced several other award-winning, best-selling 2-and 3-wheel scooters and kickboards, which can now be found at high- quality, leading retailers worldwide. micro continues to employ a combination of Swiss design and cutting edge technology - its formula for setting the standard for innovative, compact and portable lifestyle mobility products. No other Swiss design brand has captured the world’s imagination so quickly. Today, micro continues to deliver quality and innovation and is recognized as the leading brand for quality scooters and kickboards. In North America, micro markets its same exceptional range of award-winning 2-wheeled scooters and 3-wheeled kickboards under the kick® brand. |
