Greg Voisen
Well, welcome back to another episode of Inside Personal Growth. Matti, I don't really know exactly what episode this is going to be. The last one I looked at was 1050 over 17 years. So, it's a lot of podcasts on a lot of subjects, but all my listeners know that my focus on health, wellness and longevity has been there. We have a whole series on wellness and wellbeing, and today's episode with Matti. And Matti, I don't want to mess up your last name, so you say it because he's from Finland.

Matti Rajakylä
Rajakyla. Rajakyla is the last name. You can think of the j in the middle as the y, so they might be a little bit easier for you to pronounce.

Greg Voisen
Okay Rajakyla, so Matti is the North American General Manager, manager for Stormer Bikes. And as people can see, I'm wearing one of the t-shirts. And you're probably wondering, so what's the connection here? I've found them through doing some searches and found out what a high-quality bicycle, e bike, they were making, and was being made in Switzerland and distributed all throughout Europe and now the United States. And I decided I wanted to get involved in a way that I could help bring this to I'm going to just call it the business, the heartbeat of America, America's business and corporations. And so I helped Matti think through a program for corporate wellness, which we're going to be talking about a little bit today, the bicycle itself, and about Matti's background. So many let's just kind of start this out. People know it's about an E bike. They know that it's that it's a really, really well made e bike. If you look it up, we'll put links on this podcast to their website as well. Tell us a little bit about you, how you got here, and even more importantly, what uh, really made me intrigued about you was some of your personal background in spirituality. Now, so what? So I don't freak out my listeners, we have a segment on spirituality in this show. So this isn't unusual, because we cover four topics. We cover business, personal growth, wellness and spirituality. And Mattie has a really good story, and I'd love for him to incorporate that. And then the second part of that question Matty is, you know, how did you move from where you were to coming to work for this company, which isn't a huge company, but it's a pretty decent sized company in Switzerland, representing e bikes here in the United States.

Matti Rajakylä
Well, Greg, thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here. And so starting probably off with the early 2000s my carrier at that time was in pro sports. I was a professional swimmer, so I attended 2004 2008 Olympics. So that's kind of like my starting point for everything that has come to fruition to these days, I would say that I retired, retired from my from my swimming career after the Beijing Olympics, and at that point I was pretty burned out. Burned out in the sense that I always had these dreams of achieving high goals in my in my sports, and always when achieving them, I was not satisfied with everything that I achieved. So there was, I would say that there was a fearful discontentment about my achievements. I was always wanting for more and more, and to put it simply, I was not happy, and I always have this questioning mind, I would say, a very curious mind that I've always want to figure out what's going on externally and internally. And obviously that led me to all of the places. Basically led me to India. And I found an ashram after my after my swimming, I found an ashram in in South India. And for an athlete, enemy, disciplined life, lifestyle, and then you know, going deeper into life's questions and what is truly important about your life and how to find happiness in this life, no matter what is the circumstances or the exterior circumstances that you. I'd have you might be the richest person in the world, you might be the most successful athlete and you might be the poorest person in the world. At the same time we're all striving for happens. So that thing can

Greg Voisen
Also, it's you say this, but it's kind of what we're longing for, I think, meaning peace, meaning peace and happiness. Now, you know, I can insert in here that no matter how many things you buy, they're never going to fulfill your happiness. So the better house, the better car. Happiness is an inside job. No one does it for you. You learned that in the ashram. And the reason I'm inserting arms is because the whether it's an E bike or a regular bike, it doesn't matter. The thing here is, for our listeners, including the corporate listeners today, is that there is so much a sense of joy and happiness when you get outside, you just get outside. And I wanted to insert this because the more people spend some time outside, the better off they are, right?

Matti Rajakylä
Yeah, exactly. And then. And essentially that that kind of, like, I needed to find this eternal happiness in order to I would not function in the world. But, you know, like to bring that out for the world, and that fast forward to 2022 I was, I was doing, you know, coaching jobs. I had my own business that I was running, and then I was out of really nowhere, asked to do this work for sturmber. So, the CEO asked me that, hey, do you want to join the company? And starting, started running the North America because they had a good experience with experiences hiring ex athletes. And I said, I don't really know anything about the industry but, but I don't really know anything. He's basically said that, okay, I don't care about that. I just need somebody I can trust you learn everything else. So I've been here for two years now, and it's, I'm super excited about, especially, first of all, the product that we have. It's, I want to work for a company that has those core values that we're offering, obviously, you know, making people commute more, being sustainable and improving people's health and wellbeing, and, and, and it's been just a fantastic pride. And as I said, the product is amazing, so it's easy for me to stand behind that.

Greg Voisen
Well, obviously, when values are aligned, people are more I'm going to say enthusiastic number one. Number two, there's much more engagement. And I find that you're super engaged with this process, and it's one of the reasons that I enjoy partnering with you on this, this new endeavor. Now you know, store bikes has gained quite a reputation for high performance and innovative design. Anybody out there looking just go to www, S, T, R, O, M, E, R, bikes.com, or bike you do either or, and you'll get there. And I'd like for you to share those core values that drive Stormers approach to creating this E bike. The gentleman that founded the company was obviously an engineer and had spent toiled hours and hours around designing bikes and figuring out how to do this and how to keep doing it better, and particularly the next part of this question is really the company's core values around promoting health and wellness. I think this is as important as how much the bike is engineered, you know, how well it engineered. So could you comment on that? Because you've been around all the founders, the people, the engineers, the designers, the people in the factory. You get it from the ground floor up. I can't say that I have, but I will one day.

Matti Rajakylä
Well, if you I mean, first, what we need to kind of look into is that, what is tremor everything? Think that's just an E bike, but we always think that Sturmer is a vehicle. We're not even thinking that, okay. We're going against other bike companies. We are not competing with specialized Trek or even though that we might be in the same space, like bike shops and things like that. But what we really want to always, our main message that we want to give is that sturmber is a vehicle. It's a replacement of your car, in some sense, and that's where we that's what we're trying to build. It's obviously, you see, the design is gorgeous. If you look at the bike that's being one of our DNA. So we always talk about this tremor DNA. There's five pillars to it. We have the design we won multiple design awards on, on, on all of our, all of our models, and always keep on learning them. Oh, it's tremor again. And then the the other big part. Artist, connectivity of our bikes. All of our bikes are interconnected. We all. They all have an inbuilt computer in them that has a 4j chip in and that you can do, track the bikes, and you can track the mileage and and see all these things. And you can control everything, what's going on in the bike. And then range being one of them, our bikes go up to 110 120 mile miles range, and then safety being one part of them. Because obviously, now the E bike market these days is, is, is almost like a Wild West, especially in the US. Everybody's flooding into the market. There's all kinds of product, but Sturmer has been around since 2009 we've been building bikes and, and we have a lot of experience, and our core and those five different pillars are kind of like the core values of the company as well. We want to make riding bikes, obviously fun, but that at the same time you have the sustainability goals, you have the wellness goals that you want to also target, and and those are actually in the core of the whole Holstrom or product,

Greg Voisen
very well said. And I think that for again, the listeners, whether you're an individual listener listening to this, or you're in corporate America, or you have a company who would like to impress on you that this program, that we've quoted, this wellness program to help improve employees overall well being. So when you improve well being, you improve productivity, and you also improve higher levels of satisfaction, you reduce turnover. So the investment in the bike is not just an investment in a bike, it's an investment in truly, all these intrinsic things that are going on. Because if you took a balance sheet and if you just said, Well, this was the cost of the bike, we'll know you have other costs in your business. And I want to impress this upon people, because there used to be formulas around the human life value. In other words, what was an employee worth? The employee is worth an investment like this. And call this a bit of a commercial but I think I've been around on the planet long enough that it's really important to make these investments. So how do you see the stronger bikes fitting into a corporate wellness strategy, and what results have you seen from companies that maybe have adopted it in if, if any at this point, that's one and then two. I'd like to point out to some of the naysayers about electric bikes or E bikes, that if you type in almost anywhere you're going to find NIH studies, you're going to find studies all over that they found just increasing the heart rate even marginally on for an over an extended period of time is actually just as good as running. You know, a full on 8080, spread to get your heart rate at, you know, 150 beats a minute, right? So it's been proven that E bikes because there are people out there that don't believe that. They go, Oh, well, people aren't getting enough exercise. If they were commuting to work, they would be getting exercise. So my question to you is, how do you see it fitting in, and what have you seen, if anything? Matti, with relation to companies who are adopting these programs. We know Google has one. We know LinkedIn has one. We know many companies have them. What would you tell our listeners?

Matti Rajakylä
Well, starting from, from, from, basically like, okay, the argument that the E bike doesn't provide you an exercise. It gets you moving and and it's always, it's, it's, it's, it's not like a motorcycle. So you always have to remember, if you've never ridden an E bike, you still get a little bit of an exercise. I would, I would argue that if you do a trip to, let's say, call it five miles, that it's usually an average commute for for Americans, and they usually do that with the car, even if you replace that twice or three times a week and try to do that, there's there's a significant increase for your wellness, any exercise, anything that you do to move your body, get out of your office or get out of your Car. There is so much of data that can prove, even if it's a low heart rate, it doesn't need to be vigorous activity to get you moving and and that the benefits for your physical and mental well being are tremendous. And then answer to your second question is that, do I have any data or experience of other companies doing it. Unfortunately, I don't have exact data. However, in in Europe, we have bike leasing programs of all kinds, and then many of the companies are using that as an employee benefit. And I can do a little bit of name dropping here, Rolex being one of them. So everybody. Knows the prestige Swiss swatch company. Their CEO is a is a huge fan of Sturmer. He's he's writing and commuting to work almost on a daily basis, basis with this termer. And what he ended up, ended up doing is that he they have a parking garage at their main headquarters and office, and he replaced not all of it, but big chunk of the parking garage to only store e bikes into that area. So he's encouraging him his employees, to to ride a bike to work. And there are so many benefits, physical and mental. And now I also know that the practical side of I've talked to some of the companies here in the in the Bay Area where I live, and they are facing a big commuting lady issue now that they have to solve many problems in terms of people commuting, let's say, from San Francisco to Silicon Valley. And they are using, obviously, busses. They are using Lyft and Uber credits for their employees, and then the other situation that they're also going to end up for people who are driving into the place that they have to build extra parking structures. But if you think of those kinds of problems, I have one solution, an E bike people, if they're right to work. And that investment, that the investment they would need to build, to put into building a new parking structure. Why don't they just buy a buy or a lease a fleet of E bikes, and try to encourage their employees to do that? I know that they are actively working to that, but in in the US especially, it has to be a cultured change. But I know that slowly, this change is coming, and people are understanding more and more there's a lot of benefits, not only monetary, but also intangible benefits for people that would write anybody,

Greg Voisen
yeah, we are seeing it, and as you said, it is being adopted slowly, and thus The purpose for this podcast. So for anybody who's listening out there, obviously, who gets linked to this podcast, we're trying to inform you about the benefits. We understand the benefits of it. And another thing I want to talk about, because in many cultures you were talking about in Germany and in Belgium and places where people are replacing their cars, we obviously haven't done that yet, here, yet here, because sometimes, because of the terrain, the distances, the cities aren't laid out the same. All kinds of you could say, all kinds of reasons, but believe me, in most of the cities that we're addressing here, San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange County, San Francisco, all across the United States, there are hubs, and if you're within any area, close to the hub or close to your work, because usually your work is in one of those hubs, and E bike is a great solution. The other thing is, sustainability is becoming more of an increasing focus and important to corporate cultures, right? So everybody's trying to reduce their carbon footprint, right? We have initiatives here in the United States and around around cars. How many electric cars? What's going to happen? How do store bikes contribute to the company's sustainability goals? And how does this align in your estimation? I mean, because it's, to me, it's just perfect with corporate wellness, employee wellness in particular.

Matti Rajakylä
So nice thing about Trevor is that we can, we can track our riders data. As I said, every bike has this indoor computer on them. And up to this point, basically, I think, we started tracking. That was in 2014 we had this new integration of this, of this computer to our bike. And from from 2014 we had, we have now total of 350 million miles, sorry, kilometers written on a Stromer. So a little over 200 basically 200 200 mile, miles. And if and most of the users, and because Strummer is still a pretty small player in the US, but most of the US users that we we collected data from, they are writing from Monday to Friday. So they are clearly commuters, so five times a week, and if they do around, I think the average, average, uh, distance per day that they are writing is around 20

Greg Voisen
miles, yeah, 10 miles.

Matti Rajakylä
We made 10 miles. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So we did. We did a calculation of how much of CO two reduction is that compared to a car. And basically, on an annual basis, if you do that right, five, three to five times a week, you have an. Annual reduction of 1.4 tons of CO two emissions. So that's a clear indication that, obviously, if you ride an E bike instead of a car, there is a clear benefit to your sustainability goals.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, it is. It's a awful good one. And you know, it's an just another reason. So, okay, I So, let me just start all over here. Now, Matti, I understand that the amount of CO two emissions reduced has been pretty substantial since 2009 you started keeping track of this, and it's the there's an omni computer, and I want to repeat for my customers who potentially would be customers, that there's a computer that not only tracks, it, locks, it, GPS, everything. The other factor is, is this whole leasing program you have up with sweet spot. And, you know, because the bikes are exceptionally well made and cost a little bit more, you've created this whole program with sweet spot, which is quite in enticing for somebody to actually a company and or an individual to actually do it. Can you explain the reason why you went down the road with sweet spot and what the success has been so far in the US with actual leasings, or even in Europe at this point, as you see people leasing bikes and then having an option to really turn those bikes in after two years and get a whole new model?

Matti Rajakylä
Well, obviously, how we What was the inspiration for that? I always look at Europe, because Europe, in in this industry, it's, it's, it's ahead of the game. The regulation is better, and whatever they are doing is, is, is, you know, five to 10 years ahead of what's going on in the US. So that's probably 60 like Belgium is our biggest market where people, people are commuting, and around 60% of all of our sales in that market is leasing. There's a lot of corporations that offers subsidies for their employees that they will pay for the lease. There's a lot of government incentives for people to lease, and then they, basically, the regular consumer ends up actually paying, really almost nothing for a bike and and those are, I know that those things are coming to the US, and there are already some companies, so I just wanted to kind of move towards that direction that how do we people always look at the price tag of an E bike, and our business tremor is obviously on the higher end of that, but how do we make it in that it's attractive for people to actually jump on a stremmer? So we partnered with the company called this this sweet spot, and it's one of the first companies in the US that are doing bike leasing. And instead of paying 4000 to 14,000 for a Sturmer, you can get a Sturmer just around 68 or under, just under $70, a month to use it, you can sign up for a one year, two year or three year lease, and that has an insurance included theft, the theft and crash insurance included in that lease. So it's a fantastic option, and we have couple of companies that actually started adopting that as well. We have one little town, actually, in in Georgia that that brought some bikes in just a few months ago, and and they have been very excited. And we have talks with police departments, fire departments and and other, you know, communities that we are talking and some other companies that we're talking right now about that leasing. So it is a fantastic way of having people to not commit to a bike if they don't necessarily want to commit to a bike or pay a pay a bigger price for a bike, and after two years, as I said, you can replace the bike, or you can just buy it out. So I just wanted to bring this into

Greg Voisen
that. I think Matti it. It reduces the barrier to entry for both an individual and for a corporation, because corporation can be seats as well, because at least 10 of them, or 12 of them, or whatever. That's my point. But the the point is, too, is that when you do lease for a business, there are tax incentives. So one of the tax incentives is a lease is a write off. The other thing, it could go under employee benefits. So I want to talk about that because there is this kind of growing trend of. Companies offering incentives, and you're seeing it. You're saying you're working with cities and municipalities as well to bring the bikes in, like you did in Georgia, which is great. I'd love to see that in more and more cities. What advice would you give to businesses out there that are looking to incorporate an E bro e bike program into their employee benefit plan. So in other words, hey, we've got this benefit. You're going to get, obviously, a 401, K, you're going to get medical insurance. You're going to get this, this and this. But the key now is the expansion of those benefits and how we actually help them design it

Matti Rajakylä
well. I mean, the thing is that always you have to look into that. Obviously, everybody's looking into the costs. If you look at your health insurance costs, or if, if your employees are healthier, that's directly going to correlate to the cost that you're actually paying for their health insurance and and then again, wellness, physical wellness or mental wellness. That is something that is not you don't see it in the next quarter. You don't probably see it in the next year, but over a period of time, you start seeing that in your health insurance costs or whatever are the costs that companies are incurring, those are going to be seen after a period of time.

Greg Voisen
Yeah. So we are aware that programs like these and their statistical analysis that proves, not just, you know, hearsay, that literally having a regular E bike program where people are commuting to work, and it is three times a week that literally, that actually reduces the overall claims cost and the claims overall to the company, which could be for anything from diabetes to heart disease to you name it, that really we want to help reduce and so we know these EBO bike programs are available, and we've made them affordable enough through The leasing programs that anyone listening to this, please contact me. I'm your contact for this. I'd be happy to get you more information about not only the leasing, but also the bikes themselves to make some decisions. And if you're an individual thinking about a bicycle, please reach out to me as well any bike, because we do it. Now we're seeing this massive flood of E bikes coming into the United States, many of them from obviously, Taiwan, Korea, China, all over the place. You're not seeing as many come in from Switzerland. Okay, it's just not the case. But looking ahead, what innovations are trends? Because I was at the CES show, and I tell you, I saw more e bikes there than I've seen in my life, which just really surprised me and everybody and their brother trying to get into it. But I look at really, the trends in technology, the trends in design, the trends in actual the materials that they're being made of, right? To make them lighter, because e bikes normally are pretty heavy. Being heavy, they don't get as much range. What do you think will further support the integration of the Stormer e bike into corporate wellness programs? And what are the trends that you are seeing, because you're out there all the time seeing your competitors, models and what's going on.

Matti Rajakylä
Well, in terms of innovation, obviously, cargo bikes are a big thing right now, but I know, like everybody's like, stremmer is always ahead of the game in many sense that we were the first bite to integrate connectivity. So we're for sure that's going to happen in the future. Even more connectivity being being big part of it, like it can have GPS tracking Now we already in the latest model, the SD five that we just released this year is that it has a Sturmer sound, and it was just a test that we would just wanted to see that what can we do with the Sturmer sound? I cannot do any too many reveals right now, but I mean, I'm hoping that we can integrate GPS technology and then that integrate that with the Shermer sound. Maybe you won't see the turn right here, but it would give you a sound when you actually have a map on your on your computer, on the bike, and then you can, you know, have have some sort of a sound that gives you a signal to turn or go right, or then all these things that's that's probably being one thing in terms of the. The heaviness and the bulkiness. I don't know if there's anything that we can do right now, other than the battery technology. Solid State battery being a hot topic in the car industry, and Sturmer, again, was the first one that actually introduced that prototype of that in the last 2023 Eurobike. The technology is coming for sure, and that will make the battery technology even obviously, quicker to charge, and also it makes it a little bit lighter and also a lot more reliable in terms of potential risk of fire, for example. Now, at this point, the technologies are very, pretty expensive, so it doesn't really make sense right now, but I know for sure that it's coming in the next let's call it five years. So those are the innovations that we're working on right now.

Greg Voisen
But also, can I add that it's also a reason for people to consider leasing, because what happens is the bikes get recycled, obviously, but it at at two years, your one year, two year or three year, you can turn this bike over and any new technology, then lease another new bike from us. And I think that's important to remember, there aren't many companies out there that are leasing bicycles. Okay, yeah, and it's not just because of our price. It's because we'd really like to have everybody be able to do this and reduce the barrier to entry. I mean, we have prices as low as just below $3,000 as you said, and moving all the way up to $13,000 but so the point is, is that there's enough models. I want everybody who is listening and is still listening, www.stromerbike or bikes.com. There you can learn more about the bike please reach out to me, because I can actually direct you, and I can help you set up a corporate e Bike Program, wellness e bike program. And Matti, is there anything you'd like to leave the listeners with today that are either business owners that might be listening or wellness officers or individuals that are out there that you'd want them to know about Stormer bikes and the quality of the bike and or the availability of this product here now in the United States, and the ability to access it so much, I would say, easily, having this sweet spot leasing program.

Matti Rajakylä
I would just like to say that it's people, many times, especially in this car country, we are hesitant to make a move out of our comfort zone or out of our habits, but I would just say that, go for it. I'm coming from Europe. I'm from Finland, and I always used to ride bikes anywhere I would go, and that is actually a way of transportation. We know that there's there's around everybody in the US who is driving a car, commuting the work. 80% of those people, the commute is less than five miles. Less than five miles, think of the benefits of riding your bike, not even every single day, but let's call it three times a week. You would ride your bike, you would say set money, you would say time. In most cases, especially if you live in an urban area, you would be healthier, physical and mental. And actually, that investment that you put in the bike, whether it's a lease or buying a bike, it's well, well worth it.

Greg Voisen
And I'll add you'll save the environment to the tune of one point whatever billion the emissions were that you quoted. So I think there's more reasons to do this than to not do it. And so want to encourage everybody again, reach out to me. You can reach out to me through the podcast. You'll definitely know how to reach me. And Matti, I want to thank you for being on the show, taking this time to speak with our audience about the benefits of a corporate e Bike Program, also just the overall benefits of the Stormer brand and the quality that you're bringing to the US for being make made available to people, and thanks for being on the show, and Thanks for spending this time, namaste. To you.

Matti Rajakylä
Absolutely. Namaste. Thank you.