Facts about Tout Terrain
- Year of foundation: 2005
- Company headquarters: Gundelfingen (Breisgau)
- Owner: Stephanie and Oliver Römer
- Employees: 30
- Operating area: 2,500 square metres
- Annual production 2021: approx. 2,500 bicycles, 3,000 trailers
Arrival and future plans
What kind of address is this? Tout Terrain is a bike brand whose users like to take pictures of themselves on the crust of endless salt lakes, on the snow-covered roads of subarctic tundra or in a particularly dusty branch of the Silk Road - and it resides right next to a motorway in an industrial estate. The company address reads "Industriestrasse 11" with a simplicity that can hardly be improved upon. Three storeys high, white with a touch of orange and no company sign. Roller shutters block the large windows of a practically empty shop on the ground floor. The reason for this apparent dreariness? The shop is buzzing!
"Yes, there should be a showroom down there one day, where perhaps test bikes or samples could be sold directly," says Stephanie Römer. "But there's simply no time for that! We've just recently massively expanded our space, and it's an absolute priority to keep production running." Almost all bike brands are struggling with the simultaneous effects of immensely increased demand, the still tearing and creaking supply chains worldwide and increased sick leave due to coronavirus. They simply don't have the energy for a grand entrance - and somehow it wouldn't suit the two founders either.
A comparison
It is certainly not correct to compare people and bicycles. But the description "reserved, clear and with laugh lines" perhaps fits Stephanie Römer and her husband Oliver just as well as her bikes. Classic-looking steel bikes with innovative technical details and the possibility of colourful extravagance characterise the brand's image. It is a market for quality-loving individualists, in which there are perhaps only a handful of manufacturers in this country. Velotraum or Idworx spring to mind. After that, the numbers drop and the trend is towards customised frames, or the degree of innovation decreases.
The beginnings of Tout Terrain
The Romans did not discover the niche in which Tout Terrain sells 2,500 bikes a year at a start-up seminar, but in the Himalayas. Not that a mysterious voice from a tree there changed their lives, but a long cycling trip to Nepal and Tibet had shaken something loose in both of them. Stephanie Römer, who studied business administration, and her husband Oliver, an industrial engineer, held their hands out briefly after the trip and turned from their After well-paved careers in the IT sector, they also decided to enter the world of cycling. "We both wanted to do something different," says Stephanie Römer. "But just giving up secure jobs like that? And the bicycle really had already been invented..."
Nevertheless, they took the plunge in 2005 - initially with a product that someone else had invented: frame builder Florian Wiesmann had landed such a hit with his single-track child trailer "Singletrailer" that he could no longer manage production and sales alongside his core business. Oliver Römer, who had already worked for him during his studies, took over sales of the Singletrailer and took care of production. The trailer is still a central product of the brand today, with 3000 units being produced each year. And the first two Tout Terrain bikes also bear Wiesmann's signature.
A frame like a statement
On the second floor of the company headquarters, between various offices and the workshop for customised bodies, the brand's current models are on display. To the left of the entrance, in the very short ancestral gallery, a frame hangs like a statement: the "Panamericana" model not only has the brand-typical integrated luggage rack, but also an unconventional rear suspension that decouples the luggage from the jolting of the road. With milled rocker arms, ball bearings, air springs and stiffening tubes. A touring bike like no other, but its life ended years ago. Oliver Römer pensively takes the frame down from the wall and scans it from all sides. "We couldn't build it like this today. What an effort! Nobody wants to pay for that anymore."
The full-suspension touring bike is history. But just how individual the current models are can be seen in the gloomy cellar: Several hundred finished but unpainted steel frames and forks hang here. None of them are simple containerised goods. Luggage racks welded from stainless steel tubes shimmer brightly above the matt grey chromoly steel of the main frames, the brass solder of numerous threads shimmers golden, frame details such as the steering stops or the dropouts are typical of the brand. Following trials with frame manufacturers in Italy and the Czech Republic, Tout Terrain now has its frames welded by several companies in Taiwan - to its own specifications. New geometries or frame details are quickly put to the test by the development team, as a frame builder friend also works in the Tout Terrain building in Gundelfingen.
Innovation from the manufacturer
Particularly striking are the high proportion of frames with a mount for a Pinion bottom bracket gearbox and the separable dropouts. Despite the at first glance conservative round tube steel frames, Tout Terrain is open to new technology. "We were the first in Germany with Gates belts," says Römer, "and also with the first Pinion bikes ever. These things have proved so successful that we are now asking ourselves whether we still want to offer derailleur gears at all for extreme users such as long-distance commuters or world travellers."
In the add-on parts market, the Römers have also launched their own projects under the brand name "Cinq": Together with external partners, parts such as a USB power supply via hub dynamo and the only brake levers for racing handlebars that can be used to shift Pinion gears have been developed. However, the growing variety of products also pushed the 30-man company to its limits. The portfolio, which has now grown to over a dozen basic models, is forcing the company to streamline, and coronavirus is doing the rest: for three years now, Tout Terrain, like almost all manufacturing brands, has moved away from customisation to some extent. The high intensity of retail consulting, the inevitably high prices for purchasing and warehousing, but also the delivery problems have prompted Tout Terrain to reduce its range of options. Oliver Römer: "The customer puts together their dream bike and then finds out that their chosen Shimano brakes have a delivery time of 570 days. That's extremely frustrating! If I configure the models myself, I can switch to other, equivalent products and deliver a bike in a reasonable amount of time."
No pork halves
What remains with the pre-configured models is the customised assembly. The assembly stations are located on the ground floor of Industriestrasse 11, directly behind the loading ramp. There is no assembly line on which wheel blanks swing through a hall like pig halves, but individual workstations surrounded by stacking boxes with parts. One mechanic (there are no women to be seen at the moment) assembles a wheel from A to Z. This promotes responsibility and variety. This encourages responsibility and variety. Only around a dozen complete bikes are shipped out every day - a production method that has much more in common with a workshop than a factory. The fact that a spotlessly clean powder coating facility with dozens of custom colours is right next door expands the possibilities for creating a truly individual bike.
E-bike trend meets Tout Terrain
However, despite its solid position in the advanced bike niche, Tout Terrain will not be able to escape the changes raging through the industry in the long term: apart from pure sports equipment and expedition bikes, the pedelec trend is tying up ever larger parts of cyclists' budgets and development power. If you don't join in, you risk losing relevance and sales. For Tout Terrain, the first two pedelec models are not only a farewell to pure bio-drive power, but also a step away from advanced steel with a classic look. The pedelecs have aluminium frames. "Steel is the best material for our previous type of bikes," explains Oliver Römer, "but it's technically difficult for the new e-bikes if you want to integrate the battery for design reasons. Aluminium is simply better for these voluminous shapes."
But simply building another aluminium pedelec with a mid-motor would not be Tout Terrain: where other bikes have the motor, Tout Terrain has a Pinion gearbox. And on the rear wheel, where the gears would normally be, a hub motor provides the extra thrust. This means that the belt pulleys of the drive only receive the muscle power, while the motor power turns the wheel directly and without a gearbox. Römer aims to reduce the wear costs of the drive by 90 per cent and the design is also said to be whisper-quiet. It is not a design that will shout at passers-by, but once again it is a discreet way of providing the mainstream with its own solution. And if the two Römers are not terribly off the mark, they are unlikely to find time in the near future to set up a gleaming showroom and finally screw a large company logo onto Industriestrasse 11.
