CadoMotus,

still a brand new company

Founded in October 2006, CadoMotus Skating BV has grown steadily in its first two years of operation.

Within 2 years of its 2006 launch, CadoMotus had expanded to include more products and more dealers in more countries (with more than 30 countries served by the dealer network as we approach 2009). It has been a successful beginning, success its founders attribute to the unique expertise within the company, to a lot of hard work, to a love for skating, and to the desire to succeed that is possessed by everyone involved.

38-year old Diederik Hol (BSc Industrial Design, NED) established CadoMotus Skating. Hol had previously been Product Designer at Sportsinline International (Mogema) for 7 years, and before that had work briefly at Interraps (Raps) during his graduate project in Industrial Design.

Despite CadoMotus often being mistaken as Mogema, or the 'new Mogema', Sportsinline was decommissioned by its parent company at the end of 2006, bringing to an end Mogema's time in speed skating.

“We made some great products at Mogema, many people used them and liked them. I think I will always be disappointed that Mogema did not succeed in being a healthy company. Its stakeholders insisted in further investment, while at the same time we knew this was not the direction to take… it was a long and ongoing story", says Diederik Hol.

"I’m not running away from any of my responsibilities, but I know I did everything I could to try to turn things around. Mogema meant a lot to me, and it was supposed to be my life's work. But what I lost in Mogema's demise wasn't what was important, because a lot of good skating retailers and customers were adversely affected – and it's those people we have tried to take care of first and foremost with CadoMotus.”

Knowing that it could be done - running a successful company in skating sports - Hol founded CadoMotus, together with Henk Schra (NED). “We started from a new point of view, matching the business model to the specific market,” Hol explains. “Skating is a small but Worldwide niche market. It requires particularly efficient systems of promotion and distribution to remain cost-effective."

"Henk and I also wanted to establish a brand that was genuinely a part of all speed skating sports; on road, ice and snow. This 'cross-knowledge' as I call it, is going to help us deliver new and better concepts, for a better skating experience.” – Diederik Hol

working together with the best brands

CadoMotus’ strategy is to work with the best brands in the world, and by doing so bring multiple areas of proven expertise to bear on a new range of skating products.

One of the first things CadoMotus did as a new company was to work with successful wheel brand MPC - establishing a sole distributorship for the European Union. “This helped us a lot," says Diederik Hol (NED), "Due to the proven product success of MPC we could move forward faster, investing in more stock and in our own research & development.”

Besides MPC, CadoMotus cooperates with Bones Bearings, the best known bearing company in the wider skating industry and the pioneer of the Swiss bearing that was a speed skating benchmark. CadoMotus also works with two of the World's most well-known boot makers in Davide Mariani (ITA) and Paul Marchese (USA) - to ensure the incorporation of years of boot making experience and the best boot knowledge into the company's products.

Together with Paul Marchese, arguably the top boot maker in the World of short-track speed skating, CadoMotus is working on a range of ice speed skating products, debuting in 2009 with the Marchese One short-track boot. This will be followed by short-track and long-track blades that have been tested and refined by a number of World class athletes in Holland and in the USA, and were co-designed by Kees Douma (NED), who has been behind the development of some of the most innovative and successful steel blades in recent years.

"These renowned brands and the personalities behind them add knowledge and expertise to what we do as a company, and ensure that CadoMotus sells and distributes top quality skating products." – Diederik Hol

working with the best people

The people involved in the CadoMotus company each add experience and vision, in skating sports and in business

Michael Byrne
Multiple World medalist in inline skating Michael Byrne (AUS) is one of these people. A progression of his dedication to optimize his own equipment, he was involved in developing inline skates for several years. Together with good friends Diederik Hol (NED) and Henk Schra (NED), Byrne was part of the birth of CadoMotus, and influenced the CadoMotus company image, product line and worldview.
“I think CadoMotus is on its way to delivering what many skating brands have failed to”, says Byrne. “We are creating Pure Skating products. No gimmicks, just function. We start with a love for skating sports and a desire to improve, sure, but not without being realistic and understanding the market and the figures. Few companies in the skating industry have been able to show a stable growth. We're doing that, and it's not coming at the expense of quality."
"Plus I'm proud because it's just been us who got it off the ground; Diederik Hol, Henk Schra and myself.” – Michael Byrne

Henk Schra
Henk Schra, owner of Stouwdam – the Netherlands' biggest skate store – was also part of CadoMotus’ birth, but decided to leave the company in 2008 due to what other skating companies determined as being conflicting interests. “It was a great challenge to set up this brand and very satisfying to see it grow so fast. I knew from the beginning that if or when we launched ice blades it could cause problems with my business relationships through Stouwdam, and I agreed with Diederik that it wasn't an issue if we had to postpone the launch of ice blades and limit the rate of growth of CadoMotus... but I never thought we would arrive at that point within two years.”

Two new faces of the brand are Tanya Dobbin (AUS) and Geert Plender (NED), with both came on board in 2008 as the company grew. Wife of inline World Champion Shane Dobbin (NZL) and a former inline speed skater herself, Dobbin has been connected to inline teams and World-leading brands for a number of years.
Being a top-level ice and inline speed skater, Plender works part-time in Sales & Marketing, using his experience as a Bachelor of Communications to promote the brand and find new ways of marketing skating and its products.

With every business day, a small but diverse and multinational group of people behind CadoMotus bring a mix of experience to drive skating, the products, and the company steadily forward.