Kickboard USA is the official US distributor for Swiss company Micro-Mobility Ltd., importing and distributing kick® and micro® brand scooters, kickboards and luggage through 500 stores across the USA, as well as on www.kickboardusa.com.
Owners Julie and Geoff Hawksworth discovered the micro® brand while living in London in 2003. While taking her daughter to school, Julie spotted a commuter on a scooter and was so impressed with its design and evident quality that she went home and promptly ordered one, the first of many micro® scooters for her and her family. Daughter Sophie, 5, rode the 2-wheel micro flex scooter to school, with Julie running behind and riding it home. Julie says she loved the way the flex turned her 20-minute walk into a fast, fun scoot. She was amazed by the smooth glide, even on London sidewalks, and couldn’t help but compare its solid construction with the somewhat rickety construction of other major brands. It was also a quiet ride, something she thinks kids as well as parents will notice and appreciate. The quality difference between micro® scooters and other brands is what makes the micro® scooter a credible mode of mobility for adults as well as kids.
In London, Julie was singing the praises of her micro® scooters (er, her daughter’s) to friends and neighbors, resulting in 2 particular neighbors purchasing and becoming huge advocates of the mini micro, Micro’s 3-wheel kickboard for young children. They approached micro in Switzerland, asking to become the UK distributors of the mini micro. Julie looked on as the friends developed their business, selling to one mum and then another and within a short time, the mini micro populated the streets and parks of London. A year or so later, Julie and Geoff (of English extraction) decided to move to Julie’s childhood home in the USA. With their daughter from China, son from Russia and husband from England, Geoff likened her to a pirate bringing home her ‘booty’ from foreign lands.
The friends introduced Julie to the Micro team in Switzerland just prior to her return, and she was invited to join the Micro family as the US distributor in 2007.
As the business grew Julie, a former financial type herself, was joined by her financier husband, Geoff.
Later, David, Meghan, Stephanie, Lavell and Lucas all kicked in to create a fun and hardworking team of scooter geeks (they talk scooters all day long), who are just grateful to be able to work with such well designed and constructed products.
Their goal is to try to be as good as the products!
Micro Mobility Systems, Switzerland, the story
The Micro story began just 15 years ago when founder Wim Ouboter was 30 years old and living in Zurich. Wim encountered a small problem – his favourite sausage shop was too far away to walk to, but not far enough away to drive to; ‘I called it a microdistance,’ he says. A former banker turned inventor, Wim decided he needed a new mode of mobility suited to traveling the microdistance to get his daily sausage. Remembering 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.’ With his characteristic mixture of a kid’s desire to be cool and a grown-up’s application of technology, Wim worked at the scooter until it was small enough to hide in his backpack. It took another 10 years, with the constant advice and encouragement of his wife Janine, to get the invention on the road. Joined in 1999 by his partner and now CEO of Micro®, Hans-Peter Bolliger, the two attended trade shows with the first professionally developed scooter. It was 3-wheeled and they called it a kickboard®. Winning the Stuttgart Design Centre Design Prize, they proceeded to sell more than 9 million scooters 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 highest 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. Today Micro continues to deliver quality and innovation and is recognized as the leading brand for quality scooters and kickboards.
In 2008 Micro® re-introduced kickboard® as its brand in the United States. The decision was taken by the founder and the CEO of Micro, following the discovery that another company had registered the micro name in 2000, following Micro’s own international registration of the micro® brand in 1999. Confusion in the marketplace over these and other similarly named products, Micro-Mobility decided to return to the name kick® and kickboard®, brands that represent their high-quality, award-winning scooters and 3-wheel kickboards.