We get to know Kalas' clients in our Customer Stories series. These can be cycling clubs but also groups of friends, events or companies. Service is important for all our customers but in the case of Wouter Slotegraaf of the company Cyql, it was even the inspiration to think further to achieve a special cooperation with Kalas. But first to the beginning. How did former amateur footballer Slotegraaf get into cycling?
”It's a bit of a cliché because you hear it so often,” he laughs. “Like so many others, a bad knee prevented me from continuing to play football. Then the bike came into the picture. That was just a cheap model at first and so were the clothes I bought. Those even came from a Chinese eShop. I experienced the joy of riding straight away, but when I started measuring things with a Garmin and a heart rate monitor, things got more serious.’
Serious training, serious details
Through an entrepreneurial network in the province of Friesland, on the north coast of Netherlands, Slotegraaf encountered Kalas representative and former pro cyclist René Hooghiemster.
‘René made training plans for me but also helped me find better clothes. That link was quickly established. The more you ride, the more the details become important. That certainly applies to clothing. I now ride in all kinds of temperatures and weather conditions thanks to the Kalas clothes I have. Good equipment is important both on the bike and in my own business. If you have the right gear, your work and cycling career run a lot smoother.’
That business bears the name ‘Freed’. It is the Frisian (the second language of Netherlands) word for Friday. In 2012, Slotegraaf and his companion Jan Kooistra, who also enjoys cycling, founded this company. The reference to Friday comes from the more relaxed character of that last day of the working week. They want to convey that feeling every day of the week. Currently, Freed employs 16 people and focuses on building mobile applications, i.e. apps.
The desire to design their own clothes soon came with the company’s owners both riding bikes. That trend continued when Freed got a sister company in the start-up ‘Cyql’. There, Slotegraaf and Kooistra combine their love of cycling and their knowledge of apps.
The start of the Cyql app
‘From my own experience at our cycling club ‘TFC Surhuisterveen’, I saw that the communication could be a bit better. Like many cycling clubs, we used WhatsApp. Then, if out of 150 members, four wanted to go riding on a Tuesday morning, the other 146 members all got to read those messages about the start time, route and choice of clothing as well. It was all very cluttered,’ laughs Slotegraaf.
As an app developer he saw the solution in creating an app for cycling clubs. That became Cyql.
‘My clubmates did know about my IT company and that's how the ball got rolling. They wanted an app. We then made an outline of such an app. Then I approached eight random clubs. In a Teams meeting, we then looked at how they liked this idea as a kind of small market research experiment. We could think that it was a good idea but to have it confirmed was nice.’
Virtual clubhouse
The first version of Cyql was launched in 2021 but the idea dates back to 2019. The spare hours left after working for Freed's own clients went into this app.
‘I am proud of what we have created,’ says Slotegraaf cheerfully. ‘Cyql is basically a virtual clubhouse where we can all get together. Now if a few members want to ride together, you virtually sit together at a table in the clubhouse for a while. You create a ride in the app and chat in that group together without all the other members. Of course, you can also talk to the whole club when it comes to organisational things, for example. Or about the design of the new clothes,’ he adds with a laugh.
Use of the app grew quickly as the NTFU, the Dutch Tour Cycling Union, made the Cyql app available to its members. The club then pays a monthly fee for use.
‘It really fulfils a need. I have experienced that myself,’ says Slotegraaf.‘ We want to grow further internationally with crowdfunding. The idea is catching on everywhere because cyclists want to ride and like to be taken care of in that respect.’
Custom Cyqling clothes
Cyql's logo is yellow. That was something very different from the black or white clothes Kalas had already designed for the company Freed. Time for a new design session!
”We have creative minds working in the company who had already created a design. Kalas helped us turn the ideas we had into a good clothing design. It had to be yellow. Yellow is the colour of the winner of the Tour de France, but we are under no illusions,” jokes Slotegraaf.
“Yellow is nice and bright and by standing out as a cyclist, it is also a safe colour. As a company, we also stand out in that yellow and that also generated interest. Mainly our own cycling friends now ride in yellow, but Cyql users are also interested. They use the Kalas Custom eShop to choose their own clothes and go to check-out themselves. Then it is delivered to their homes individually. Nice and easy. We don't give advice because there is a lot of choice for all kinds of budgets and wishes. We do say to people to get good shorts. You shouldn't skimp on that.”’
Cyql into the future
There was now a nice, widely used and highly rated app and clothes in yellow but that was not the end of the collaboration between Kalas and Cyql. What if they could expand the collaboration? In Tábor, Slotegraaf saw how similar the two companies were. That inspired him further.
"Last winter, I was invited by Kalas to attend the cyclo-cross World Championships in the Czech Republic. We were then also given a tour of the factory and saw how Kalas' production process is down to the last detail. The employees make the products with passion, love and an eye for detail. We do the same."
That inspired Slotegraaf and his business partner Kooistra to think further about making cycling even more social. They also want to further unburden people in both app and clothing.
"Chatting with cycling friends is still the most important and most used feature," Slotegraaf says. ‘You can implement that idea of ‘unburdening’ much further than just easily planning a bike ride together. What if you could link the weather forecast to your ride? Or, thinking a bit further, what if you translated that weather forecast into a clothing recommendation. Long bibs? Gilet on? Rain jacket? Bring gloves or just the lightest summer jersey because it will be 30 degrees? That's all unburdening and it makes such a ride even easier to plan for our users. That’s ultimately what Cyql was all about in the beginning anyway, and that unburdoning remains the core, just like Kalas has been doing for their customers for decades.”
