“Accepting Software Processes the Way They Are”

Mr. Ostner, you started up your own company at the age of just 14. Today, you’re the managing director of PG Bikes. You are a successful retailer of electric bikes and you recently added electric roadsters to your product range …

I wanted more independence from my parents and I wanted a chance to earn more than the 20 marks I was given as pocket money every month. So I set up a newspaper wholesale business and employed people to do paper rounds for me.  When I was 15, I started buying old Vespa scooters, pepping them up, and reselling them.

So your fascination for two-wheelers began at early age?

Yes, and I was drawn back to them again later. In the meantime, I worked for “Nice Price Finder”, where my job was to locate the lowest prices for companies who wanted to buy IT equipment. I also ran a wellness distribution business for a Japanese company.

… and then it was back to the world of two-wheelers …

Correct. In 2004, I founded the “Pimp Garage” where – as the name suggests – we bought, pimped, and resold bicycles. We installed free-to-customize osCommerce software for our online shopping website and spent 140,000 euros on it in just three years. We just didn’t have the experience, and it was important to us to start out with an inexpensive solution. But then we started adjusting and adding bits on; adjusting again and adding more bits. The system steadily got bigger and bigger and less and less transparent…

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