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2013 - Flashback... Der Franzose was 25... the boss told how it all started

„Der Franzose“ celebrates its 25 years – the story of the boss

My name is Ansgar Olberding, born in 1966, a child of the 80's!

At that time, the most important for me as teenager, was not to be a narrow-minded person. So after my apprenticeship as mechanist, I decided to never start any career in the automobile industry, specially Mercedes, Opel, Ford or Volkswagen. Thus my first car was a Fiat 500, followed by three Citroën for DM 300, Citroën DS and Peugeot 204 cabriolet. Meanwhile, it was as a trial to find out which profession suits me.

So I started as merchandiser in a motorcycle shop and in parallel, the number of old french cars kept on growing so that as I was 20 years old, I had a henhouse full of second-hand cars, all badly preserved. Thus I started restoring the first car and on and off, I got a request for spare parts.

I then concluded that merchandiser was not the right one for me so I started a new apprentice as technician for computer and office machine technology. Later on I worked as medical technician for an american enterprise. Even though, I was still not happy with my job and as young man, it was much easier to start again and keep on looking for new challenges until I discover the vintage cars industry. Ansgar Olberding

Rainer Braunwald who was running a company with vintage cars, proposed me to take over his enterprise. I know him well and visited him since 1989 as we shared the same interest. The only trouble was the purchasing price, respectively DM 13,000, which was categorically refused by the bank as I asked for a credit! Somehow, we did managed to get the money, of course without the support of the bank and brought all stuffs to our flat-sharing community on the farm. After loads of discussions with the other flatmates, we could finally used the garage as office/warehouse. I could imagine that it is my dream job and my girlfriend, actually my wife supported me as well. We even dismissed our jobs to concentrate ourselves in dealing with spare parts and establish a real enterprise. In 1996, we created our website while our competitors were laughing at us, thinking about what a silly business! In 2005, we organised our first in-house exhibition, which occurs annually on the third week-end in September.

As self-employed, we have made lots of mistakes due to lack of experience, trying to solve all problems on our own! If we have to start again today, we will definitely do it again as we are much wiser and have good employees by our side.

Today, everything is perfect! We have good employees, loads of orders and we can even afford us TIME: time to enjoy our lunch without emails and telephone conversations, closing the office on time and having leisure time during the week-end! Our employees can manage without us and we can enjoy a relaxing drive in the 2CV without mobile phone, Facebook or Twitter!

My only problem is that officially I'm a merchandiser and sometimes I have to scratch my head trying to find out where does this part belongs to!But I acknowledge that many of our customers are happy to know that there is still some hope getting those rare parts. Furthermore, I must say I find it quite interesting working with an international team, thus keep on expanding.

Otherwise, I'm enjoying life how it is. I'm still getting wiser even being over 40 yrs old and I know that I can take time relaxing on the veranda with a cup of coffee, playing with the dog though keeping in mind that there are some vintage cars in my garage, waiting patiently to get screwed and get ready for a good drive. I'm not worried about business as it is running smoothly as long as the electronic keeps on developing as fast as it is since the last years. I know that there are people outside who are longing for quality rating and slowing down consciously.
I don't need any „mobile computer with 4 wheels“!