Duotone Diversity Magazine No.02 2020

As it turns out, I needed that one day in Tarifa to wake me up. My best friend Robin and I spent some time there kiting together. I started to love this sport when I was only 17. I was totally hooked from the first lesson onwards and it has been my balance in life ever since. Being out on the water means absolute freedom to me, I just love the feeling when I am kiting. Robin shares this passion with me, which makes him the best travel companion to wish for. Although, on this one day in Tarifa, things turned out differently. When we were out kiting and jumping over a sandbank, something must have gone wrong. Robin crashed onto the sandbank and was washed out into the water unconscious. We managed to drag him back to the beach where we had to resuscitate him. It was the most intense minutes of my life and it completely changed my way of thinking. I grew up in a little town called Wermelskirchen, close to Cologne, Germany. With only 35000 inhabitants, it always felt like a big family. Everyone knows each other, the kids grow up together, and there exists a social cohesion and readiness to help. Still to this day, my closest friends are those I met as a child, even though we are all spread out around the world. After finishing school, I felt the urge to see something new and to discover the world. Also, I have always had a strong career drive and a certain idea of my future work life. So, when in 2010 the possibility came up to do an internship for an automotive supplier either in Brazil or in China, I didn’t have to think too much, China as a rising global power clearly was the more promising first step for the start of a successful career. Or so I thought. Looking back, this wasn’t necessarily the right decision. In China, no one really spoke English back then, everything was still quite underdeveloped, and I wasn’t able to connect with the people there. This left me feeling isolated. Back in Germany, I soon started studying. In the Netherlands, I enrolled at Maastricht University for International Business which had quite a good reputation in this field and I spent one semester abroad in Toronto, Canada. After finishing my Bachelor Diploma in 2014, I took a break to travel throughout Australia with a Work&Travel visa. Although I meant to stay a whole year, I decided to go back after six months to start my master studies back in Maastricht. Clearly, all my decisions then were solely based on creating the best possible resumee. Having fun and actually taking a break for once, wasn’t what I was after. In 2016, I finally entered work life, starting at a Management and IT Consulting firm which specialized in Process and IT Consulting. I was responsible for Value Chain Excellence for automotive clients, like Audi and Hymer. During that time, I learned a lot and to me it was extremely exciting to look into the companies to see how their internal processes work and how you can optimize them. I also learned what it means to work more than 70 hours per week, sometimes sitting at the desk until the morning hours. I also got to experience what it’s like when everyone only works for his own benefit and I found myself in a society where the weakest go to the wall. This was so contrary to what I used to know from my childhood days. It was also then that I realized “Work-Life balance” was not just a phrase. This was not the place I wanted to work at for the rest of my life. The only solution was to quit. Following this experience, I started to work as Key Account Manager for a Logistics Service Provider taking care of two strategic HighTech clients, Kodak and Epson. The job was well payed, with regulated working hours and I liked the people I worked with. However, I still did not find the position very fulfilling. There is no greater motivation for doing your job than passion. Back to Tarifa: When Robin was well again after his accident, we both reflected on our lives and realized that neither of us were quite happy with what we did. The accident made us aware that life can be really short and that we don’t have time to waste it on things that don’t make us happy. In the end, Robin and me both decided to quit our jobs to do something that would fulfill us and that would still leave enough time to enjoy life to its fullest. The initial plan was to move to Amsterdam together. However, I was still dreaming of at least once applying for a job in the surf / kite industry and I just had to give it a try before committing to the move. And here I am. Since 2018, I am working as the Sales Manager for Duotone Kiteboarding and am responsible for our distributors worldwide as well as some of our agents in Europe, Brazil and the USA. I take care of product availability and the calculation of prices. When there are questions regarding possible discounts, plans to increase turnover or if there occur problems on specific markets, I am the one to contact. Additionally, I take care of the Duotone Pro Centers – a project which I initiated together with our CEO and whose implementation I am responsible for. I identify myself 100% with the products we sell and the lifestyle that comes with it, which makes it so much more fun. Business talks come naturally – you don’t have to think that much, you feel it. It is a major change in mindset from where I used to be – but if anything, this is the one thing I definitely do not regret. BASTI HERRIG, 28 SALES MANAGER From my first day of kiteboarding, I was a huge North Kiteboarding fan, nowadays known as Duotone. Their sophisticated products, engineering and permanent innovation impressed me. I worshipped the people behind the brand, especially those who were responsible for the development of the kite gear. For me to be the person in this role today, the one to develop Duotone’s Twintip collection and together with Sky Solbach to also be responsible for the evolution of the surfboards, makes me extremely proud. It still freaks me out when I think about people buying my boards, riding them, and having fun with them. It’s the best feeling you can imagine. If the “dream job” exists, to me being product developer at Duotone is it. I discovered kiting right in its beginnings, 2002/03. At that time, I was actively sailing, taking part in the German “Segelbundesliga” (classes 420er and J70). Growing up in Munich, sailing at lake Chiemsee, and thus being close to the mountains most of the time, my other passion in life was snowboarding, especially freeriding and backcountry. When kiting came up, it was just the logical thing between those two sports for me. I was fascinated from the first moment I saw it. My parents had a different opinion on it – to them it was dangerous and yet another sport that would get me injured sooner or later. So, when I wanted to buy the equipment, I had to earn it myself. I was 14 years old back then and it took me almost two years until I was finally able to afford my first kite. During that time, I took in everything there was to read and learn about kiting. So, when I eventually got to the point of actually trying it out, I theoretically knew so much already, it felt like something I had been doing my whole life. My first ever session at lake Walchensee in Germany, in 2004, taught me otherwise. A classmate who also kited, lent me his directional board – I had to swim a lot! At some point a random guy came up to me and said “with that board you will never learn how to kite”! But it was all I had. So this guy brought me his Twintip and told me to keep it – just like that. From that day onwards kiting was my number one sport. After my A-levels in 2007, I went to lake Garda to work as a sailing instructor. The sailing school was connected to a kite school, so it didn’t take long until I was teaching people how to kite instead. After one year, and slightly under pressure by my parents, who wanted me to get an education, I came back to Munich for one weekend – officially to go to career counseling. Lucky for me, it happened to be Oktoberfest as well. Who would’ve thought that the counselor actually nailed it to the point – she suggested for me to study sports engineering in Chemnitz, which basically meant developing sports equipment. The only downside was that I had to move to Chemnitz within one week as the new semester was just about to start. Suddenly I had a very clear vision of what I wanted to do with my life; I wanted to get a job at North Kiteboarding, now Duotone, to develop kiteboarding equipment. Before this point, it never occurred to me as a realistic option, but this woman had just introduced me to the tools to make it happen. So, the decision was clear. I would move to Chemnitz. During my studies, I kept coming back to Lake Garda whenever I had time off of university to keep working as a kiteboarding instructor. That’s when I met Caro, my wife. She was a hardcore windsurfer at the time and didn’t want to have anything to do with a kiter like me but I kept at her until she couldn’t resist anymore. That’s basically what I did with Duotone Kiteboarding as well – I was very persistent. Maybe even annoying at some point, if you ask Toni Destino, head of development and the one to eventually give me the job. After my studies, I applied 3 times over a period of 2–3 years, without success. Still, I didn’t want anything else, I wanted to work for this brand only. Though this ambitious goal took quite a while so in the mean time, I took a couple of other jobs and laid the foundation of a rather less than successful startup company. A good friend of mine had an old CNC machine in his garage and we were building prototypes for sailing. The big vision was to one day build skis and sell them. But all we did was burn money. So, after only a couple of months, I was broke and quit the startup. Then one day, my time had come. Caro and I were back from Los Angeles where we had been living for a year, while she worked for the World Surf League. I had joined her in the US to work as a freelance design engineer for startups but Caro’s visa wasn’t prolonged and we both had to leave the country. Back in Munich, neither of us were happy so when the WSL offered Caro a job in France, we packed our bags. Shortly before we were meant to move to Capbreton, I got a call from a friend who worked for Boards & More telling me that a vacancy would be coming up at Duotone that would fit perfectly for me. It was the ultimate turning point. I applied a fourth time and this time I didn’t leave anything up to fate: I called Toni constantly, actually as often as it took to convince him to invite me for a job interview. Then one thing came to another. Caro and I moved to France but my time there was limited, I finally got the job I was after for all those years and moved back to Munich after only 3 months abroad. Caro stayed a full year. Today Caro and I are married and have two kids, a boy (2 and a half years old) and a girl (6 months old). Caro is also a dedicated kiter now and left the windsurfing days behind her. So kiting is not just a job for me, it’s an important part of my life and also of my family’s life. We spend as much time as possible on or at least close to the water; to follow our passion and to be able to pass this dedication on to our kids. MANUEL ZWINZ, 31 PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT P E O P L E 60 61 P E O P L E I N S I D E D U O T O N E