During its training camp in the south-east of Portugal the brand new cycling team Cervélo TestTeam presented itself to the press.

For the first time since years a bike supplier has become the main sponsor of a cycling team and that team manages to get the winner of the last Tour de France in its list of riders right from the start!

The Cervélo brand

Cervélo Cycles was founded in 1995 by two engineers, Phil White and Gérard Vroomen. Vroomen studied at the same university as I did, the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven where he studied Mechanical engineering. He did his graduation internship at the University of Montréal in Canada where, together with another student, Phil White, he developed the first prototype of a special time trial bike, the Baracchi. This bike was developed for an Italian cyclist who asked Gérard Vroomen to develop such a bike since the bike sponsor of the team hadn't been able to develop a revolutionary new time trial bike.

Everyone thought the result was great ... except for the team's bike sponsor. Therefore, Vroomen and White decided that the only solution to market this bike and to continue its development was to create a company.

The company started with the development of especially time trial bikes and the Canadian rider Eric Wohlberg used a Cervélo in 1996 at the Olympic Games in Atlanta. The national time trial championships for Germany and Canada were won on a Cervélo and the brand thus little by little became wider known.

In 1996 the company started off with 4 designs: two road bikes and two time trial / triathlon bikes. These designs were far ahead of their time and therefore didn't sell very well. In 2000, when the UCI announced new very strict rules for competition bikes, Cervélo already anticipated these new rules in its designes and could thus continue to sell extremely advanced bike which respected the new rules while its competitors had to start all over again and were thus obliged to sell less advanced bikes.

From 2003 till 2008 Cervélo was the official bike supplier of the CSC team, which has since become Saxo Bank. In 2003 this team was number 14 world wide, with Cervélo the team ended up at the first place for three years.
Furthermore, since 2008 the company became the official sponsor of a women's cycling team with Kristin Armstrong and Karin Thürig among others.

The company currently has about 30 employees and offices in Toronto in Canada and La Chaux-de-Fonds (Neuchâtel) in Switzerland.

Still today, Cervélo's bikes carry the inscription Vroomen-White-Design and the company continued to focus more on the technical than on the marketing side. The company's website says about this that the company's goal has always been to help its customers win and that it's therefore more important to invest money in a test in the windtunnel than on ads and marketing: We apologize in advance if our ads look like they were written by engineers. We figured you would rather read an ad designed by an engineer than ride a bike designed by the marketing department.

More information on Cervélo's history can be found on the company's website.

Why did Cervélo decide to sponsor a cycling team?

For several years already, no single bike supplier has been main sponsor of a cycling team. Why did Cervélo decide to pick up what was normal in the 60's till 80's?

During the team presentation, Phil White answered this question by saying: We did it because we feel that professional cycling is of extreme importance to the bike industry. Rather than just criticize on the sidelines as a sponsor, we decided we should put our money where our mouth is and be proactive. We think it is time the industry doesn't just fund teams they have no control over, but that it also takes an active role and responsibility for how these teams are run, and how they promote bikes & cycling in general.

Gérard Vroomen completed this reasoning by saying: While race exposure is great, we need more than that. Our company is based on creating the best products, and to continue to offer that to our customers, we need assistance and feedback from pro riders during product development. The best way to ensure the team is focused on providing this feedback is to own the team. In speaking with Thomas Campana, the basic structure of such a team started to take shape. We had a great experience in 2008 with the women's team he runs, so to take that team, add a men's side, and turn it into a bike industry team made a lot of sense to us.

The company's goal is clearly to use the team to improve its products.

The Cervélo TestTeam 2009

When the idea for the team started to become more structured, the Tour de France 2008 winner, Carlos Sastre, was the first to show his interest ... it's probably a world's first that a brand new team starts with the last Tour de France winner as one of its riders. After Sastre, Roger Hammond and Thor Hushovd joined, followed by other riders, team managers and other staff members.

The men's team riders
- Andreas Klier (GER, 33, comes from Team Columbia)
- Brett Lancaster (AUS, 29, comes from Milram)
- Carlos Sastre (ESP, 33, comes from CSC - which has since become Saxo Bank)
- Daniel Fleeman (GBR, 26, comes from An Post - M. Donnelly - Grant Thornton - Sean Kelly Team)
- Daniel Lloyd (GBR, 28, also comes from d'An Post - M. Donnelly - Grant Thornton - Sean Kelly Team)
- Dominique Rollin (CAN, 26, comes from Toyota-United)
- Gabriel Rasch (NOR, 32, comes from Crédit Agricole)
- Hayden Roulston (NZL, 27, was a rider at HealthNet until 2006 when he had to stap due to heart problems)
- Heinrich Haussler (GER, 24, comes from Gerolsteiner)
- Ignatas Konovalovas (LTU, 23, comes from Crédit Agricole)
- Íñigo Cuesta López (ESP, 39, comes from CSC - which has since become Saxo Bank)
- Jeremy Hunt (GBR, 34, comes from Crédit Agricole)
- Joaquin Novoa (ESP, 25, néo-pro)
- Jose Angel Gomez Marchante (ESP, 28, comes from Saunier Duval-Scott / Scott-American Beef)
- Marcel Wyss (SUI, 22, néo-pro)
- Martin Reimer (GER, 21, néo-pro)
- Oscar Pujol (ESP, 25, comes from Burgos Monumental)
- Philip Deignan (IRL, 25, comes from AG2R La Mondiale)
- Roger Hammond (GBR, 34, comes from Team Columbia)
- Serge Pauwels (BEL, 25, comes from Topsport Vlaanderen)
- Simon Gerrans (AUS, 28, comes from Crédit Agricole)
- Ted King (USA, 25, comes from Bissel Pro Cycling)
- Thor Hushovd (NOR, 31, comes from Crédit Agricole)
- Volodymir Gustov (UKR, 31, comes from CSC - which has since become Saxo Bank)
- Xavier Florencio (ESP, 29, comes from Bouygues Telecom)

The women's team riders
Carla Ryan, Christiane Soeder, Claudia Häusler, Emma Pooley, Kirsten Wild, Kristin Armstrong, Lieselot Decroix, Pascale Schnider, Patricia Schwager, Regina Bruins, Sandra Dietel and Sarah Düster.

The team's other sponsors

Next to Cervélo the team has the following sponsors: 2XU for the cycling kits, 3T for the handlebars, Bicycling Magazine, Castelli for the winter cycling kits, Cross Klinik for the medical and orthopedic products, Elite for the trainers and water bottles, fi'zi:k for the saddles, Morgan Blue for bike maintenance products, nokon for break and gear change cables, Quarq Technology for data acquisition during training, Reporter for the suits, Rotor Bike Components for bike components, Skoda for the cars, Speedplay for the pedals, Vittoria for the tires, Zipp for the wheels and Zipvit for dietary supplements.

door Thomas Vergouwen
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this publication is published in: Team presentations 2009 | Marketing

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