Revolution Design Michael Vollmer Interview
Area52 has the interview. I am designing RC cars and many other RC related products since nearly seven years, when I started with a touring car project for Robitronic directly after I finished studying mechanical engineering. After two years in Vienna I felt that I needed to go back to Hamburg to start my own design office, Revolution Design, and to work as freelance designer. Since that time, I can say that I designed a lot of very innovative new RC cars and many, many other stuff like tools, cases for electronic devices, bodies and other parts. I have worked for a lot of larger and smaller companies out there worldwide.
The most important stage for me personally was the exclusive contract with Team Durango, a make I found with Gerd Strenge. I think I can say that I designed the most innovative RC vehicles out there. The DEX410 and the DEX210 are a milestones in the RC history probably as much as the iconic Team Associated RC10 back in the days.
I also designed many other cars for Team Durango as head designer. Most of the vehicles I designed so far have been or still are very popular and very successful on the market and at the races. My cars won countless National titles, European Championships, World Championships and I am very proud of Jörn Neumann win at the 2012 Reedy Race of Champions. I think, I am the only designer so far, that was able to design the winning cars in both classes.
Speaking of Team Durango, after three years of hard work I felt that it was time for another change and I decided to leave the company and start working as freelancer again. The experiences I made lead to even better designs and I started to design a lot more general products and after two years being by own boss again everything is running very good and smooth for me now at this moment.
There are two reasons why I started RDRP First, I had a lot of old and new ideas about tools and accessories in my head, all of them incorporating that something special that I missed with many tools on the market. Also, I was unhappy with the quality of many of the current products and I felt that there is a lot of potential for improvements. Plus I simply wanted to create some sort of a backup in case the global financial crisis would affect the order situation of my design projects.
I made some smaller projects with Sven at that time and I asked him, if he would be interested in working with me as partner. Sven Ruddog company is running very well and he has the needed infrastructure, contacts and many distribution partners.
Sven was excited about the idea and I directly started to design the first RDRP
Then we developed more and more ideas, what we can do and of course what can we do better, than the other companies, both from the style and the function. The good thing when you start with a clean sheet of paper is that you can make a very nice product family that keeps a corporate identity and straight forward design. I decided to create the tools like precision instruments, from the style to the function. A very serious technical design, maybe even a German design if you like.
Not a fancy superlightweight purple green blue, heavily machined, wind tunnel tested space age stuff, but a classic, solid design. This leads to a high weight of many parts and all products are made from the best 7075 T6 aluminium. This ensures a long lifespan and a high scratch resitance. You pay a lot of money for your tools and you expect a perfect product.
We are a small company. I get a lot of emails from people who wants to become RDRP team drivers. And it is not easy to explain, that all the money straight wents into new products. Ellis Stafford (UK) and Chrissi Krapp (Germany) are the only team drivers so far. And it is great to have so smart guys and excellent drivers in our team.
Maybe in one year, when we have a lot more products on the market, we can think about additional team drivers. But many team drivers also mean a lot of time and money that we have to invest. And, to be honest, we don’t want to raise the prices of our products, only to have some more team drivers out there like others!
Most manufacturers are mainly focussed into the production of their car kits. There is often no time to concentrate on option parts, because there are thousand of other things to do. Today most drivers want to personalise their cars and sometimes their complete equipment. Sometimes just for looks and sometimes for performance reasons. With RDRP I try to make parts that makes sense and that look cool at the same time. The DEX210 parts are only the beginning.
The aluminium shock towers for example are an idea from the 1/8 cars. They are strong and solid. You simply cannot break them. The standard plastic shock towers break very often as do aftermarket carbon fibre ones. The aluminium towers are only 7 grams heavier than the plastic towers and that still is very light. As an example the prototype sample I have on my DEX210 are in their sixth months now and they are still in same goo shape.
After the first batch of tools and DEX210 option parts, both a great success in terms of the sale numbers, we now start to extend the ultra series tool and wrench series. We will also come with some very clever nitro tools and other accessories soon. After a hard six month to get everything up an running we now expect to expand our product line in a faster way and I am very excited to see what we can reach with another half year to come. But, like said, RDRP is only a small aspect of my daily work as I of course still design RC cars. This is what I am made for!
By Area52 and RevolutionRC
