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Korys, the investment company of the Colruyt family, takes a majority stake in Santos Bikes, a Dutch producer of travel bikes. It also supplies bicycles for the Ghent police.
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Santos Bikes, founded in 1997, does not make bicycles on an assembly line. Every bicycle that leaves the workshop in Nieuw-Vennep, south of Amsterdam, is custom-made. Customers can adapt almost all components to their wishes.
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The company originally specialized in travel bikes to explore the world packed and bagged. The cheapest models quickly cost 3,000 euros. ‘But they are built for life, as it were, with little maintenance costs. Anyone who is traveling does not want to have any problems along the way’, says Thomas De Kempeneer of Korys.
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In the meantime, Santos Bikes has expanded its range with gravel bikes, commuter bikes, electric bikes and ‘patrol bikes’. For example, the police of Ghent, Antwerp and Kortrijk already drive the Dutch two-wheelers. Cities and municipalities in the Netherlands and Sweden have also discovered Santos Bikes.
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Santos Bikes achieves an annual turnover of approximately 10 million euros. ‘The bicycle market is on the rise, and certainly also the niche of travel bicycles for slow travel.’ The company sells its bicycles through some sixty specialized stores, mainly in the Netherlands. ‘We also sell in Belgium, but we could use a little boost there,’ it sounds. The company is also thinking of expanding to Germany and Denmark.
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Korys becomes majority shareholder by acquiring the stake of Think2Act Capital, another Belgian venture capital fund. Additional growth capital is not yet on the agenda. ‘The company is very profitable, but we are ready to invest more if opportunities arise.’
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