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Morning News

Scooter Inventor Rolls Into Success

Aired December 26, 2000 - 9:56 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: No matter what holiday you are celebrating this year, one of the most popular toys for the kids has been the scooter. Where did it come from?

Well, CNN Financial News reporter Christian Mahne now tells us the man behind the new generation of scooter and his ride to the top.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go!

CHRISTIAN MAHNE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): By day to friends and colleagues in Zurich where Wim Ouboter appeared to be a normal Swiss banker. But by night, the 40-year-old father of two led a second life, swapping up passwords and secrecy of his numbered accounts for the pliers and screwdrivers of his basement workshop. He's now quit banking and become creator of this year's must-have.

WIM OUBOTER, DESIGNER: This is hell now. This is hell and heaven combined, because not even in my wildest dream I have been thinking this would become such a big success.

MAHNE: The path to that success started seven years ago as a shortcut to the nearest take-away. A 20 minute walk suddenly became a five-minute thrill ride. But it was an idea whose time had not yet come. The microscooter languished in limbo until some top European scooter specialists spotted its potential.

OUBOTER: Every afternoon, the kids came to our house and they were scooting around. And my wife said, hey, there's something about the scooter, otherwise the kids wouldn't come. And she said, you better do it professionally, otherwise someone else is going to do it.

MAHNE: Wim tried just that, but was left holding 20,000 unsold scooters and a $150,000 bill after his first corporate backers pulled out. He marketed the scooters himself. They became a sellout success in Japan and a worldwide trend was born. It's still run from the Zurich apartment Wim Ouboter was born in 40 years ago, but production has now left the basement, leaving to a factory in the Far East employing 7,500 people, with the ability to produce 70,000 scooters a day. The original version is now being supplemented with off-road models, stunt kits, and even an electric motor.

But now the scooter project is getting too big for the two of them to handle. And success has bred a new problem: the copycat.

OUBOTER: My father told me, if you don't get copied, your product isn't good enough. But now we get copied a little bit too much. I mean, there are more than 100 factories that are producing aluminum scooters with the non-skid wheels and it's just impossible to stop all of them.

MAHNE: A worry that's connected to copycats is safety. United States consumer regulators have just banned two brands of copycat scooter, and in Hong Kong where over 100,000 scooters have been sold in recent months, it's estimated that two-thirds are fakes: poor- quality copies that break easily.

The copycats are responding to strong scooter demand from around the world. U.S. giant Wal-Mart recently ordered 3 million Razors for its stores, and in the U.K. Wim's scooters have been selling at the rate of 5,000 a week. Time will tell if the microscooter goes the way of the space hopper and Rubik's Cube. But for now, the profits are still rolling in.

But the invention does have its detractors. City authorities increasingly view scooters as pests. And many cities, such as London and New York, are seeking to ban scooters from the sidewalk. It could be an ignominious end to the idea that was meant to change the way we travel.

OUBOTER: I'm not an inventor. I would say I'm a visionary. Or at the end, I was the father of this project.

MAHNE: Christian Mahne, CNN Financial News, Zurich, Switzerland.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: Got to watch out for those scooters going fast out there.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com

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