VOL. 52 ISSUE 14 APRIL 7, 2015 P55
S
tephan Schaller, 57, has been the Pres-
ident/CEO of BMW Motorrad since
June 2012. A qualified mechanical
engineer, he first worked for the BMW Group
from 1981 to 1999. Initially he was a trainee in
what was then the Technology Division, before
going on to hold various management posts—
including heading up production at BMW's
Rosslyn automotive plant in South Africa.
Schaller then crossed to the rival Volkswagen
Audi Group (VAG), serving as a member of
the Management Board of Volkswagen from
2004, and as the CEO of Volkswagen Com-
mercial Vehicles from January 2007. He then
became Vice Chairman of Schott AG in Mainz,
an advanced optics manufacturer, before
rejoining BMW in 2012 to head up its motor-
cycle division. The chance to talk to him in his
office in Munich provided a window on BMW's
continued sales success and ongoing global
expansion.
Mr. Schaller, you've had a very success-
ful recent tenure as CEO of BMW Motor-
rad. I understand last year was a record
one for the company?
Indeed so. We sold a total of 123,495 mo-
torcycles in 2014, so a 7.2 percent increase
over the 115,215 we made in 2013, and the
first time BMW sold more than 120,000 motor-
cycles in a single year.
But we manufactured around 130,000 units,
definitely a lot more than last year because we
had a little change in our philosophy to stock
more at the beginning of the year. And this
year has indeed started very positively for us,
with 6,263 maxi-scooters and motorcycles
delivered to customers in January, a sales
increase of 15.2% compared with January last
year.
To what do you attribute the current suc-
cess of BMW Motorrad?
I think this is definitely not something that
happened in the past two years, but was pre-
pared long ago in the past…
I must tell you the motivation in this team is
even beyond what I already experienced in
the car division, and I believe this is the main
reason for our present success. More than 80
percent of the men and women working for
BMW Motorrad ride motorcycles on a regular
PART ONE:
SCHALLER SPEAKS
CEO S TEPHAN SC HALLER TALK S BMW'S
SECRET T O SUCCESS AND BUSINESS
BY ALAN CATHCART
PHOTOS COURTESY OF BMW MOTORRAD
