How I came to producing sailplanes
"Should you wish that I speak another word with you in my life, Mister Wolff, you had better withdraw that proposal immediately!"
the authentic words of my wife on a beautiful summers day in May 1996, as we were out for dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Wolff. And of course these words have a history, which I will use, to introduce myself as the managing director of DG-Flugzeugbau in Bruchsal, to you, the readers of the Homepage of DG Flugzeugbau.
For more than 6 years now I love to fly my DG-400 as often as possible. The DG-400 is particularly sym-pathetic to me, because this sailplane allows me to enjoy the beauty of gliding without stress and no risk when landing outside the gliding field. I find great joy and pleasure in this sport, even without trying to reach for competition honors or any need to find my name high up in a ranking list.
Step by step the wish grew on me, to acquire the newest and most beautiful offered sailplane on the market in this category, and to my personal judgment this could only be a DG-800B. This led to a visit in Bruchsal, to negotiations and to a contract, where I noticed, that the sales manager obviously was in no hurry to fill out a confirmation order. The whole situation gave me reason to disbelief, if this company can make it much longer?
On a gliding vacation at the beginning of March 96 in Vinon, southern France, the news of the company's crash reached me, and as I did not fancy any of the competitive products, it became clear to me, that I had to go on flying my DG-400 for many more years.
This did not hamper me to mention all my sorrow at the above mentioned dinner to my tax consultant, Mister Gerhard Wolff , who succinctly stated: "There is a very simple solution to the problem. Just buy the whole company!" You know the startled answer of my wife already.
Mister Wolff and I handled many interesting businesses over the last two decades, so there was no two ways about it, this thought had to be talked about. Even my wife's opinion soon was, that I could not simply watch such an obviously good product coming to an end like that. So Mister Wolff and I found ourselves in Bruchsal only one week later, talking to Mister Glaser about the sale of the remaining company capital, in a completely empty and deserted production hall.
Experience proves this to be an uneasy situation but more and more we came to the conviction that a company ran out of money, when its future started looking bright.
The product, especially the DG-800, like the production technology, made an excellent impression. It would have been a great shame to leave all this for the scrap yard. Glaser-Dirks plus Elan was the 3rd largest manufacturer of gliders in the world.
Gerhard Wolff, who at that time had no contact to our hobby, also got smitten by the enthusiasm and joined the company as a partner.
So we are building gliders for more than 5 months now and over and over again we ascertain what extraordinary joy this trade brings. This must be the result of mostly all the staff, customers and suppliers being glider pilots themselves and their enthusiasm for our hobby leaves no room for the „ just another day at the office" atmosphere.
Quote my wife again, who in the past, never tried to influence my business activities. By now she accompanied me to Bruchsal several times, took part in negotiations for future sailplane developments and after the last visit stated: "When you discuss this subject next time, I would like to be there again!" Well, what was it, she had said back in May..........?
.....and in the meantime she even became a partial owner of the company!
- friedel weber, written in October 1996 -
The very first article of this Website
The Owners of the Company Today
2006 – How did things go for us?
The year is drawing to a close, we have enjoyed the very pleasant Company Christmas celebrations, and my wife and I are back at home in Bielefeld.
DG Flugzeugbau has become ten years old. Shortly after re-establishing the company, I celebrated by 50th birthday. And now? Have we learnt how to make gliders in the past ten long years, and will we still be there in the future?
While the Christmas tree is being decorated next door (nice thought, that this article will probably remain on the Internet for a while and you may end up reading it in mid summer at temperatures of 30 degrees!), I just feel like “taking stock” a little, and this is what I see:In the past 10 years, DG Flugzeugbau has continually expanded. The "DG brand" - and since 2003, also the "LS brand" - have gone really well, and our company has gained a good reputation among glider pilots.Six years ago, we moved into our new premises where we are now able to work under optimum conditions. Our number of staff has risen steadily from the original 16 to the now 70 to 90 – depending on how you count. (Do you count our 14 apprentices as full, half or third members of staff? How do you count freelance people working exclusively for us? As part-time staff or as temps, and so on.) All in all, quite a rapid development in an otherwise shrinking market.
How nice!
Really?
I don’t think many of you can imagine how incredibly difficult the last 10 years have been. How unbelievably expensive it is to re-establish a heavily damaged brand on the market. How much we have invested in our numerous new designs before we were in a position to offer products such as the DG-1000T, the DG-808C and soon the LS10. There really have been moments – 2002 and 2003 in particular spring to mind – when I was asking myself in “black desperation” what I am doing here and why I am putting nearly everything I have earned in my life into aircraft manufacture.
Today, I can say all these things. At the time, I didn’t because it wouldn’t have helped. However, if, after 8 years of negative results, you have managed to generate a surplus two years in a row – well, then your concept must finally have started to work!
In brief:
Your aircraft manufacturer has had a very successful 2006,following on from the small surplus in 2005.
But let me define what I actually mean by a „a very successful year”:
It’s not an operating result based on the "Shareholder Value Theory” as defined by Josef Ackermann of Deutsche Bank. Our "shareholders" – my wife and I – are quite happy when we break even, provided we have enough left for the rent of the premises, interest, and a small salary for the managing director. We can live with that, and that we have achieved.
The consequences are clear:
To stop our shareholders from getting overexcited we decided just before Christmas to increase our costs in 2007:
In the media, there is talk of "scope for wage increases", "salaries needing to catch up", etc. Our members of staff have had to make do largely without wage increases in the past few years and even had bonus payments scrapped. (We simply didn’t have the means to pay them.)
However, now it’s their turn first. We don’t know whether there is "scope for wage increases" in the economy as a whole, but we will apply it anyway. We will not only compensate our people for the VAT increase, we’ll put a little extra on top.
My wife, Holger Back and I feel we can justify this.
And the future?:
Our customers are behind us, as the lead time is “too high” at the moment, which means we do lose some orders, especially for the DG-1000 and the LS10, because customers would dearly like to own one of our gliders, but don’t want to wait so long. At least this order backlog does provide us with a certain safety cushion.
The service and spare parts business is growing in double figures. Our customers are increasingly beginning to appreciate the advantage of having their aircraft maintained by the manufacturer.
Our products are currently "leading the field", meaning we believe that there aren’t any better gliders around, and that even we ourselves could not build better ones.
Under Holger’s leadership, our staff has become a closely knit team, which is the reason why, last summer, he was promoted to a position equal to mine and is now also a managing director. It is a joy to watch our people work, and especially our apprentices stick firmly together and help each other out.
At the same time, we are currently trying (successfully) to get a second foot in the door, outside gliding (but still within aviation). After all, our customers can only benefit if DG becomes even more crisis resistant. The beginnings in 2006 were very successful and we expect this to continue.
It is hard to believe: We have obviously made it!
(The title of world champion, however, eluded Holger, despite my “official order”.
But he still is German champion in the 18 m class! )
I wish you all a successful New Year! And now Christmas. For me, the operating result, and with it the relief, are the best Christmas present by far, as you probably can imagine.
... and next year, we will be better still!
Promised!
24.12.2006 - friedel weber -
DG holds its own also in these difficult times
Yes, we can!
We are frequently asked how our business is doing, especially in light of all the bad news from other areas.
In summer 2009 our honest and simple answer right now is: "So far, still quite good." In spring 2010 we say: "Still okay and stable!"
New orders for gliders have of course declined, however so far this has not influenced our airplane production. Earlier we had a very large order book, which translated into lengthy time from order to delivery. So now we are in a better and more balanced situation, with a more reasonable length of time from order to delivery.
DG has not yet announced any work force layoffs, neither are there any planned. Our employees know this and are of course very pleased.
Regarding Interest Rates we are even on the up side of the economic crisis. DG is almost exclusively financed by shareholder loans from my wife and me. So in this area we are independent of banks etc. Interest payments, for our various businesses, are now as low as ever before. At least something to be happy about.
The general economic development came as no surprise to us. The worldwide decline in number of the pilots was known long before the current economic downturn started. So over the last 5 years we have developed 4 more business legs to make our company less sensitive to a crisis of any sort.
- The service and maintenance part of our business has developed in a very pleasing way. We are now also servicing and maintaining many gliders from other manufacturers. This is especially true regarding service of motors and their installations for SSG and SLG gliders. Looking to the number of people working in our operations, or our overall sales in this area, we have probably in the meantime become the largest gliding repair shop in Germany ( - and that automatically means "world wide", too!
).
Thanks to the flexibility of our work force we have benefitted by the high volume of service orders, since we quickly can move people from the production side to the service side (and of course back again) of our operations. This is of course also good for our customers who can count on getting their gliders repaired or fixed within a very reasonable time frame.
Never before so many trailers stood in front of the factory. This already becomes somewhat critical because pilots like to start into the new season without any delay. - Our work with maintenance and certification of the UL "Fascination" has developed very well, not least thanks to good personal relations. So also this section has been blessed with quite a gratifying development. And thus we have built experience in servicing other ULs. These customers often fly their planes here, and like the ability to just roll them in into our factory.
- Our spare part business, in particular through the inclusion of the Rolladen-Schneider business, is also expanding strongly. Here, however, significant consulting expenses are necessary, which gives us a lot of work.
In spring 2009 we made a precice cost research and had to find out that we immeditely must install a system like the new "Service Agreement". Now - after a while of some angry comments - this system is well established and is covering the cost of Type-Support by the incoming contracts.
- Our “youngest child” the DG Kunststofftechnik (DG Composite/Plastics Engineering) has also been through a phase of rapid development. Here we build industrial composite parts, using the know-how of more than 35 years of glider engineering. It is hard to believe how many areas one can use composite parts instead of heavier steel structures. In this area we see new opportunities almost daily.
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Above you can see eqipment for a "King Air" ambulance aircraft.
These 4 new business units make up for a, hopefully temporary, drop in our order book for production of gliders.
In spring 2010 we have enough orders for the whole year 2010.
Our new gliders also give us new impulses:
- The LS10 certification has been finished successfully
- The DG-1001M is used for flight testss. The serial production is already running.
- The DG-1001TE is developed with highest urgency after we got
the approval of government monetary support
So as you can see:
DG Flugzeugbau has a secure and successful
future also in these very difficult times.
- friedel weber - summer 2009/spring 2010 -
translation: Lars Lundin - 