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Sons of Battery: Community Management between Huge Tasks and Small Smiles

Patrik Schneider, founder of the ebike community Sons of Battery and owner of the brand

What began with some guys having a merry time of it an evening in 2021 has now developed into the largest online meeting place for ebike fans across Europe – Sons of Battery (SoB). You have probably come across the striking logo before. Maybe you even ride around with one yourself. But how does one actually manage such a large community? What everyday challenges does it present? What has become of the goals that the initiators set out with? These and other questions are answered in an exclusive interview with Patrik Schneider, creator of the brand and owner of SoB Media GmbH.

1. From zero to 100,000 in three years
2. The pleasure and the pain of participating
3. Making an impact internally and externally
4. Old broadcasts and new players

1. From zero to 100,000 in three years

Patrik, what exactly is Sons of Battery?

For me, it’s primarily a feeling. A sense of community and belonging. Only secondly do I see it as the largest ebike community in Europe. We fly the flag for ebikes and are equally happy when someone joins us with a push bike. This openness is something we’d like to be seen as having.

When you say the largest community in Europe, what does that mean in terms of numbers?

More than 100,000 people now follow us across Facebook, Discord, Whatsapp and Twitch. They come from all over Europe, although the largest share is clearly from Germany. People can express themselves on the respective channels. That means they get to know each other, arrange to ride together, ask questions, share their own experiences and, ideally, create an atmosphere in which everyone feels comfortable.

Is it true that the idea for the community goes back to an evening with friends?

Ah, not quite. At most, the inspiration for the brand, from which the community later grew. On my LinkedIn profile, I jokingly say: Drunk to your own brand. The short version is: Some corpulent guys have a few beers too many and complain that no T-shirt ever fits really well. Our own 4XL T-shirts would be cool. Definitely with our own logo. At some point, the name Sons of Battery popped into my head. Bang. As a graphic designer, I quickly designed a logo and uploaded it to a free platform. Then, overnight, someone must have discovered it and posted it in some forum. We still don’t know exactly how it happened. In any case, requests for these T-shirts suddenly started coming in. First ten. Then 20. Then 25. At the time, I was still working as an art director at an agency within the VfB Stuttgart football club and knew a few things about brands. So I scraped together the necessary money and secured the brand as well.

And how did a few T-shirts turn into more than 100,000 followers?

Weird, right? It still is for me, too. The thing just developed an insane momentum of its own, which I tried to channel as best as possible. People want to get in touch with me? So I create a website. They want to order clothes? So I set up a shop. They want stickers? I make stickers. A new logo. Hats. Mugs. On and on. It’s still like that today. Most of the designs come from the community. Something involving mountains would be cool again. OK, then I’ll do something with mountains. Basically, I’ve always just reacted.

Anyone who looks at your online shop might assume that there is a larger company behind it. Is that the case?

Never. Far from it. We are talking about a family business in the best sense of the word. My wife and I are the only employees of a limited liability company. Our son sometimes takes out the post. Since our daughter belongs to the Tik Tok generation, she is not shy in front of a camera and sometimes hops into the picture.

So, does that mean your apartment is more like a distribution centre?

Fortunately, not. However, all the stickers and battery foils are already packed in boxes at our place. Not to mention all the mail. After the first year for Sons of Battery, we actually had to move. There was simply no more room to work. And if I look at it realistically, we are heading for the next move.

Logo of the Sons of Battery e-bike community
Sons of Battery logo

2. The pleasure and the pain of participating

But a team of volunteers is helping you, especially with moderating the various Facebook groups, right?

Yes, I’m really proud of this cool group. They’re not just parroting what we say but are great individuals. They’re all very different in character and political views. We often clash with each other and have our internal squabbles. That makes the search for consensus all the more exciting. I want to work with people who think for themselves. Who also make mistakes. And afterwards you say, ok, I was wrong or right. But everything in a constructive and respectful way, so that in the end we can look each other honestly in the eye.

Your team not only engages in this kind of discussion with the community but is also often challenged on the content. Where do you get the necessary expertise for this?

I only comment on things that I am absolutely sure about. Two or three of us run a shop ourselves and get our knowledge from our daily work. But we also make mistakes and have our idiosyncrasies. For example, one of our moderators unconditionally swears by wax for maintaining the chain. We then catch him together and make it clear to him that, as with many other things, there is more to this than just black and white. Otherwise, we tend to just let the discussions run their course and only intervene if it becomes political, unobjective or otherwise dicey.

How can I join you if I want to?

If you ride an ebike and love your battery, you already belong to the Sons of Battery. There are no membership fees or anything like that. You can actively support us, get a sticker or a shirt from us and show yourself off. In return, you get the feeling of a community. You meet other people with the logo, you greet each other or start a little chat. In addition, there is added value behind the products in the form of discounts when shopping at certain online shops. Even a few hotels in Austria now cooperate with us and give you awesome discounts when you identify yourself as a supporter of SoB.

And if I prefer to ride my ebike on my own, without a community and discounts?

That’s just as cool. Just have fun, get on your ebike and show people that this is not something you can only do from a certain age or with health problems.

Despite, or perhaps because of, your size, there are also ebike riders who don’t have the Sons of Battery on their hitlist, to say the least. How do you deal with that?

I don’t. As long as I can look in the mirror and feel good about myself, it doesn’t bother me. I don’t sell the stickers at an exorbitant price. We try to create as much added value as possible with our moderations, partnerships and events. Yes, some would like it to be completely free. But I run a family business, and I stand by it. Others may not like the netiquette on our forums. Sometimes these are people we have banned from our site. There were always good reasons for that. But I don’t take them into the public. If someone still talks shit about us, then in this day and age it’s just part of the job.

After five years, do you still enjoy this side of the job?

Nah. Oops, that was a quick answer. That’s a little alarming to me right now. I’ve never been asked that before. Take Facebook as an example. I no longer spend any private time there. The way people interact with each other there is definitely too toxic, too rude for my taste. I only take care of our community there, and I enjoy that. Seeing what cool rides people have, exchanging ideas or showing off their bikes. Just being proud of something without someone else putting it down. I think it’s nice when people find each other in this small cosmos and respect each other. Outside of our groups, I miss that now.

Banner batteries for ebikes

3. Making an impact internally and externally

Does such an exchange actually need to take place, because the ebike still requires a lot of explanation and raises many questions?

Yes and no. Those who are more familiar with the subject are less likely to have questions. Others, on the other hand, are surprised that they are still supposed to pedal on an ebike themselves. Between these two extremes, there are countless other gradations. Even today, this still requires some explanation.

In addition to staying in touch with the community, you are always seeking dialogue with the bicycle industry itself, addressing issues that you feel are important to a large proportion of ebike riders. Has anything worth mentioning come out of this yet?

In the first two years of the Sons of Battery, we tackled the issue of the maximum permissible system weight. At the time, I myself weighed around 140 kilograms. Today, I’ve got it down to 115 kilograms. That’s a body weight that doesn’t allow you to ride just any ebike. And for a long time, many manufacturers didn’t provide this crucial information. I remember our early days, when we had around 9,000 followers. A survey of them showed that 60 per cent of people struggle with being overweight and are far from the 90 or 80 kilograms that the industry likes to assume. The information was also not found in tests by bicycle magazines. So, for example, I contacted the German magazine E-MTB News and told the editor-in-chief how important the figure is for many people. At the Eurobike, I spoke to every manufacturer we had contacts with and gave them the same lecture. Now, the system weight is mentioned much more often. And some of the decisions made by bicycle manufacturers are based on surveys of our community. Of course, I’m extremely pleased about that because it makes me feel like I’m giving something back to the community.

Speaking of weight, you yourself are very open about your body weight and cite it as one of the factors that brought you to ebiking. Can you relate to a term like body positivity?

No, not really. I take a much more sober view of it. When my doctor told me I had diabetes, I was relieved. Before that, it was always just a hunch. More than 25 years with a lot of flab around the hips doesn’t come without consequences. Now I know the name, now I have an opponent to fight against. Apart from that, I’m happy when someone posts about losing weight through ebiking. Then I post back, give the person my respect and try to find out how they did it. Hopefully others will come across the post later and, in the best case, get quite specific instructions on what to do. For me, this again symbolises the added value of SoB.

Some women probably count the fact that there are Sisters of Battery in addition to the Sons of Battery as added value. Even though the reason for founding the group is a sad one.

Exactly, basically we are talking about an indictment of us men. The trigger was sexist comments from male followers on questions and pictures that women had posted on our site. It went as far as obscene, hurtful and abusive personal messages. At some point, we reached a point where we wanted to set up a safe space for women where they could address any topic without having to fear stupid comments and worse from men.

How did you organise that?

The Sisters of Battery is set up as a private group. With the exception of me, only women are allowed to join. Three of our girls take care of the moderation. The rest runs by itself. If I take a quick look at it every two or three months, I can see that it’s running perfectly, and I log out again.

Have the other groups become a purely male domain?

Fortunately, not at all. There were actually prophecies of doom beforehand, along the lines of: You’re taking the women away from us now and all that. Quite the opposite. Since then, we’ve had more women registering in the main group than before. That’s partly because they know that we pay close attention to such aspects during moderation. And on the other hand, because they can switch over to the Sisters of Battery at any time when they expect the stupidity of us men on certain topics. I would have liked it to be different. But even in 2025, we as a society are apparently not yet ready for such a form of coexistence. And before I lose the women at Sons of Battery completely, I’d rather create this safe space for them.

Why didn’t the Sisters of Battery become the Daughters of Battery? It might have worked better with the Sons.

There is a very simple reason for this. All the girls who already had SoB merch shouldn’t suddenly have to buy DoB merch to be able to identify with the brand. From our point of view, Sisters was linguistically close enough and had the advantage that the abbreviation is also SoB.

Patrik Schneider, founder of the ebike community Sons of Battery and owner of the brand
In 2025, Patrik Schneider hopes to be able to swap his desk for his ebike more often and spend more time on the trails.

4. Old broadcasts and new players

With the name Sons of Battery and other details, you deliberately took inspiration from the American broadcast Sons of Anarchy. This, in turn, is full of references to the Hells Angels and similar rocker clubs. Has anyone ever objected to this?

Yes, actually I remember a message that someone wrote to me in the early years. In it, I was asked if I knew who I was mocking. To be honest, I didn’t really take it seriously back then. Of course, I play the card deliberately and there is a certain homage in the name. But that’s meant to be funny at best. If someone stumbles over the wording and smiles, at a time when a war is raging in Europe and Donald Trump is thinking about whether he should attack Greenland, then I have achieved everything.

Let’s stay with the name for a moment. Do the Sons of Battery have an idea of the ultimate ebike battery and if so, what does it look like?

Honestly, in my opinion, 625 watt hours is ultimately enough. Full stop. Capacity and weight are in a great ratio. You can dimension it quite differently in terms of construction. Do we really always need more? Asks the guy who rides a 750 battery himself. Oops. But even for me, 625 watt hours would be more than enough. I don’t ride 500 kilometres in one go. So I’m more in favour of smaller cells. This gives bicycle manufacturers much more freedom in their search for a great geometry. I don’t need faster, higher, further. Neither for the battery nor for the motor. 150 Newton metres is of no use to me. After all, I don’t want to ride a moped.

Do you have any preferences for certain brands or drive systems in your team?

We have a mixed bag. If you’ve been riding for a while and realise that the bike fits perfectly, you probably don’t care about the brand in the end. Two of the team swear by Specialized. I’m currently riding an Orbea Wild and will be switching to a Waldbike soon. But we’re not completely committed.

How do you feel about the arrival of DJI on the bicycle market?

Sick. Sorry, I don’t have any better expression. Innovative. Underdog. Nobody saw it coming. I absolutely celebrate it. Finally, someone is giving the old guard a good shake-up. Hopefully, other drive manufacturers won’t just focus on the Newton metres when they follow suit. Simply turning up the throttle doesn’t take much. The innovative thing about DJI’s system is more the details like the sensors. Or come up with your own cool stuff. A heart rate monitor integrated into the handle. Bosch could finally equip the motor with an Ant+ interface so that people can use Garmin properly.

It sounds like your community won’t run out of things to discuss until 2025. Apart from that, is there anything that people can look forward to in the new year?

More events would be great. At the same time, the shop is taking up more and more of my time. So it’s a difficult balancing act again. In general, I hope 2025 will be a good year for ebikes. Maybe I’ll get on my bike more often again, preferably together with the community. And then there’s the new partnership with you, Ebike24. I’m really looking forward to that too.

We feel the same way. We found the beginning very entertaining. Thanks for the conversation, Patrik.

Pictures: SoB Media GmbH; Bosch eBike Systems

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