With its “Greenville” line of eco-friendly (and kid-friendly) equipment, Berliner Seilfabrik is changing the way kids in the Upstate – and worldwide – have fun.
When David Köhler and Lukas Steinke were looking for a city to base Berliner Seilfabrik in North America to market its rope-net playground units, the Upstate was on their list because of the presence of many German companies.
“We knew BMW was here,” said Steinke, CEO of the U.S. subsidiary of the Berlin-based company. “This proved to us that it had logistics capable of supporting a lot of business, and we would be close enough to the eastern coast so we are only six hours behind Germany.”
Steinke and Köhler, who is the CEO of the parent company, decided on Greenville as much for its cosmopolitan downtown, family-friendly small-town feel and international community as for its business environment.
“The parent company wanted us, me and my family, to feel comfortable and to like where we live because they wanted us to stay permanently here.”
“Being Germans, it is not like we have to see Germans every second day, but it feels good to be part of the international community,” Steinke, 37, said, now four years after he, his wife and two children, 5 and 7, are settled in a home in Mauldin.
From that beginning, the United States has become Berliner Seilfabrik’s largest market, challenging the American tradition of outdoor play climbing on fixed, mostly plastic, structures.
High-Profile, High-Climb
The company has prestigious installations in major urban centers such Boston, San Francisco and New York, where a giant climber is being built in Battery Park with views of the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty and the new World Trade Center.
In one of its most ambitious installations, Berliner erected a 30-foot “Neptun XXL” climber in Saratoga Springs, Utah, last year. “It has become so popular, I am told they are building a new road leading to the park and named the park Neptune Park,” said Steinke.
At the time it was only the third model of that size in the world. Berliner since has built one in California and three others abroad.
Greenville has not been left out. The company donated a $50,000 installation of a climber at the playground between the Kroc Center and A.J. Whittenberg Elementary School.
“After they came here, I did the immigration work for them, and they told me they wanted to make a community donation,” said Mayor Knox White, a lawyer with Haynsworth Sinkler Boyd. “Their playground equipment is unique and different than what you see around here.”
The company named its newest line of equipment “Greenville” out of affection for its adopted city and to reflect use of sustainable green materials: bamboo for panels, 85 percent postconsumer recycled aluminum, 70 percent recycled steel and, as the case with all Berliner products, no PVCs.
“Karl (Köhler) and his son David, company owners, live in Berlin, and they come quite often here to this beautiful place. The name was actually their idea.”
Red Dots for Design Excellence
The “Greenville” line received a “red dot award” in a product competition recognized as the most prestigious in the world for excellence in innovation, functionality, durability and environmental “rightness.”
Berliner’s “Cosmo” unit, which is installed at Whittenberg Elementary, received the award in 2008.
All of Berliner’s products are made in Germany and imported. The company’s intent was to put manufacturing in Greenville, but the recession and slow recovery put a hold on those plans.
“It is still on the long-term list of objectives,” Steinke said. “We need to see a proper increase in demand and sales to justify the expense.”
In 1971, Berliner developed the concept of rope net climbers for commercial playgrounds “based on steel-reinforced rope. On the outside, you have yarn and on the inside there are steel wires,” said Steinke.
The innovation grew out of Berliner Seilfabrik’s history dating to 1865 as supplier of steel cables for elevators, such as Otis. After 1971, the company did both for a while; but in the 1990s, in a management buyout, Karl Köhler took the play division into a separate company under the Berliner Seilfabrik name.
Sales Exceed Expectations
The company introduced its rope play units in the United States 18 years ago through an importer. In setting up a subsidiary in Greenville, Berliner “got rid of the middleman and since have been distributing the products ourselves” through 20 independent playground equipment dealers across the country, Steinke said.
While eliminating the middleman allowed Berliner to make its rope units “affordable for every city, every school,” Steinke said, the major challenge is making inroads into the market of traditional U.S. “post and platform,” climbers, a business dominated by much larger companies.
Since Berliner opened its Greenville office with just three employees, including Steinke, the growth of the business “has exceeded our expectations. We have grown each year, significantly last year by plus 70 percent and in the years before at around 50 percent.” Steinke plans to hire a fourth person for back office sales.
In 2012, Berliner installed 200 units in the United States at a price range between $10,000 and $100,000 per unit.
But there are far bigger projects. It has “a client now that is worth $250,000 in play equipment.”
Berliner also supplies rope bridge components for use under the brand names of two of the largest commercial playground companies, Landscape Structures and Playworld Systems.
‘Everything Is Moving and Shaking’
One of Berliner’s strong selling points is that rope-net climbing is more interactive and exciting – and every bit as safe – as climbing or sliding from platform to platform, Steinke said.
He said there is evidence that kids consider “pretty much 95 percent” of playground equipment boring. “Our equipment is the opposite of that, providing more excitement to the users.”
“Rope climbers are very flexible. Everything is moving and shaking. They require certain abilities from the child. They need certain physical and mental development where they are capable of climbing. Usually this happens around the age of 4. We have some structures for younger kids, but the majority of our business is for the age group between 4 and 12.”
Steinke said the company has to convince people “not familiar with the concept” of their safety. “They are concerned about their children maybe falling to the ground, but you cannot. The next level of net catches you.”
He said all of its units are in compliance with U.S. standards. The units, even the high ones at 30 feet, “are very safe. We have never had a serious accident in 42 years.”
Berliner dominants the global market but success “has attracted many copycats,” particularly companies in South Korea and China making, as Steinke sees it, cheaper quality and less technologically sophisticated products.
“We have 20 patents, and this is what basically keeps us ahead of the game,” he said. He added, “The oldest structures we have in use are 35 years old. They are almost indestructible.”
