this wonderful success and we handled that easily. Then it's mainly a thing of planning the cars. Well, we were overloaded, some people didn't get any cars. That was a problem. The infrastructure of the office handled it, some additional people, not a big problem. Everybody was a bit overworked, but then we said afterwards everything will be a bit better. We are going to have more money if we can administer these people. They will give us money because they'll rent cars. And now the service in the firm is much better because we are able to lease an extra 30 cars for those 450 people. So this season is going to be a perfect season for the clients. Much better than the last ones because the firm is so big that it can lease these cars. Last year it couldn't. In the summer last year, they didn't get any cars. We said we're full- not very good service! This summer is much better because we got 450 people in one step, not gradually. So now we could buy or in this case lease cars. Normally you could get the cars, but in the summers we were overloaded. This year for summer it is not the case, we can lease another 20 cars for 10 weeks. DJ: Is there a minimum time that members must remain? MP: No, because of the good experience of the "testing" experiment. The "testers" were through Greenpeace. We did not make the campaign. That was a success because Greenpeace said officially in the public, they said "CarSharing is great, test it. We have a deal with STATTAUTO that you can test it. You just pay when you use the cars. You don't pay a membership fee. You don't pay an entrance fee." So because the media power of Greenpeace is something, we had these 750 people within one month. That was really incredible, we had an txtra office, we·had an extra telephone service firm to handle the calls. That was great. So they tested for 30 days. So like one guy would enter the first day, September 1, 1994, when the campaign began and he could test for 30 days. After that we would write him a letter that if he would like to stay, he would have to pay the entrance fee. If not, he would just call us and send back the Mobile Card and then we wouldn't take the amount from his account. So after that good experience, Carsten and I changed the policy. We said, "Everybody who wants to come in can test it for 30 days. For 30 days, you don't pay an entrance fee. You don't pay a membership fee. If you like the firm, if you like the product: it worked, you got the car, the car was clean, it was ok, people were friendly and so on, then you stay obviously and then you pay the entrance fees. So after the Greenpeace campaign, we changed the policy last month (April 1995). That is very good, I recommend that. DJ: Are some people saying I don't want to test it, I just want to join? MP: It is very new. It is only 30% or 20% of the people who are coming to the information evenings here that say Page 54 RAIN Summer 1996 Volume XV, Number 1 ok I'll test it. Most of them, they have already decided. They say "we've waited 2 years, we now know because we have so many friends that are members that we go for it. We'll stay anyway, so here, you have the fees." DJ: Who runs the informational meetings/evenings? Employees? MP: Yes, employees. Carsten and I did it for the last seven years, but now we have somebody. GB: You started with old cars? How did you manage to jump from old cars to new? MP: It's in my dissertation, let me show you. You should have a copy of this... It is a wonderful book because everything I'm telling you is in here. It's not available in English. Here you have development of members, car, revenues, balance sh;ets and profits. In our first year, 1988, we had only one car and in 1989, we,had 3 cars, 40 members and then it's here in quarters. As first we thought old cars were right. We don't have any money, so we'll buy cheap stuff. It was funny, when I founded the firm, I bought a car. It cost 2,800DM. I bought a computer for 5,000DM then I bought an answering machine. In Germany, answering machines were very expensive and it cost 2,000DM because of the Tele-com monopoly. So I had 7,000DM in information systems and 2,800DM to make the money, which is a crazy relation. Now I don't know, we have 2 million DM in cars and maybe 200,000DM in computers. That is a better relation. Then it was funny... Back then, one time the brakes didn't work, but luckily I was driving the car at the time. That was very bad service. We sold the car at a profit for 4,000DM. ... when the wall came down and all the prices went up all the East Germans wanted to buy wonderful western cars... the prices went crazy and we sold the car, and that saved the firm in fact. We sold all of our used cars because the prices were crazy in those days. The value just doubled. And so that saved STATTAUTO because we had so many losses and the firm was too small to take them. I was giving up because all of my private money went into this stupid STATTAUTO. Anyway, we saved it with the wall coming down, so the communists they saved us, and afterwards we bought only new cars. We then had this argument. We said, "There is a big difference between members and people who are not members." Important because obviously the people who aren't members are the majority. People who still drive private cars... What you want is not the low-budget student, you want the people who have the private cars because they are the guys who produce the emissions. You don't want people who can't buy a car. So therefore, you have to have very good service-- 24 hour service with many stations. STATTAUTO has many stations in Berlin now. We have a very good image. That means "it works", first of all. It is not a stupid idea, it works, that's the point. And we did that. That is the very good work of my brother that he pushed the point that STATTAUTO works. It's expensive, but it works.
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