How sporthocker began
The youtube videos on sporthocker are not really all that thrilling: just a guy playing with some trendy plastic stool and then sitting on his bum after thirty seconds of juggling and messing about. Well, each to their own. But this doesn't prevent certain people from posting unkind comments like: ‘I had no idea people could be such idiots’, ‘Haha, what a load of rubbish’, and ‘I've never seen anything this stupid. And I've seen some really stupid things in my time’. When asked about such criticism, Michael cracks open a can of Red Bull, takes a slow fortifying slip and responds: ‘Obviously we had a few negative reactions to start with. But they were from close-minded people who didn't understand what we were trying to do.’
Read ‘Skating: important sub-culture in multicultural Berlin’ on cafebabel.com
In 2006, Michael and his brother Stephan, who were both then studying for masters degrees in industrial design in Kiel (northern Germany), decided to focus their course project on creating a stool capable of resisting any kind of shock. ‘We thought it was a bit strange but kind of cool. We had played all kinds of different sports since we were kids.’ Michael and Stephan got their first skateboards when they were ten. But the two brothers also went snowboarding, surfing, played volleyball and football ; plenty of sports to inspire the technical side of sporthocker. ‘What we'd loved about the sports we played before were the technical aspects. We invented more than twenty tricks for sporthocker in a week. But then we were starting from scratch. This sport can only improve because nobody has any previous experience.’