Hello I'm Aneka from Made to Sew this video is part 2 in a series of videos that i made at
the Bernina headquarters in Switzerland 18 months ago in this video i interview the owner Mr Ueltschi
i hope you enjoy the conversation we have and the things that he shares about the Bernina company
so i'll introduce us first shall i so i'm Aneka and this is Mr Ueltschi can i please check I'm
saying that correctly so the first thing when i did my research about Bernina that i thought was
amazing is the fact that you're a family-run business and you've been going since 1893.
right correct so how did it all start can you tell me a little bit about that
you're staying at the Hotel Feldbach right i am yes that's where my great-grandfather started
and he invented that year 1893 the first hemstitch sewing machine and then the first 40 years of our
history you know we didn't use the name Bernina because he was in the industrial sewing machine
business and then uh you know they made embroidery machines industrial embroidery
machines and then in 1930 my grandfather Fritz he realised the business is kind of dying so he
looked at the Swiss market and they were importing sewing machines household sewing machine and he said
why don't we produce one and so he said okay and he worked together with some engineers
and him and he decided that's the business we want to be in but then he said we need the
brand name because now in the consumer business you need a brand name in the industrial business
he they used his own name Gegauf so he went uh to San Moritz with my grandmother in 1931 and
saw this beautiful Bernina mountains okay that's it easily pronounced in all the languages and
uh already then he was a clever not just a good engineer but a clever marketing man and he said
a name which is easily pronounced because i will
export this machine because the Swiss market is too small so clever
and then after that and after that obviously you know here you see the first Bernina right
there a straight stitch machine uh made out of steel probably heavier than our 880 today
and uh from then on uh
his philosophy always was and it still is ease of use quality and longevity yeah
yeah so that was in my next question really was about when i think of bernina the one word that
comes to mind is quality so i have students that bring lots of different machines to my classes and
you can always tell when there's a video what kind of machine do you ever usually bring they'll be
portable machines so they might bring a Janome they might bring a Brother a variety of different
prices Singer yeah a variety of different price points depending on the customer but i
would say no matter how old the Bernina is you can still tell there's a Bernina in the room because
it's quiet you know it sort of purrs along rather than this sort of trying to eat through fabric
that some machines can sound like nowadays um so really how do you keep on top of your
your quality obviously you've got your manufacturing unit here as well as in Thailand
nowadays right what i believe in a mechanical concept Bernina is far better than everybody else
in the electronic concept today you know if you use just any technology it's common knowledge
but the mechanical uh R & D you know Bernina is very unique and you know the feeding system
the hook system you know when you touch it that's where we believe we are different and better
and uh so that's whether it's made here or in Thailand it's the same thing you know we have
one philosophy we train our people in thailand you know we're 27 years we've been now in Thailand or
28. the start was uh very small we just produced parts then we started with a mechanical machine
as an assembly you know we still have the 10 weight which is basically the machine we started
27 years ago and so you know we have one philosophy whether it's there or here
you know one quality and if you ask people they wouldn't know the difference between
a 790 which is produced in Thailand or an 880 which is being produced here so that's fantastic
but every day is a fight to keep this quality yes as
some of our ladies know right well looking through you know the factory at the amount
of testing that goes into the machines it's fantastic i need a thousand parts in there
and all the parts you know the suppliers have to be the right ones i mean it's a very complex
business but i think the other thing that i really noticed was that all of your team is so passionate
that they really want to produce the best thing and they're so passionate about what they're doing
that they're going to put 110% into doing it i think you know that's also maybe an advantage
of being a family business you know i think uh you know they work for some you know something
yeah and uh you know a common a common goal you know it's not a huge huge company and uh
i think you know we treat the people well you know we communicate and um you know so i think
it helps yeah it's brilliant so then my next question is about the fact that Bernina were
always at the sort of forefront of sewing machine developments you know you created the hem stitch
machine obviously your original machine was world renowned it was the first one of its kind and
then throughout the you know the years you've done lots of things that you've had patents on
and being the first machine at this and that so how do you continue to develop that technology
and stay ahead of the game with that but first i think the most important thing in R &D or in
innovation is be curious what's going on in the world not just in the sewing machine world but
our engineers you know they always have to look what's new what technology makes sense with Bernina
we listen a lot to our consumers uh you know dealers consumers they give us input our own gurus
like you also and i think we work very close to with the sewing world the sewing network
and then i mean the biggest challenge today is there is so much available technology-wise
what makes sense you know does it make sense you know to use super super computers
which nobody can use you know you have to buy a booklet first and to you know to get to know
what's going on uh and so i i think this is the challenge but uh today
i think our people as you said they're very passionate and so they we are an ambition company
i do a lot of sports i like to win so and and everybody likes to win uh some more than others
but that's how it is in organisation but uh i think we we try and we want to be the best yeah
and don't you do well at doing that and did you win last weekend when you're skiing
i i i won uh in my category yes yes oh fantastic that's good so i've got a few questions from my
YouTube and instagram followers the first one is from Rachel on my youtube channel and her question
is my is mechanical versus computerised how are they different and do the computerised machines
last 30 plus years the mechanical parts sure will the chips as you all know in
a iphone uh lasts maybe five years and you have to replace it Bernina obviously lasts more than
10 years we have not had the experience of 30 years of computerised machines so we don't know
but the problem is not only lasting the problem is having replacement parts available in these
computer chips so but uh you know i don't know but uh and technology changes and that's the thing
the technology is such a quick thing to improve and hopefully people will not keep
the machine 30 years anymore because today i mean they still will sew in 30 years but
in five years from now you have so many more advantages of of having a new new sewing computer
than you have today so you should take advantage of this like in any high-tech product yes no i
agree so what are the other questions let's have a look this lady has said this is on my instagram
KPE Moors i love my Bernina i would love to know if Bernina have a large design team or if it only
takes a small number of designers to develop the idea for a new machine given the same
base the basic shape remains the same and do you i'm sure competition is hot so do you keep designs
completely under wraps until launch you mean when she talks about the outer design yes i think what
she's saying yes you've got if you've got a large design team or a small number of designers because
the outside generally stays the same so how many sort of designers do you have well actually
we outsource design okay yes so it's just the inside of the machine yes and because i think
you know design is something very subjectively and uh so we use the best designers in what we think
we i think we have been using this designer for quite some time Bernina has a special designer team
outsourced and the Bernette also and so i i think it's much better versus having
an inside yeah because again they work with so many other products and they know what's cool and
hot and so i think yeah and she's also said do you have any manufacturing secrets like
coca-cola has a secret recipe that you can't ever share yes everything yep
we don't have secrets because you can open the machine and you you can see it but i'm i'm not
afraid of being copied because to copy Bernina is very difficult it's a big challenge and probably
competition wouldn't take on this challenge because uh it's it's it's it's it's you know
too too precise and you need a lot of uh specialized um suppliers and so like our hook
our system you know nobody would even dare to to to copy us in a hook system because it took us
many years also to get to where we are and then my question was what is your
favorite product the company has ever created ever created you know
the old A30 was the most popular which was produced in from 1970 to 1980
but i mentioned the 790 i really like today i also like our long arm machines which is quite
happy you seen it yes i have yes it's fantastic and which we produce here it's it's uh i like
the design i like the technology ease of use so and we're working on some some two great
new products which i'm sure will be a big hit so it's very it's very very very difficult to say
yes yeah the company's been going for such a long time so you've got a number of products
um and that's it really so thank you so much for having me thanks for watching i really hope you
enjoyed this video please let me know what you think in the comments below and if you haven't
seen part 1 which is the tour of the Bernina factory do click here thanks and see you soon