Rapidly towards electrification

Golf is undoubtedly a science in itself. Anyone who plays golf knows how important even the smallest details are in order to manage just a halfway good stroke. The absolutely perfect stroke never really exists, but the best players are definitely very close to it and can keep up their level of play for several hours. On the one hand, they owe this ability to their talent, but on the other hand, to hard training as well. Technological aids are playing an increasingly larger role in this. A few years ago, the focus was still on video studies of movement sequences, but technological development now allows for much more precise methods of analysis. For example, by using dual force plates like those offered by the company Smart2Move. With these, all movements and forces during a stroke can be measured and displayed, which helps players enormously in optimising their swing.

Dual force plates are used in many areas, for example in physiotherapy. Using them for golf, however, was a revolutionary idea at the time Smart2Move was founded in 2015. Two years earlier, in 2013, the French professional golfer Gregory Lebrat presented it to his Swiss colleague Ronald Groeflin, who was one of the best amateur golfers in the country in the 1990s. However, it was not only about making such plates acceptable for golf, but also about offering them in a portable form in order to always be able to use them regardless of the training location. "It was a crazy idea at the time, but we knew we were bringing an innovative and sensational technology to the golf industry that would immediately help every golfer improve their game," recalls Ronald Groeflin.

With Hertz from the start

When Smart2Move took its first steps as a company in 2015, mobility was already a big topic. But as is so often the case with start-ups, the capital was meant to be used for other things that were far more important at that moment. "Product development, manufacturing and above all marketing of course cost money that we didn't want to put into vehicles as well," says Ronald Groeflin. Since it was an internationally oriented company from the beginning, the acquisition of a local vehicle fleet would only have made limited sense. "Many potential customers could only be visited by plane anyway. Since from the airport we usually continued with a rental car, the idea of also using rental cars for journeys in Switzerland was born." Since Smart2Move wanted to use a vehicle in Switzerland with as little administrative effort as possible, a car subscription was recommended. Hertz was thus not only the perfect partner for international rentals, but with the then still young subscription product Hertz MiniLease, it was also ideally suited for ensuring local mobility.