Management
Dr. Friedrich Böbel
Managing partner
Dr. Friedrich Böbel is responsible in the Torqeedo management team for Innovation and Development, Purchasing, Production, Supply Chain Management and Finances.
During the three years before the company was founded in 2005, he was Chief Operations Officer at Gardena AG, responsible for Production, Logistics, Purchasing, Research and Development, IT, Organization, and business with OEM customers.
His understanding of the possibilities today’s cutting edge technology provides when applied to motors, batteries and electronics was a key factor in the foundation of Torqeedo. The products on the market at that time failed to reflect any of the groundbreaking advances that had been made in these areas over the previous 20 years. This was where Dr. Böbel saw an opportunity for revolutionary new boat motors. And revolutionary in this context does not mean just improving the performance characteristics of the product by a few percentage points, but boosting them by several factors.
Prior to joining Gardena, Dr. Böbel spent the years 1999 to 2002 at dairy company Alois Müller GmbH & Co KG as manager of the Müller Group with overall responsibility for Production and Technology, Supply Chain, Quality, Research and Development. He also spent a few years in charge of the Müller Group’s business in the UK as well as the group’s plastics business (optipack).
From 1995 to 1999 he worked for Infineon Technologies AG. He embarked on his career as Head of Production in an IBM-Siemens joint venture in Essonnes-Corbeille, France and rose to Vice President of Production with responsibility for strategic production management for four semi-conductor production facilities.
He gained his first professional experience from 1990 to 1995 at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits as Group Leader in the areas semiconductor manufacturing electronics and synergetic computers.
Dr. Friedrich Böbel is a graduate physicist and holds a doctorate in electro-technology. He studied at Würzburg and Erlangen Universities in Germany, the State University of New York (Master of Science, 1988) and Todai University in Tokyo, Japan.
Dr. Christoph Ballin
Managing partner
Dr. Christoph Ballin is responsible in Torqeedo’s management team for Marketing and Sales as well as for running the company’s US subsidiary.
Before switching to Torqeedo, Dr. Ballin also worked for Gardena. Initially, he managed a number of projects at Gardena for the business consultancy McKinsey & Company. Then he changed sides and first became Head of International Key Account Management at Gardena. Subsequently, he worked as Managing Director for Gardena’s business in Germany, the company’s biggest sales market.
It was Dr. Ballin’s electric drive that drew the two managers’ attention to the market for electric motors. Dr. Böbel noticed the outdated design of the drive, and this led to a technical analysis and an analysis of the market opportunities. These studies resulted in the foundation of Torqeedo.
From 1996 to 2003, prior to his work at Gardena, Dr. Ballin worked for business consultants McKinsey & Company in Hamburg. The focus of his consultancy work was on sales and marketing in the international consumer goods industry and in trading. He belonged to the European Consumer Goods Practice as well as the Recruiting Core Group at McKinsey.
Dr. Ballin was educated in commerce. He graduated in Business Studies from Bamberg University, Germany. He achieved his doctorate in Marketing there parallel to his work for McKinsey.