CEO for Babboe's parent company believes there was no malicious intent in their actions

Tjeerd Jegen, the CEO of Accell, the parent company of Babboe, believes that although the quality system of the plagued bicycle brand did not function well, there was no malicious intent in the actions. Jegen said this in an interview with Het Financieele Dagblad. Babboe was mired in controversy earlier this year because various cargo bike models had been proven to be unsafe. A criminal investigation is ongoing into the issues.

"I cannot say anything about the criminal investigation," Jegen told the newspaper. "We have started a fact-finding investigation into what went wrong. This investigation is not concluded."

Jegen, therefore, said that he could not give any hard conclusions. "But what I have seen thus far is a company that thought customer satisfaction was so important that every customer was helped as quickly as possible. The customer had to be able to cycle again; that was the goal."

According to the Accell CEO, who used to be the CEO of the shopping chain HEMA, the problem was that this did not lead to a deeper analysis of Babboe's issues. "This does happen at a normally functioning quality system."

RTL Nieuws released recordings a while ago in which supposed Babboe employees were hiding broken bicycle frames in delivery vans. However, Jegen did not want to draw any conclusions based on this and thinks that the ongoing investigation should provide the answers. According to him, nowadays, it is easy to put things in a "certain light" with recordings that you may not explain properly.

The problems at Babboe have cost Accell a lot of money. Earlier this year, the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA) obligated the brand to recall many cargo bikes and banned Babboe from selling any more bikes.

Jegen told the paper that the costs for inspecting, repairing, and replacing the cargo bikes are calculated to be around 50 million euros.

The recall has not been completed yet. Jegen claimed that Babboe has picked up around 7,500 bicycles from customers. The company has inspected around 2,750 bikes. Almost 800 people have been given a replacement model, the CEO told the FD.

Accell is also experiencing a difficult period due to the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic on the bicycle market. The manufacturer, which also owns bicycle brands like Batavus and Sparta, has a debt of over a billion euros. Jegen is currently negotiating with lenders about debt restructuring.