What and who is Robem Engineering? What does it mean and how did the name come about?
Lets star with what the deal with the name?
I was on a flight to China for work and happened to be talking to a friend about renaming his company. I felt he was being picky or over analyzing it and explained every company I ever started the name basically came from nonsense. It was my personal felling that it was more important to focus on the products, service and making money than the name or logo on the front of the door. My advice was "Keep it simple, you buy great products from plenty of companies without catchy names".
This advice also rang home a bit for me as I was making parts for some of the Wera and MotoAmerica twins riders. Its started as a conversation over a beer with some of the RBOM team, so to be clear this was and still is just a side gig for me. But requests were increasing and It got to be more than just a few dollars and found myself in the same place my friend was previously, I needed to call it something, anything...
Remembering back to the conversation with Ryan on the flight, I had watched a movie while killing time, "Goodbye Christopher Robin" and laughed a bit in one of the scenes but before when he was headed to boarding school. In the scene he had to say goodbye to his friends in the 100 acre woods and the animals had placed a banner that read "FAIRWEL CRISTOFER ROBEM". That's literally the meaning or origin of the name, call it a homage to children's story or whatever you want. It was just the misspelling of Robin on the sign.
Who is Robem Engineering?
Well my name is Matthew Spicer, I work as an Engineering Manager for an international industrial parts company that specializes in material handling (think forklifts, aerial work platforms), basically equipment you would see in a warehouse or construction site.
Robem is not the first, second or third company I've started or been involved in. As early as 19 I was running albeit poorly a job shop machine shop while in school. It was all financed off some saving and a credit card my mom agreed to allow me access to the credit line...the woman lives dangerously. I couldn't tell how I decided to get into machining; I had a single class in college that really barely touched on it. I just thought it was neat to create something out of metal I guess.
After selling the machine shop I went to work doing contract engineering for various companies and got to work on some neat projects a long the way. I got to travel the world and meet people some that I am still friends with today.
At some point I had a friend who purchased a 2002 R6 and was of the shorter variety like myself. He asked if I could make a lower link for the bike and after showing me what needed modified and what was available in the market, I thought I could do better...or at least tie some design into the functional part. It was a simple part, it worked and didn't look like a piece of bar stock with bearings pressed in, success.
That was pretty much the start of using my experiences in industrial engineering and design for other areas. I've made parts for Motorcycles, Global Time Attack cars, Rally Cars, Drag Cars, Trophy Trucks and anything with a motor. Problem solving is just something I really enjoy, even when it costs me hours of sleep.
Just a not so brief explanation of the history of the name and myself.
-Matt