Rotger Stickers: From Idea to Reality

“I have an idea!” This short phrase, which can say a lot, flashes through our minds and then falls flat like a cheese soufflé, because we don’t trust it, because we tell ourselves it already exists. But the most important thing is not to have an idea, it’s to believe in it, to believe in it very strongly, more than others, and then to bring it to life, just like when Apple had the brilliant idea in 2005 to imagine a new design for a smart phone, easy to use and which would offer the whole world new functionalities revolutionizing the use of this everyday object. The iPhone was born. And for that, there’s a word. That word is: conceptualization… Let’s discover a designer who has been making a lot of noise in the small world of cycling in recent months. We are talking about the young company Rotger Stickers, which offers personalized stickers to brighten up your machine or anything else.

“Dad, how are ideas made?” “Well, you see this milk bottle…?” More seriously, for an idea to be born, there must be a strong loving encounter between a desire (female gamete) and a need (male gamete). They will get to know each other, settle down together around a unifying vision and mutual sharing until the day! Understanding their differences to be able to fill them. A need and a desire can live their whole lives together without giving birth to an idea. An idea is born from a perfect osmosis between a need and a desire.

For many years, Fred Rotger has been imagining how to personalize everyone’s bike and accessories.

When I met Frédéric Rotger, I mainly knew the cyclist. Fred is an emblematic figure of cycling in the Île-de-France region. He has been well established in his sport for over twenty years. Almost everyone knows him. A character full of grimaces, Fred has earned his stripes on the roads of France and Navarre by winning numerous victories as a pure rouleur. Sometimes a puncheur. Sometimes a climber. Sometimes a rouleur. But rarely a sprinter. We can’t say he has all the cunning necessary to win in a ratagas, but on the other hand, his name on the start list is the guarantee of a great show.

On the road or in cyclo-cross, the Val d’Oise rider wins races every year.

But what I had come to discover in this interview was Fred, the creator. The designer who is making a lot of noise right now with his personalized stickers. With a single idea in mind: to serve those who trust him to highlight a very individual singularity in a sticker, to help them engage their preference and with them a privileged, even emotional, link with what makes each of us different… To understand the other. To put oneself in their place. To perceive what they feel. A deep respect for perceptions. Feelings. Beliefs. Desires. Emotions. While being able to dissociate oneself from the other, and to regulate one’s own emotional responses… To produce a very personalized sticker that the “client” will place on their bike frame, on their helmet, on their wheels or even on their GPS bike computer. Qualities that are increasingly rare in this era of ultra-individualism. Ultimately, a very creative design that nevertheless fits in less than 3 cm².

Fred Rotger is generous in effort, as in life.

The birth of an idea… “Great emotion” when Fred explains the beginning of this sticker story to me! His desire and his need announce to him that they are expecting a happy event. Its nickname: idea. Its weight: about 70 nanograms. It’s a shock, his life can change, he doesn’t know how to do it, how to educate it, how to make it grow, how to give it importance in his well-ordered life. So he asks for advice… But the advice given to him is based on ideas already raised, on a vision of the education of their ideas and not necessarily his own. But Fred does not get discouraged. For him, it is already an embryo to protect and make grow.

Starting from an idea, Fred Rotger had to go through several stages before offering his creations to the general public.

And if we were to do creativity tests in the psychology of genius for Fred, and we tried to unravel the mystery of his ability to create, we would have to go back to his early adult years. Indeed, it dates back to his apprenticeship in cooking. Moreover, it was probably his love for cycling that prevented him from becoming a Michelin-starred chef and led him to prefer more industrial cooking so that he could combine a time-consuming activity like high-level cycling into his daily schedule. By talking with him, I discovered a very old existence of this divergent thinking. And it is only now, 25 years later, that this fabulous ability to create and imagine such a varied range of solutions is finally expressed!

How do Leonardo da Vinci, Mozart, Picasso, Einstein, etc. think? And all those who revolutionized their field, in arts, sciences, techniques? Albert Einstein, isn’t he that disheveled scientist, who trained outside the scientific institution, and who sticks his tongue out at authorities? There’s some Einstein in Rotger… or the myth of the solitary creator!

The conceptualization of this famous sticker (finally, here we are), the art of materializing an idea, so that it takes shape, to give it an image, a physical representation. This is ultimately the most delicate moment in the life of an idea… Is my idea capable of facing the wider world? At this level, several options present themselves to Fred: keep it to himself, make it grow, give it to someone else? If he has come this far, it means that his idea is worth living and realizing (without breaking the bank, of course).

“The concept is both fascinating and torturous,” he tells me. The idea will be constantly questioned, “but you must go all the way without looking back, otherwise you will feel a void all your life.” This is the painful experience he learned from this period of his life that could have led him to the kitchens of the capital’s greatest restaurants.

Bike computers, helmets, wheels, shoes, frames… can be personalized with colorful and affordable stickers.

An example to follow

I advise you to choose carefully the ideas you want to see born. Don’t throw yourself headlong into every quest for a concept. It took Fred 25 years to reveal this creativity. And don’t forget: there are no good or bad ideas, only good or bad results. And if you liked this article and you also want to personalize your bike wheels or your GPS, don’t hesitate to contact this brilliant and endearing designer.

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