How the Light Got into the Tomato Can: 25 Years of SUPERNOVA

"Mountain biking during the winter months in Central Europe is a tough business. It's cold, wet, and windy. Ground conditions are often unpredictable, and daylight hours are limited. In the late nineties, I trained hard and wanted to ride about 20,000 km a year. Without lights, you couldn't do that in winter," said Marcus as he explained how he came up with the idea of developing bicycle lighting.  

As a budding racer, he barely had time after school to climb the mountains in the Black Forest before nightfall. In addition, he was not impressed by the brightness of the lights available at the time. He needed a bike light that would bring him home safely in the dark, even on the most technical trails. And such a light might even give him the decisive edge in the first European 24-hour races. 

"Before races, we often had pasta with tomato sauce," said Marcus. "When the tomato paste cans started piling up, I thought of installing a halogen spotlight in one of them." A motorbike battery served as a power source. Soon, the first Supernova front light was born, and Marcus completed his first night ride with it. 

His cycling colleagues quickly recognized the training advantage, and so Marcus had to equip his friends with tomato can lights too. Since his spaghetti consumption couldn't keep up with the increasing demand, Marcus fashioned a prototype front light from aluminum on the school's lathe. It was soon to go into serial production.  

Shortly afterward, Marcus started producing front lights in his parents' garage and shipping them to a growing group of enthusiastic night riders. His passion for cycling drove him on and led him to register his business in 1997 - which then became SUPERNOVA DESIGN LTD. 

Today's company name contains the word "design" because Marcus studied industrial design after graduating from high school. In those days, he viewed bicycle lighting more as a hobby. However, he was always an entrepreneur at heart. Very quickly, Marcus realized that many of his studies could be applied to his hobby: "At university, you learn much more if you are already active as an entrepreneur. Most of his fellow students were only interested in the creative part of the program while Marcus also recognized the importance of technology and management. 

At a 24-hour race in Munich in 2003, Marcus met the cyclist and electronics engineer Michael Fitzek, who was mainly working for the aerospace industry at the time. Their friendship quickly developed into an important partnership for Supernova. Today, Michael is an integral part of the Supernova development team. 

The company gradually gained momentum. In 2007, things suddenly sped up. Marcus recalls: "At the Cape Epic race in South Africa, I met a product manager of one of the biggest players in the bicycle industrie who, a few weeks later, wanted to know if we could produce dynamo lights. He said, 'But we need about 5000 a year. Can you supply that?' At that time, we were producing only about 500 lamps a year. So it was a huge moment for us. I said with a poker face, 'Yeah, sure. No problem!'"  

The excitement of delivering the order on time is still fresh in his mind. The industry became more and more aware of his company. SUPERNOVA was suddenly playing in a completely different league. From that moment on, the company grew by an impressive 50% per year over the next ten years.

The Airstream was followed in 2014 by the M99, another milestone in the company's history. SUPERNOVA wanted to develop an LED matrix front light with a high beam. Marcus remembers: "A lighting engineer from the car industry told me at the time that it was physically impossible to develop such a headlight in this size."   

It was the first front light with a high beam and daytime running light. Many people don't know that this front light had already been in development for a long time. All that was missing was the official road certification.  

Marcus said: “First up, developing the complex reflector was time-consuming. And then, the official German certification became a problem. After three years of development and big investments, our financial reserves were almost exhausted.  

When we finally got the certification, we were totally relieved! No other front light could match its light power at that time and still is.”  

SUPERNOVA is firmly rooted in cycling and can reflect on a successful racing history. In the 1990s, it was mainly 24h MTB races, whereas today, it is hard to imagine ultracycling and bikepacking without SUPERNOVA lights. Especially in recent years, their use has increased dramatically because of collaboration with some of the most famous riders on the scene. One of the first was Kristof Allegaert, who won three Transcontinental Races with the E3 dynamo light between 2013 and 2016. 

In 2019, Fiona Kolbinger won this prestigious "unsupported" race with an E3 Triple 2, the most powerful dynamo front light SUPERNOVA had in its range at the time. The same year, ultra-adventurer Jonas Deichmann also came on board. He circumnavigated the globe in 2020 and 2021 with an M99 MINI PRO B54.  

With Ulrich Bartholmös, Sebastian Breuer, and Sofiane Sehili, more successful ultra-athletes joined the team at ever shorter intervals. In 2022, Christoph Strasser, 6-time RAAM winner, won the Transcontinental Race with the new dynamo light M99 DY PRO on his very first attempt and in the first year of this light's market launch. 

Whether in deserts, mountains, tundra, or taiga, SUPERNOVA lighting has now illuminated almost every remote corner of the earth.