Founder and Chairman of Amigo Mobility International
Welcome to “7 Questions with A Couple,” a monthly series that includes quick conversations with a variety of experts and influencers from throughout the MS community. We are grateful that Al Thieme took the time to have a great conversation with us this month. Al is the Founder and Chairman of Amigo Mobility International – a major manufacturing company that focuses on improving people’s lives through mobility. This includes everything from a simple cane or walker to a mobility scooter to power wheelchair. He developed the first scooter to help a family member living with Multiple Sclerosis, and he hasn’t stopped helping people to move forward since. On a personal side note: Al first connected with us back in 2005 to congratulate us on our marriage after he saw one of our wedding photos in a magazine story that Dan wrote. He noticed from the photo that I was at the altar with Dan as I sat in my Amigo scooter 😉
1. What’s your elevator speech for what led you to develop the first Amigo back in 1968?
When one of my family members, Marie, began to lose her mobility due to Multiple Sclerosis in 1968, there were limited personal mobility devices available. At the time, I was working as a plumbing and heating contractor in Bridgeport, Michigan, and pushing her in a wheelchair. I knew there must be a better way. While traveling in Mexico and using a wheelchair, I promised to find a better way for her. When I got home, I worked on the first Amigo in my garage, and it was named the Amigo for being the best friend of the first person who used it, and I thought of the idea for it in Mexico. Amigo is Spanish for friend.
2. The Amigo website indicates the company has remained focused on staying true to its original mission, “Improving Lives Through Mobility.” Why is this commitment so important for you as company’s chairman and founder?
Improving Lives through Mobility® is the basis for everything we do, our biggest inspiration are the customers we can help provide independence and mobility to. Over the last 53 years, we have expanded to helping people shop independently in grocery stores with our motorized shopping carts, making workers jobs easier by having Amigo material handling carts to move people and other markets.
3. For as much as an Amigo improves the lives of people who use them, how have you seen an Amigo also improve the lives of caregivers?
A family member, friend or caregiver wants the people they care for to have as much independence as they can. They can move at their own pace instead of relying on someone pushing when, their caregiver can walk beside them instead of behind them pushing.
4. We often hear from people who are newly diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis that one of their biggest fears is they’ll, “end up in a wheelchair.” As a leader in the mobility industry, how would you respond to that to alleviate their fears?
Our Amigo customers often say that “ending up in a wheelchair” gave them more independence than they knew was possible after their diagnosis. Shirlee, an Amigo customer since 1989 from Washington said, “I have MS and walking longer distances got harder and harder. That first day out on my Amigo was like getting out of jail.”
The Amigo design is functional and therapeutic. We want our customers to be able to venture out, go to work, travel, take care of their family and more.
5. Amigo was founded in Bridgeport, Michigan, and it has expanded its operations to offer motorized carts for individuals as well as for businesses and industries worldwide. What has kept you grounded in the Great Lakes State?
I was born and raised in Bridgeport, Michigan, and grew up with strong manufacturing workforce there is in Michigan. In the 1980s we opened Amigo West, a plant in New Mexico, and there came a time when we had to shut down one of the locations, we chose to keep our Michigan location, and I moved back from New Mexico to Michigan. The suppliers in the Midwest and the people here were the best option to support Amigo’s future growth in manufacturing and assembly.
6. Among its many accomplishments, Amigo Mobility International received the Michigan Manufacturers Association’s 2019 MFG Lifetime Achievement Award. What are your proudest moments as Chairman and Founder?
My proudest moments are when I see the high level of dedicated people at our company, and how we are continually finding better ways to improve lives through mobility.
7. Thinking back to the countless evenings you spent working in your garage developing the first Amigo, could you ever have envisioned this is where you’d be with it over five decades later?
Yes, I occasionally told people how big this mobility concept could be, very few felt the same way.
I can’t say I ever took time to “digest” where we would be, we set projections and took one year at a time. A few years ago, we projected numbers for 2028, we are on track for that.