WINTER 2015, Issue 1

Top tips for setting up and running

a QUALITY bike rental business

1

Understanding your customer

Bike rental falls into several

categories and you can only

start to analyze your

opportunity when you

correctly identify it:

High end - expensive bikes to

discerning customers. You will

need to be located in some

world-class cycling territory,

or a significant attraction. This

is all about great customer

service and great product.

Deliver first

class experiences and they will

2

tell their friends and come

back. You need to know your

bike kit and all about cycling

locally. Think quality.

High volume - lots of 'bums on seats'. Might be beach rental or a trail-centre. This is all about maximum efficiency. Get people on bikes and out the door having fun as efficiently as possible. Again choosing the right kit for the location is key. Think fun.

Touring - you might want to have a fleet and offer tours. Lots of people do this and it's really synergistic. You have a fleet that you use for two purposes - tours & events

3

and simple renting. Hardest category - your bikes must be tour-ready; panniers, racks, even mudguards perhaps. You need access to a workforce to deliver those tours of course!

Family - perhaps in a National Park or holiday area. You need to have the whole range of kids bikes, trailers, and tag-alongs. Think safety and memorable family experiences.

Mixed - you might have a business that does some or all of the above - lucky you! Must be one hell of a location.

INSIDE THIS ISSUE Planning your fleet Marketing your business Delivering your service

BIKE RENTAL TIPS

This document is intended to give some tips for setting up and running a bike rental business.

BIKE RENTAL TIPS – setting up and running a rental business

YOUR FLEET Once you've identified your opportunity you have to decide what type of fleet you're going to need. Do some market research. Then do some more. This will help you identify not only what type of bike, but how many. Don't forget with most bike types you need different sizes of each model. So it can be an expensive mistake if you get the basics wrong. Start small and expand when you run out of capacity for your fleet. Your bikes need to sturdy; to withstand all the abuse that rental bikes invariably attract. Your bikes also need to be appealing to your target customers. No point having some heavy old cruisers at the bottom of a steep hill. But at the same time your bikes need to be affordable for your business. If things take off you’re going to want to buy lots of them, and keep buying them. So pick some bikes with a good price point. Get the quality / price mark right. Finally think about how your bikes can add to your customer experience, not simply be a means of transport for the rental duration. The right bike for your local cycling can make all the difference. Think of it as another opportunity to exceed your customer’s expectations. For more information about fleet choices please visit: http://rentalmanblog.com/

1

It’s a subtle distinction, but

with bike rental you are selling

a service, not a product. So

think about how you're going to

deliver that service - end to

end, from enquiry to delivery of

service, to post-ride

maintenance. Get it right and

you have happy customers, get

it wrong and you have a lot of headaches.

Generally, this can go pear-shaped for one of two reasons.

Sometimes the concentration is

too much on the product, the

cool bikes etc. Other times

there is a total neglect of

understanding the customer is

a human being. Both are

extremes, but it does happen.

2

The happy medium of course is

to concentrate on the whole

experience you are selling

from initial contact, to setting

up the bike, bike fitting and

bike return. The customer is

not buying the bike, but for that

1 hour or 1 week rental, your bike belongs to the customer.

To make them love the whole

experience you have to be

very organized . For each

rental you do you there are

about 7 or 8 steps you need to

go through, from a

conversation about availability,

pricing, to bike preparation,

security deposit, scheduling,

checking out, checking out and

servicing. You need to think

about the whole process so that

Remember it’s a service,

Not a product!

3

3

you can ensure that you do

each one of those steps to the highest quality.

If you get properly organized

you can ensure that each

interaction with your customer

is pleasant, efficient and

rewarding. Put yourself in your

customer’s shoes; are they on

holiday, doing a triathlon, day

on the beach or ticking off a

life-long ambition for that long climb?

4

If you get truly organized and

concentrate on the experience

the rest will follow, you will get

recommendations, you will

have happy staff, happy customers.

What it means to be truly

organized depends entirely on

your business. We typically

find that upwards of around 25

bikes dedicated software helps.

COMPUTER SYSTEM

Most people who rent bikes don’t start off thinking about the computer system. It’s true there is plenty to think about, and software may not seem the most pressing.

But why not plan to be successful? What will life look like if you grow to around 30 or 40 bikes, or more, all being rented for varying durations, some pre-booked, some walk-in? Suddenly you will have a hard job keeping on top of it all. Then there is online booking to consider, tracking everything, including issues. Even just dealing with change can be time consuming and stressful if you don’t have the right system.

Change happens a lot in rental, change of bikes, change of duration, change of dates.

Bike Rental Manager has been built from the ground up to solve the unique problems faced by bike rental operations.

Getting the right software in place from the start is smart.

MARKETING YOUR BUSINESS

Sure, your bike shop must look good, including quality, prominent, location-appropriate signage. But this is the 21st century so you also need to be thinking about inbound marketing. This means leveraging social media, websites, blogs and review sites to create a sense of community and draw customers into your business.

You need to start this from day one because it takes time.

BIKE RENTAL TIPS – setting up and RUNNING a rental business WINTER 2015, ISSUE 1

AND FINALLY

A word about online booking

It’s worth thinking about this thorny topic from the outset. More and more bike shops are offering online bike booking. Importantly more and more customers are expecting it. Some shops do it well; others do it very badly. We’re not just talking about how the booking page looks, we’re talking about how integrated your online booking is with your day-to-day operations.

Unless you choose a booking system that is tightly integrated with your back-office systems you will be setting yourself up for failure. Why? Because delivering bike rental is quite a complicated business, as discussed above. If you ‘sell’ bike rental online you are setting up an expectation with your customers. If you fail to meet those expectations you have created an unhappy experience.

All too often we come across shops who have tried to shoe-horn in a shopping basket solution, like Magento, shopify etc. But bike rental is not a product that can be shipped it’s a service that needs to be delivered, so you need to have the right tool for the job.

Unless you have an online booking system that queries your live availability and tightly integrates any bookings with offline bookings, and your workflow, we honestly believe you are better off without it.

http://rentalmanblog.com/2014/11/28/online-booking-is-a-pain/

www.bikerentalmanager.com