If you want to sell your scooter, here are some tips from Fluidfreeride CEO Julian Fernau. In a recent Entrepreneur interview, Fernau explained the nuances of scooter sales. Here are his top tips for the new escooters category. Read on to learn how to sell your scooter online!
Given the recent rise in gas prices, scooter sales have doubled in the last year. Traffic to the Miami company’s website has increased by 30%. This has forced consumers to look for alternative transportation in cities. Fluidfreeride has been one of those alternative transportation options, slowly relocating taxi and travel sharing apps. During that time, electric scooter sales grew by 50%, with New York City being the largest market for its models.
The company offers a variety of scooters, from ultra light models to heavy weights. Prices range from $ 500 to more than $ 4,000, depending on the model. With such a large market, electric scooters have a bright future. Given that they do not require gas, they are an environmentally conscious alternative to gas-consuming vehicles. With a wide range of accessories and the ability to charge quickly, e-scooters are a great way to reduce gas bills.
The advent of electric scooter sharing services is another great way to persuade consumers to buy an e-scooter. Market research has shown that it is a great way for many consumers to get excited about riding an electric scooter. And walking through traffic is like feeling like a teenager again! As an added bonus, fluidfreeride offers a large selection of electric scooters and electric bikes. And to sell electric scooters in an e-commerce site as technologically advanced as its e-scooters, fluidfreeride has taken the lead.
The Fluidfreeride Horizon electric scooter is a stepping stone to portable commuter scooters. This has more power and a nice fear factor. Regenerative brakes and rear brakes are other features of this electric scooter. With a color screen and remote control options, you can control the features of your scooter. You can also customize your ride with cross-control and zero start enabled.
The Fluidfreeride e-scooter is one of the growing categories of electric vehicles. Although the e-scooter market is still small, the company is focusing on businesses in Boston. Bolt e-scooters offer ride-hail and shared scooters. With the Bolt 5 e-scooter, a 34-mile route and a 60-month life expectancy, Bolt expects to sell more e-scooters than ever before.
Julian Fernau has been working at Proctor & amp; Bet in Europe and the Americas, and finally landed in Miami, where it launched Fluidfreeride in 2018, a store that is fully geared towards the growing e-scooter category. Although an e-commerce operation with a full set of e-scooter explanatory videos and virtual demos, Fluidfreeride (fluidfreeride.com) has brick exhibits in Miami and Brooklyn. It also provides online and in-store customers through Miami and Brooklyn service centers, as well as a third-party repair network in the U.S. We talked to Fernau about how Fluidfreeride got started, what’s going on in the scooter market. and how to build a fast-growing omnichannel business in a new category.
What is the history of Fluidfreeride?
In 2018, I think I went through what most of our clients go through, which is when I first tried Bird and Lime when they arrived in Miami. At the time, it was exciting, and people were walking down the street. I got on a [rented] electric scooter with my wife, and that’s when I had a moment like that, and I realized that electric scooters aren’t just for kids. I think it’s still a bit wrong about the category.
Then we tried to buy one, and it was impossible. There were one or two offers on Amazon, and those sold out quickly. There were few independent retailers, but even then it was difficult to judge what we should buy, and whether what we would buy was reliable. I had a few contacts in China and I had already tried a bit of third-party sales on Amazon, looked at different suppliers, asked for a bunch of samples, and finally decided to follow that path. We bought a container and created a website.
The first website was a testament to the concept, and we sold some models, but even though they arrived late, we were able to deliver 100 pieces before Christmas that year. We only carried two models. But that’s when we came up with the strategy we’ve been following ever since, which is to differentiate ourselves by offering a wide portfolio of different scooters, and educating customers on what they need to know so that they can choose which scooter to choose. right for their specific application. And then the service that comes with owning an electric scooter.
Why e-scooters exactly; why not include other electric vehicles such as electric bikes, skateboards, Segways and the like?
I think you need to pay attention to what you are doing to be good. A year ago, I asked for some samples of electric bikes from the customer and we had credibility. But then we picked up on technology and the lack of capacity of the electric bikes we hadn’t built over time, as we did with scooters, so we decided not to focus on the growing market. good.
The same goes for Segways and single-wheelers. Scooter is a unique category and I think it will be second only to electric bicycles as a means of transportation. They’re easy to ride: you don’t have to be a skateboarder, and basically anyone who puts them on an electric scooter can go. That’s why I think it’s a big enough category that deserves full attention. And there’s a wide range if you look at our portfolio: the cheapest we sell is $ 500 and the most expensive is $ 4,500, and that’s still only part of the market we choose to operate. On Amazon, you can get it. -scooters are $ 200, and at the other end are models worth $ 9,000. So I think the category is big enough to focus on that and then do well.
Given the ubiquity of rental scooters, why not rent them all? Why is the property suddenly increasing?
Rented scooters, of course, have a great purpose in the inner city, and serve as a driving test for people to try out scooters. Companies like Lime and Bird have helped create the category. But people quickly realize that if they want to use it every day, it can be quite expensive. Even if it’s only two miles or 20 minutes a day, it can add up to $ 200 a month, so you might buy a $ 500 scooter from us and use it every day.
So what is the range of e-scooter products you sell, and which ones or what types of riders?
Brands don’t necessarily have to decide who a scooter is for, because each brand tends to give a bit of space. In terms of creativity, you have these classic scooters that are comparable to the rental types, such as Fluid and INOKIM, and are between $ 500 and $ 1,000. These don’t go that far, with limited power and ride quality, but they are very portable.
As you go up in segments, you get more power, sometimes a second engine that allows for faster acceleration and top speed. The stacks are bigger, so you have more autonomy. And then there’s the quality of riding that many people buy when they buy a scooter – the quality of the suspension, the type of tires – and that’s important. If you only walk two miles a day, for example, in Manhattan, and partly on the sidewalk, then it doesn’t matter so much. But if you use your scooter, for example, to get six miles from Brooklyn to Manhattan, you’re not going to rent a scooter-type model because it will shake you up and not allow you to ride in traffic. at its lowest peak speed.
Most of the business we do is in the upper segments, we are quite specialized and we also offer scooters that look like a larger version of a rented scooter, with a larger engine. These scooters from manufacturers like APOLLO and Mercane allow you to travel longer: they have the same form factor, but they travel at 30 miles per hour and the board is wider, so you can relax. And on top of that there is a twin-engine segment with a more advanced suspension that allows it to be carried on the tracks. In New York we have customers using off-road scooters for the back streets. These allow you to simply slide and, for example, allow an electric bike to pass in front of you, because you can cut off traffic, pass and then cut. You need that strength to speed up even at these higher speeds. .
And then there’s the upper end: what we call an expert. These scooters – Kaabo Wolf Warrior and NAMI Burn-E-2 Max – run at 60 miles per hour with a range of 90 miles. We try our best to encourage customers to buy these if they have no experience. Yes, there is an extra level of ride quality, downhill suspension on mountain bikes that let you slip no matter what the condition of the road. And on an electric scooter, 60 miles per hour feels like a car at 200 miles per hour; so this segment is more for fans: instead of using it for commuting for people who really want to have fun on skateboards.
What are the largest electric scooter markets in the United States, and where do people ride 60 miles per hour?
Our biggest market, where about 20 percent of our business is created, is New York City, which is very dense and urban, with a lot of roads. The Bay Area is generally large, as are San Diego, Los Angeles, and Orange County. Interestingly, Miami, where we live, is not so good for scooters, despite being a big city. The roads are bad, there aren’t a lot of sidewalks, and there aren’t consistent sidewalks, so all those starting $ 500 and $ 600 main scooters aren’t suitable for commuting, say, between traffic and five miles. cars. And that’s why Miami scooter is a bad city.
In addition to inland cities, we sell many of our largest machines to rural areas because we can have fun with them. There is less traffic, the roads are probably in better condition and there is less traffic. We tend to sell larger vehicles that can be used for off-road riding, similar to off-road mountain biking, to people living outside of cities.
As for the 60 mph scooters, these are also for city applications, especially if you don’t need to take the train, but if you have to do 20 miles a day to work, which makes this type of scooter ideal, you can get a 50 mile commute. And walking at 60 mph doesn’t mean you have to walk that fast.
Here are three things you can do to help keep the store afloat.
First, choose the right category. The electronic scooter market is hot, and rental scooter companies are getting to know more categories because of their presence and basically allowing people to try out. Second, invest in SEO early on because it’s expensive to get traffic, so getting good positions in Google searches is ultimately the only way to make it sustainable. And third, invest in early customer service. We don’t see anything as a temporary sale; we see it as a long-term customer experience. Customers may want to start with a small scooter and then, six months later, they want to go faster and have fun so they can upgrade. But this is only valid if the first experience is positive for us.
Is there anything in your business that didn’t go as well as you expected and did you learn?
In 2019 we had to organize a call for one of our biggest products. We noticed that the brakes were starting to fail. It’s a new category and with some manufacturers, especially if they are out of the factory, we are often the only ones who put up the safety flag. We had to replace it with 2,000 caliber customers, and it was a big expense when we didn’t have much organization.
What we learned was that before we introduced a new product, we did our homework. Everyone always tells you, well, this is the best product we’ve ever had, and it might be the perfect sample, but the first 100 pieces you deliver really tell you what’s going on in the production line. This has changed the way we evaluate products before we put everything in and buy large quantities to launch.
Fluidfreeride is launching a new ultra-portable e-scooter under its brand name. Mosquito Fluid ($ 899) is now available for bookings (see video below).
[This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.]
Tom is the editor-in-chief of Dealerscope.
