cycle.land

Market

Target market

Our members are the 20-35 demographic in urban areas in the UK. The demographic is health conscious and concerned about environmental impact of their choices. Bike sharing addresses both health and environmental concerns and provides an affordable and easily accessible alternative for transport.

Our research shows that students and young professionals are frustrated with current transport options and are keen to cycle to get around whenever bikes are easily available and affordable to them.

Tourists and visitors are another group of users who benefit from Cycle.land. Tourists using public bike sharing bikes in London, Paris and New York show that there is a huge demand for easily available and affordable bikes. Members of Cycle.land can have access to affordable bikes wherever they need and for as long as they need: a day, a week, a month or 3 months without having to bring their bikes or buy new bikes. Cycle.land makes it easy for them to keep cycling. Anyone who has friends and family visiting and wants to keep going on bikes can easily expand their bike fleet for the visit with bikes on Cycle.land. The reasons why people need bikes are countless - Cycle.land is the easy solution that connects people with the bikes they need!

Characteristics of target market

We aim for Cycle.land to be a major player in the global mobility market, valued at $5-6tn per year (excluding air travel). Shared bike mobility’s share of that market is increasing.

According to National Travel Survey, 66% of all trips in the UK are less than 5 miles. It takes about 30 minutes on a bike to go 5 miles.

PwC has calculated that on a global basis the Sharing Economy is currently worth £9bn, with this set to rise to a massive £230bn by 2025. In the UK, transport and tourism are amongst the largest categories within this sector. We estimate that in Oxford alone, there is currently approximately £25m of value tied up in idle bicycle capacity.

We believe that the market timing is perfect for Cycle.land as cities invest in cycling infrastructure, people are looking to have more active lifestyles and cut down their carbon emissions as well as save money.

Marketing strategy

Cycle.land has established the first successful market in Oxford. By focusing on one geographical area, it allowed us to have quick success in member acquisition, revenues and a variety of partnerships with influential institutions, such as University of Oxford, Oxfam and the Oxford City Council.

Already, we have developed a strategy to expand to the next 5 markets: Cambridge, Bristol, Brighton, Edinburgh and East London. These places, similar to Oxford, have a high percentage of cyclists, tourists, students, and cycling infrastructure. Additionally, we believe that, having done initial market research, by leveraging our current partnerships and by contacting local partners each of these places the Cycle.land community will be successfully launched.
Besides institutional partnerships, we recruit and retain our community members using traditional and online media. In Oxford, we successfully recruited residents using local media, students using university media, and activists using social media, events, and word-of-mouth recommendations. We aim to optimize our marketing strategy to include influencers and live events.

Competition strategy

Cycle.land connects people with all available bikes in a creative and comprehensive way. Our platform, unlike any other, provides our users easy access to all shared bikes: peer-to-peer bikes, community bikes, hire bikes from bike shops and public bike sharing. We have developed a strong focus on ambassadors and enthusiasts in the community who improve engagement, trust, and network effect.

We focus on urban cyclists, our core audience are those for whom cycling is a practical mode of transport and part of everyday life, rather than purely a sport or hobby. Given that many of the cities globally and especially in the UK are investing in cycling infrastructure, this is the segment of cycling that we believe is growing fastest.

Our innovative approach is to make every bicycle that is visible on our platform to be attractive to a diverse set of needs. On the same platform, Cycle.land members can access touring bikes, vintage bikes, and cargo bikes. This approach means that we are a fast growing bike sharing community, doubling our total bike listings, total users, total transactions and total revenues every month.

Since being incubated with Oxford University Innovation, we passed many milestones to be ready to expand into other cities in the UK. We met with Amsterdam-based bike sharing company Cycleswap which soon after was acquired by US-based Spinlister. Even though Spinlister is the oldest peer-to-peer bike sharing company, we feel that the bikes that they offer are more geared towards people who use bikes as sports equipment. While in the USA people still predominantly use bicycles as sports equipment, we do not believe this is the case in the UK and Europe. Also, we focus on building a strong community city-by-city, which gives us the advantage of brand recognition and ability to build liquidity in each city.