Entrepreneurs often start companies because of an unsolved need in their own lives. Twisted Road Founder and CEO Austin Rothbard, for instance, wanted his bike everywhere he traveled. He kept saying the same six words over and over again: “I wish I had my bike.” At the same time, he spotted an untapped resource — the very motorcycles that he wanted to ride so much. “I realized how many bikes were sitting idle in garages,” Rothbard told PYMNTS in an interview.
To help take on this challenge, Rothbard’s motorcycle marketplace went live in October of 2017: It took him about 10 months to get all the insurance and legal elements into place as well as have the website built. Rothbard noted that the site went live with 79 motorcycles and had rentals within the first 48 hours. Now, he says, the company has rentals coming in all the time and has 1,500 bikes on the site. “We’re in every state,” Rothbard said.
The booking process begins on the company’s website, where riders can find the bike they want to rent and click a button that says “book.” The company then asks for their driver’s license numbers along with other basic information such as cell phone number, address and birthday. All of that information goes over to a third-party company that has a proprietary system to check the riskiness of every single rider. If consumers don’t have a motorcycle license or have too many points, they can’t ride. When it comes to reservations, the owner gets to review them and take a look at a rider’s profile, including his or her experience.
The Marketplace
If the bike owner is comfortable with the rider, the two parties meet and conduct a walkaround of the bike and photos are uploaded to document if there are, say, any scratches. The rider is then off. When the rider returns the bike, the owner receives payment 48 hours later. (Riders pay with credit cards, debit cards or PayPal.) To list a bike on the platform, the company ask some basic questions about the bike such as its year, make, model and number of miles.
Owners also write descriptions as well as upload photos, and Rothbard notes that the nicer the photos, the nicer the listing. After that point, the listing goes through an internal approval process that might take a day or two. When it comes to the selection of bikes on the platform, Rothbard said, “we have every major make and model of motorcycle.”
In other words, the site has adventure bikes, sport bikes and vintage bikes on its platform. Featured bikes on the company’s website one recent afternoon included a 1965 Honda CB450 Black Bomber, a 2015 Victory High-ball and a 2015 Ducati 1299 Panigale S. Other makes include bikes from BMW, Big Dog, Harley Davidson and Kawasaki.
The site serves a variety of riders from those who don’t have a bike anymore and want to ride to those who might be on the road and traveling. In other cases, a rider might have a bike in the shop and need a rental as a loaner. Alternatively, a rider might be thinking about buying a new model of motorcycle and want to take it for a test drive. Either way, the bikes are insured during the rental process through a commercial insurance policy.
The Sharing Economy
Beyond sharing economy platforms for motorcycles, some companies such as Outdoorsy connect those seeking to rent recreational vehicles with those who have one sitting idle. Jeff Cavins, the company’s co-founder and CEO, noted in a previous PYMNTS interview that there are more than 18 million registered RVs. These vehicles, however, sit idle in garages, driveways, backyards and storage facilities 97 percent of the time. His company, however, seeks to put those RVs to good use and has a booking experience similar Airbnb.
Cavins said the company has many vehicles on the site that travelers can instantly book. While consumers can book roughly 33 percent of the company’s inventory instantly, some owners require travelers to message them instead. The company also encourages owners to activate instant booking for their listings. “It kind of ‘hotelifies’ our platform a bit,” Cavins said, adding that it also brings in more business.
With the help of online marketplaces, digital disruptors are connecting owners of recreational vehicles and motorbikes with customers who are looking to rent them to save them from sitting idle in the digital area.
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