Still an achievement, in just over a year managed to get around 50.000 customers for a rental bicycle on a subscription basis. Dirk de Bruijn managed to do it with Swapfiets. De Bruijn has been working with Richard Burger, Steven Uitentuis and Martijn Obers since 2014 Swap bike, a startup that provides rental bicycles on a subscription basis. For 15 peak per month you are provided with a rental bike.

The blue bands will look familiar to you. Swapfiets is a Dutch start-up and you can call their bikes Mobility as a Service. A group of students from Delft pioneered by offering bicycles in a subscription service. 

Where you could rent bikes for a few days at the NS, Swapfiets goes a step further.

The Swapfiets always works and if your bicycle is broken, they ensure that a working bike is at your home within 1 day. As long as the subscription runs, we take care of the maintenance of your Swapfiets and they fix everything that is broken.

Pon's new revenue model.

Investment company behind Swapfiets is ponooc, the investment company of Pon, seller of, among others, Volkswagen in the Netherlands and owner of bicycle brand Union. Swapfiets won high praise from the press and investors last year.

Denis Doeland analyzes his clever move by Pon in his column as follows:

Where Ikea itself innovates and dares to experiment with renting out furniture, it is remarkable that it is precisely a player in the mobility industry who comes up with the idea of ​​renting this late. Did not think of any of the 13.000 employees at Pon: we already rent cars, why not rent bicycles?

“You receive a Swapfiets for a fixed amount per month and we ensure that your Swapfiets always works.”

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What if you apply the Swapfiets model to the pushchair industry?

The Amsterdam entrepreneur Piet Huige (35) is currently working on this experiment with Wheely. The Swapfiets of the prams, that is Wheely. Piet Huige (35), father of two, started his lease platform out of annoyance. If he wanted to get a pram for his offspring, it quickly cost him 1.000 euros new.

"We then pick up the crib again, so that you don't have stuff you don't need," says Huige. If your child has grown out of the pram after about 2 years, you as a consumer can also temporarily lease a buggy at Wheely. "That saves you an extra purchase," says Huige.

The Swapfiets of the prams, that is Wheely
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