Starting a bicycle rental is a profitable small business idea and managing it is similar to managing any other rental equipment business. Rentrax is a popular sports rental management software designed by people who know a thing or two about bicycle rental businesses and stands as the best bicycle rental software on the market. Bicycle rentals are one of the fastest-growing businesses in the rental equipment market and while managing a rental does have its challenges, the rewards make it well worth the effort.
- As a rental store owner, a large portion of your money will be spent on paying your employee’s wages, real estate, and purchase of equipment. You will need to spend a lot on the bicycle replacement parts such as tires and tubes as bicycles break down all the time.
- The start-up cost of opening a bike rental, which includes the cost of the fleet of bicycles and the tools is high. It can be as much as $175,000 to $200,000.
- You will be investing in a lot of new equipment, which is why it is essential that you have proper bicycle rental software such as Rentrax to automate the workflow at your store.
- Rentrax is a flexible cloud-based equipment rental management system, which can be customized based on your requirements. It gives you the ability to manage your business from anywhere, anytime.
- All the information is stored in the cloud, so you don’t have to worry about any of the data getting lost if your computer was to get damaged or hacked.
- The number one thing you should do as the owner of a bicycle rental is to research your target customers. Your target customers will most likely be tourists. If you live in a bike-friendly city, you will have a lot of tourists visiting your store and renting bikes from you.
- You should have a marketing strategy in place to attract more tourists to your rental store. It is not enough just to have a great location. You can start by building strong relationships with employees and managers at local hotels, restaurants, coffee shops, malls, etc. so that they refer your store to visiting tourists if they were to ask them about a bicycle rental.
- It is crucial to create flyers and distribute them in places frequented by tourists such as malls, hotels, popular local attractions, and so on. This is much cheaper and more effective than having your ads published in local newspapers.
- A professionally designed website is a must. Pay-per-click advertising is very effective too – most tourists look for information on Google, so making sure that you’re visible on Google’s search engine results pages is absolutely essential.
Finally, make sure that you’ve got the correct terms and conditions page on your website. The terms and conditions should cover every possibility such as bicycle theft, loss, damage, etc. so that there is no room for confusion later.
Starting a bicycle rental is quite an adventure; with enough dedication, patience, and good bicycle rental software you will make a lot of money and can run a successful business!