We've got a bit over two months of experience operating in the San Juan islands, Friday Harbor, WA (
www.pedalanywhere.com/sanjuans) now, thought I would put together our thoughts on the process. The San Juans are a different beast from Seattle and it has been a learning process that's still on-going. A few differences:
1) Most folks want a rack on the bike in the San Juans. Here I show my biases -- I'm a city rider with minimal gear on my bike to keep weight down and because every time I put something on it gets stolen. Just carry a messenger bag and have gotten very adept at riding up hills with a load on my back. So to me a rack is just extra weight. But I'm in the minority, and in the rural touring situation a backpack just won't cut it. Sometimes my instincts of what folks want work out (people do in fact want long term bike rentals, all over the place, and they don't want to keep bringing their bikes on the plane) and sometimes I'm in the minority. But the markets speaks and we listen.
2) Repair kits are essential here. In Seattle I ride without any repair gear for daily riding, and know that I can always find a nearby bike shop if something goes wrong... or take the bus. In the San Juans there is no such luck, a flat can be trouble and even though Mikial manages to get out to help you in less than 30 minutes (still impressed, that's actually really fast) you're still stuck for a bit.
3) Most rentals in the San Juans are out of our shop, whereas in Seattle we don't have a physical shop and only do delivery. This changes the economics a bit and means that our costs are not dominated by delivery; which alters a few things, but makes rentals shorter than a week economically viable for us. We also get lots of weekenders looking for rentals shorter than a week. So we decided to add two and three day rentals -- which would start to be a logistical headache in seattle with our free dropoff and pickup -- because it made sense. Again, the market spoke and we listened.
And some interesting observations so far, not really actionable, but not obvious when we first started:
1) The majority of renters don't have a car. They've taken the ferry directly from Seattle or taken a shuttle to the Anacortes ferry, walk four blocks off the ferry in Friday Harbor, get their bikes, load up, and head off. These are exactly the customers we envisioned, the ones we want to serve, the kinds of trip we want to enable (what would that have looked like without PedalAnywhere? Boxed bike on the plane, unbox in the airport, stick it on the front of a 2 hour bus ride to Anacortes? Way harder and more expensive). Terrific that we're making this a reality.
2) Few renters traveling on their own. In Seattle we're split between couples and individual renters.
3) Talking with folks we learn that our main competition is airlines and bike boxes, not really other rental shops. Have heard a few people literally point out that they have boxed bikes on previous trips, but didn't have to this time because of PedalAnywhere. Awesome, and maybe even the cargo loaders will be happy to have fewer bikes to deal with eventually?
