Spinlister wheels its way into Vancouver
Bike-sharing peer-to-peer network all about shared passion for cycling, official says
Spinlister has been described as the biking equivalent of peerto-peer networks such as Airbnb for accommodation and Uber for car rides.
But according to Andrew Batey, the chief marketing officer for Spinlister, the global bicycle-sharing network — which recently expanded into Vancouver — is different because people who are part of spinlister.com aren’t motivated solely by the idea of making money.
“You’re not going to make $100,000 renting out your personal bike,” he said. “You might make a couple thousand a year depending on how many bikes you have.”
Spinlister, based in Santa Monica, Calif., is tapping into what Batey called the “spirit of reciprocity in the cycling world.”
“It’s a whole culture that tends to be very communal and sharing,” he said. “It’s the sense of fulfilment from helping other biking people.”
Since Spinlister started in 2012, it has grown by what Batey says is 400 per cent a year — including this year. Now in 63 countries, the number of bikes varies in each city, but he estimated that there are about 250 bikes in Barcelona, 500 in London and 3,500 in Brooklyn. In Vancouver there are about 50.
Batey said in a phone interview that about 70 per cent of Spinlister’s users are travellers who want to explore a new city by bike. (Spinlister accepts listings for skis, snowboards and surfboards, but bikes remain its core business.)
Batey, who lived in Vancouver for a year, is part of the bike world: he’s in a cycling group that rides up to 65 kilometres a week, plus he regularly commutes three kilometres to work at Spinlister. But the realities of living in Los Angeles mean he also has a truck to get across the city’s vast distances.
When someone lists their bike on Spinlister, the lister determines the rental price, availability and extras such as a lock and a light. If you have a bike that you use to commute Monday to Friday, for example, you could make it available only on weekends.
“If you can mitigate the financial risk and provide people some upside, most times people will want to help others,” Batey said. “It creates this really cool, instant bond between people.”
Bikes are insured for up to $10,000 for theft or damage. Spinlister takes 17.5 per cent on transactions, which are completed through PayPal. Prices on the site are in U.S. dollars.
Batey acknowledged it’s a problem not having a big inventory of bikes for people to choose from in Vancouver. It’s part of the growing pains of starting in a new city.
“If you’re a bike-rider and you’re travelling to another city, you want a bike usually that’s similar to your bike and in the neighbourhood that you’re in so it’s convenient — and the person is available,” he said.
“We have to have significant inventory to create 100 per cent efficiency. That’s our biggest issue. I see people searching all the time for Vancouver, but I don’t have enough bikes to give them.”
One Vancouverite who has listed his bike on Spinlister is Denis Agar. He rents a retro Sekine for $17 a day which includes extras such as a lock, helmet and basket. He’s centrally located in downtown Vancouver, five minutes by foot from Burrard SkyTrain station.
During the five months he’s been on Spinlister, he’s had five requests. He’s rented twice to tourists: one from New Zealand and a second from Austin, Texas.
“I mostly put it on there to figure out what kind of response I might get for it,” he said.
“The response has been pretty tepid. I don’t think there is a huge Spinlister community yet.”
Sometimes he’s turned down requests because he wanted to ride his bike that day. Because he has a regular nine-to-five job, he doesn’t rent his bike by the hour. It’s just too much hassle being available for short periods to arrange the pickup and dropoff.
Downtown Vancouver may be a special case compared with other cities, he said, because of the availability of so many bike rental places close to the Stanley Park seawall.
“When you compare the price people are charging on Spinlister to what people are charging at the corner of Denman and Georgia, you’re not even necessarily saving money to use Spinlister,” Agar said.
“The last guy rented my bike because it was a retro Canadian bike rather than because it was cheaper.
“He wanted something with a bit more character.”
Other Vancouver bikes available on Spinlister include a cargo bike at $30 a day and a sevenspeed cruiser for $25 a day.
Agar expects demand to drop off after summer, but doesn’t plan to remove his bike from the bike-sharing site.
“I’ll stay on — I might as well,” he said. “Being listed, I can always say no to someone.”