Comment Rent-A-Segway (Score 1) 652
As the anecdote states, there are some occasional uses for the Segway. But most of all, there is the overwhelming market of people who want to try the Segway, if only for a few minutes. So why not cater to that market? Imagine having a pair of these at a trade show, or a high density location, like a beach resort.
In the past, Ive been to ocean boardwalks, and there is a very well recieved rental business of odd bicycles. There is the two person side-by-side model, the four person trolley model, and the recombinant sit-down-and-bike. They were availible to hourly rentals, and business was booming! Sure, you could only rent the large bicycles in the early morning and late afternoon, for traffic concerns, but you wouldn't have that restriction with a Segway, designed to have the same footprint as a pedestrian.
So, one would set up a booth, or a storefront, and wait. Perhaps they would take to circling around on the Segway, drawing people in. When people asked about it, they could be quickly drawn back to the storefront, where they would be given the salespitch for Rent-A-Segway.
Since the Segway has a maximum range of about fifteen miles, and top speed of 12 mph, an ideal rental would be an hour or two, to ensure that the battery wouldnt run down on them.
Let's see now...2 Segways, that's a $6000 overhead. Wooh! But at a three day conference, that's about 36 show time, or 72 possible rental hours. Now, let's consider that the segway's are under rental for 50 of those hours. Would $50 an hour be completely unreasonable for a Segway? Everyone would want to try one. $30 a half hour. Deep pockets at these tech conferences, or so I hear. $110 to use the Segway until the battery ran down, depending on how fast you are going. They would even be rented to other companies for advertisement. Strap a sign on the front-the machine will do the head turning, and your sign would be in the right place at the right time. The idea could even be expanded to rent-a-segway-for-a-week, or timeshare Segways.
To break even with those conditions and prices, you would have to sell about 100 hours of Segway time-which could be accomplished very easily at two conferences. I know you would have to buy admission, rent a booth, insure yourself against stupdids, etc, etc, but for the sake of arguement, Im not including those at the moment.
The Segway is indeed an excellent invention, but it is not suited to the public market just yet, But make use of inherent curiousity in homo sapiens....sell them time on a Segway!
In the past, Ive been to ocean boardwalks, and there is a very well recieved rental business of odd bicycles. There is the two person side-by-side model, the four person trolley model, and the recombinant sit-down-and-bike. They were availible to hourly rentals, and business was booming! Sure, you could only rent the large bicycles in the early morning and late afternoon, for traffic concerns, but you wouldn't have that restriction with a Segway, designed to have the same footprint as a pedestrian.
So, one would set up a booth, or a storefront, and wait. Perhaps they would take to circling around on the Segway, drawing people in. When people asked about it, they could be quickly drawn back to the storefront, where they would be given the salespitch for Rent-A-Segway.
Since the Segway has a maximum range of about fifteen miles, and top speed of 12 mph, an ideal rental would be an hour or two, to ensure that the battery wouldnt run down on them.
Let's see now...2 Segways, that's a $6000 overhead. Wooh! But at a three day conference, that's about 36 show time, or 72 possible rental hours. Now, let's consider that the segway's are under rental for 50 of those hours. Would $50 an hour be completely unreasonable for a Segway? Everyone would want to try one. $30 a half hour. Deep pockets at these tech conferences, or so I hear. $110 to use the Segway until the battery ran down, depending on how fast you are going. They would even be rented to other companies for advertisement. Strap a sign on the front-the machine will do the head turning, and your sign would be in the right place at the right time. The idea could even be expanded to rent-a-segway-for-a-week, or timeshare Segways.
To break even with those conditions and prices, you would have to sell about 100 hours of Segway time-which could be accomplished very easily at two conferences. I know you would have to buy admission, rent a booth, insure yourself against stupdids, etc, etc, but for the sake of arguement, Im not including those at the moment.
The Segway is indeed an excellent invention, but it is not suited to the public market just yet, But make use of inherent curiousity in homo sapiens....sell them time on a Segway!
