SeedTable

This week in Europe: Ownership is not the future of transportation

September 6th | #41

Earlier this week, e-bike DTC brand Cowboy announced Jeremy Le Van is joining the team as VP of Product. Jeremy co-founded (and later sold) calendar app Sunrise to Microsoft, so he is kind of a big deal.

Cowboy has raised a €10 million Series A funding round from Tiger Global, Index Ventures, Hardware Club and others, and is available in 5 European countries.

In June, another European e-bike company named VanMoof raised millions in a few hours in one of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns ever.

Why have we barely heard about them?

A few years ago, European tech was smitten by Uber, Bolt, Cabify, the ridesharing economy and their fight against a local government. Now, as with everything, the novelty has passed.

But we’ve found a new, shinier toy to be captivated by – scooters. I covered them in one of my first newsletters, and again a few months later.

Scooters are a fascinating topic. After all, the scooter biz is an all-out war and, quite frankly, wars are fun to watch. You never know when a company is going to raise a gazillion dollars, eat up a competitor, or go head to head with a local government.

Tech has been focused largely on ride-sharing – scooters, bikes, cars. But we are forgetting the essence of capitalism: ownership.

Yes, we can still own stuff. It seems we just don’t care about it that much. Why?

The unsexiest DTC brands

The global e-bike market is growing at a substantial rate. In 2018 it was valued at $14.7 billion and is expected to grow ~6% annually over the next few years.

Source: Mordor Intelligence

Europe itself is not staying behind. Shortly before publishing its 2019 half-year results Merida Industry Co. ltd also announced that it is investing heavily in a substantial expansion of the production of e-bikes in Europe. In The Netherlands, 40% of all bicycle sales last year were e-bikes.

But why aren’t these transportation DTC brands – Cowboy, VanMoof, Mate, even Casey Neistat’s darling Boosted – not sexy enough?

They have fantastic products, beautiful packaging and they are incredibly fun to use. They follow the DTC playbook to the dot – beautiful websites, powerful social media, and active communities.

And for god’s sake, Boosted even launched a SCOOTER that’s 10x better than anything