Swapfiets is the world's first 'bike as a service' company with a circular business model. Founded in 2014 in the Netherlands, the scale-up quickly grew into one of Europe's leading micro-mobility providers, with now more than 280,000 members in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, France, Spain and the UK. FROM OWNING-A-BIKE TO ACCES-TO-A-WORKING-BIKE

The Dutch Swapfiets bike supplier offers a Bike-as-a-Service subscription model: "For a fixed price per month we offer you a bike, and we make sure the bike itself is always able to use.” This micro-mobility solution started with the vision to turn the old “take-make-waste” approach into a usage-focused, circular economy that contributes to more liveable city.

CLOSING THE LOOP

Swapfiets is not just leasing you a bike per month. It is providing you with a working bike as long as you need it. For this reason, Swapfiets had to invest in its own bike design, new repair-shops, tracking stolen bikes, repair shops, bike pick-ups. This helped to close the total loop of owning and maintaining a bike. Including refurbishing old bikes into new ones or recycling materials. A BACK CHANNEL TO LEARN FROM THE USAGE-DATA

This full-circle infrastructure helped Swapfiest to gather valuable data from users and the Swapfiets repair shops. With this valuable data, the design of the service and also the bikes are ever improving with fewer and fewer repairs needed, benefitting both the user and the bottom-line.

A VIRAL MARKETING TOOL

The eye-catching Delft blue tire was a clever move by Swapfiets. But it wasn't a preconceived plan as a marketing strategy. Initially, the striking tires were an idea for a better user experience, it was meant to make it easier for the renter to find their bike in the crowded streets.

Ask yourself:

• In what way can you turn your product into a subscription or access-based model?

• In what way could you move from a chain a loop approach?

• In what way could you then gather usage data from subscribers to further improve 

  your product or proposition?
  

• Bonus challenge: In what way could an eye-catching element express who is a user of your service?