Scooter Underground - Brief History
Scooter Underground opened its doors for a in the fall of 2007 but before that there was nearly 3 years of planning and research.
The founder, Michael Stevulak, was no stranger to the transportation business, being a partner in Pacific Mazda for 20 years. Urban transportation problems and environmental issues were driving forces behind establishing Scooter Underground. While there has been talk of mass transit in the Greater Victoria area for a long time, nothing seemed to be happening. The “Colwood crawl” was getting worse even though the highway had been widened. “One employee who takes the bus to work from the Western Communities said he counted 67 car this morning before he found one with more than one person in it. This is crazy and it is unsustainable – as we create urban sprawl, we must have cost-effective and environmentally sensitive ways of moving people.”
A few years earlier, Stevulak and his wife were on a vacation in Europe. They noticed that there were scooters everywhere. Most city blocks had reserved spots for free scooter and motorcycle parking and they were crammed full. People embraced scooters as a cost-effective mode of urban transportation and they were having fun on their commute.
So the seed of an “Urban Transportation Store” was germinated and efforts were focused on gas scooters, electric bikes, electric motorcycles, and electric cars. “We already saw a lot of great bicycle shops and motorcycle shops who were serving that part of the market well and we did not want to step on their toes” says Stevulak.
A business partner of Stevulak, Jay Holliday, had spent a lot of his time travelling and backpacking around the world. He claims to have ridden more different scooters in more countries than anyone else. “While everyone tends to think of Honda, Yamaha, and Vespa, when you mention scooters, Jay knew there were many other great brands of scooters out there that had not made their way to Canada yet (because Canada is a relatively small market in the global scheme of things).” Says Stevulak
Over the period of a few years we tried to establish relationships with many of the other great scooter companies of the world such as KYMCO, PGO, SYM, TGB, Peugeot, -- we even tried to get into the business of importing scooters ourselves. “We tried to import a really cool German scooter called the Sachs MadAss that was now being produced in China. We wanted to do everything properly by-the-book such as meeting all of the Transport Canada safety requirements -- a very long and expensive process. We had exclusive Canadian distribution right and were well along the road only to see the same scooters being sold by a company in Quebec. Even though we thought we had all our bases covered and had a good working relationship, our first experience with doing business with China was not a good one” says Stevulak.
Rather than getting bitter or tied up in legal wrangling that was likely to lead nowhere, Stevulak just views the whole process as an education “Doing Business in China 101”. We are well aware of how important it will be to do business with China and India in the years ahead and we want to continue to forge good relationships with quality companies in these countries.
“Now Taiwan is totally different” he says. “Great products, emphasis on quality control and customer satisfaction, -- great people to deal with. That is how we ended up carrying mostly Taiwanese brands. In scooters, when you think of Taiwan, these are the top-shelf products. Most Honda’s and Yamaha’s are made in Taiwan (not Japan), and Taiwanese companies also make key components such as the transmissions for Vespa scooters. “ Most of the companies we deal with were offshoots of associations with Honda, Yamaha, and Vespa. “I would put KYMCO’s quality up against any scooter manufacturer in the business. They are the #1 scooter company in Taiwan and I can see why with the winning combination of quality and value that they offer” says Stevulak.
The key to our business plan was that we wanted to be an Urban Transportation store and not a traditional Power Product s store. This means that we did not want to carry the big motorcycles, dirt bikes, and ATV’s that most manufacturers have in their lines and require dealers to carry.
Again, when we looked around us, we saw businesses who we thought were serving the motorcycle market fairly well. But they viewed the scooters as a bit of a pain in the ass – low profit margins, different servicing requirements etc. Most of those stores were also carrying the ATV’s. Scooter riders were being treated like second-class citizens.
“In our concept of an Urban Transportation store, it simply did not make sense to me to have some backs-woods-chewing-bambi-shooting ATV sitting on the sales floor side-by-side with one of our eco-friendly electric bikes” says Stevulak. “The Taiwanese manufacturers and distributors seemed to be more open to giving our concept a chance – they let up cherry pick the products from their line that we thought were most appropriate for our target market.”
So who is the target market of Scooter Underground? Early on we recognized that scooter riders were different than motorcycle riders. Their basic needs are often different and they want a different identity and different accessories.
We guessed that the market would be at least 50/50 male/female and it is...it may even be skewed a little bit more to the female side. We also guessed that the demographic would be skewed towards a younger audience – on that one we were, happily, dead wrong. “We probably have as many customers over the age of 50 as we do under the age of 25” Stevulak says. “Many people with European backgrounds who are going back to their younger years and can use the excuse of higher gas prices for hopping back onto 2-wheeled transportation.”
To round out our product line on the electric bike and electric scooter side of things, we tapped Todd Johnson. Todd was working at Butchart Gardens at the time but was actively researching, testing, and refining electric bikes and electric scooters. Todd is very tapped into the electric bike community and there are a core group of people in Western Canada who are very dedicated to these technologies.
“We’ve probably tested a hundred different types of electric bikes and scooters. The problem is that 99% of it is junk. Maybe not junk, but designed to carry a 125 pound Chinese rider over flat ground in warm, dry weather – not exactly what we have here in Canada and particularly on the West coast” according to Stevulak. “We finally narrowed our selection down to a couple of brands that we can sell and support. This is important technology and we are on top of it.”
Stevulak and Johnson have partnered to form Quiet Revolutions Enterprises Inc. Which focuses on importing and distributing electric bicycles and related products.
With regard to electric cars, we think they are important and exciting but still a little ways down the road. This is a very politically charged area right now and a regulatory nightmare. The technologies are getting better at lightning speed and when the pieces come together, we will be on top of it. Whether it’s ZENN cars or Project Better Place, or one of the major auto manufacturers adjusting to the new paradigm, the electrics are coming. How they will be sold, licensed, regulated, and insured, is still up in the air.
It has been a very interesting journey to this point and we are looking forward to a very positive and dynamic road ahead. “Our intention from the very beginning was to create one prototype store in Victoria, iron out all the bugs, establish processes, and then expand through either franchises or additional company owned stores” says Stevulak. Our first year of operations went very well due to the “perfect storm” of high gas prices, high parking costs, high insurance costs, and increasing environmental awareness. Scooter Underground is dedicated to constant improvement and the only way to do that is through a great motivated staff, great training, and constantly being on the lookout for opportunities.
We are in this for the long haul – we want to be known as the “Purveyors of Urban Transportation”.
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