Seven months ago, Tim Wagner decided to give up his 15-year career in accounting to start Up North Bike Rentals. He decided to combine his interest in cycling with the needs of his local community in Nisswa, Minnesota, as well as visitors. He knew inventory management and online bookings were vital, so he chose Booqable as the software behind his business.
When starting a rental business, you’re often confined to the geographical area where you’re based. For bike rentals, this means you either need to be in a city or an area with plenty of trails for people to cycle on. You also need to know that there is a demand for them, which Tim certainly did after many years living in the area and enjoying the cycle trails himself.
Up North Bike Rentals
For over 15 years, Tim Wagner had been an accountant and enjoyed his career, but he wanted to do something new amid the pandemic. He wanted to start his own business and researched what products were in demand in his area. It wasn’t long before he settled on bike rentals, as he had enjoyed cycling around his town for many years.
What do you do during a global pandemic? You launch a business, of course! Ultimately, I knew that I wanted to start my own business.
Up North Bike Rentals is located in Nisswa, Minnesota, which is known as a vacation paradise and makes up part of the Paul Bunyan State Trail. This 120-mile trail is the longest continuous paved trail in the United States and is a popular bike trail in the spring, summer, and fall. So, it only made sense that Tim followed his passion for cycling when starting a business.
Tim found that bike rentals met the needs of his local community and set about catering to some unique use cases that weren’t being pursued by anyone else in the area. Surrey bikes allow families and small groups to enjoy proximity along with a fun, leisurely ride. For those who want to explore a bit further, he offers e-bikes which allow people to go further than a traditional bike would take them.
Getting into the right gear
From the conception of Up North Bike Rentals, Tim knew the essential software his business needed to succeed. The first was online bookings so that people could make reservations easily in their own time, and the second was inventory tracking to keep stock in a centralized solution. So he searched for a while, weighing up numerous options.
He decided that Booqable was the perfect fit for his new bike rental business as it had all his desired functionality in one streamlined cloud-based system. He also found it to be the most user-friendly for both front-end use by customers and back-end use by himself and potentially future staff. Finally, it integrated perfectly with his chosen website builder and POS platforms.
It was the most user-friendly on both the front-end and back-end and integrated well with our chosen website and POS platforms.
The result has been a centralized booking system that keeps track of reservations online and in-store. It integrates perfectly with his other chosen software solutions and means he doesn’t have to spend hours moving between different programs.
Cycling the right path
Tim has been running Up North Bike Rentals since this spring and has seen tremendous success. His location is ideally placed as it enjoys visitors three-quarters of the year, so there is much less downtime than some areas that mostly see customers in the summer months. He has managed to create a beautiful online store that is attractive and easy to use for his customers.
Many of his customers have commented about how easy and user-friendly the process is, from booking online to picking their bike up in-store. He has been impressed that customers bring this up specifically, and it certifies that he made the right choice when he chose Booqable to power his online store and inventory management.
