Welcome to the Small Business Spotlight hosted by JAISIN Insurance Solutions. The goal is to bring more awareness to businesses and entrepreneurs in the local community. That being said, I am here with Kenneth Cadmus, President of Ride FIIK.
Watch the video on YouTube here.
Give us a little background information on Ride FIIK?
We are a scooter micro-mobility company; we like to classify ourselves as the opposite of a rideshare. We primarily target leisure rides. We are not going after transportation solutions like some of the larger companies; we actually started out originally as an electric skateboard manufacturer in Australia, which is our parent company. About two years ago, we branched out into the e-ride or electric mobility space, and about a year ago we came up with our current business model and have grown ever since.
Why did you make the jump from skateboards to scooters?
Well, obviously in any industry you are always have to be changing, you constantly have to be adjusting and adapting to new products. We actually started manufacturing for some of the larger companies about two and a half years ago, and we did a trade show about a year and a half ago and brought some of our e-mobility scooters. Out of all the really cool products that we have with our parent company, no one wanted to talk about anything except for our electric mobility scooters! All the small businesses wanted to know how they can enter into that space without having to make big capital investments, especially in software and all the other capital things that are required. So about a year to a year-and-a-half ago, we started to develop our software that brought us to where we are today.
Now obviously this is Small Business Spotlight, so how is Ride FIIK helping local and small businesses?
That is actually one of the primary reasons why we started to do this. In 2018, electric scooter rideshare, Rides, actually surpassed bicycle rides as a whole. So in 2018, there were about 40 million e-scooter rides taken just in the USA, where there were about 36 million bike rides through a rideshare company.
That brings us to our local partners; there was really no solution for the small guy to enter into that space, so we developed our own software where we can partner with small, local businesses. They can enter into that space without having to make a 7 to 8 figure investment in software or hardware. In fact, they can make relatively small or little to no investments and be able to enter into that space.
I am a pretty clumsy person myself, so I have to ask, how is Ride FIIK ensuring companies’ and consumers’ safety?
One of the primary things that we do in our application is before any ride is taken, we have a “how to” slide. It’s about five different slides and it gives the user a brief overview as to how to operate the unit safely and efficiently that must be completed and must be flipped through and viewed before the ride is able to be activated. Also with all of our partners, we provide a helmet solution at no cost to the partner. At each of our parking hub or pickup location, they are able to offer helmets to the riders at no charge. One of the testaments in our opinion is that we have one of the best and safest units on the market. It has a highly visible LED front light, LED rear break light, and a very, very stable deck to stand on. It also has a couple of reflective materials all around so it gives the user one of the highest quality, but also one of safest, rides of them all.
It seems like Ride FIIK is very, very easy to use, which I know is what most people want to hear. If I am a company who is interested in partnering with Ride FIIK, what would my expectation would be?
Believe or not, we really do not do any marketing. It’s the kind of a company where people see us and we have a ton of inbound traffic activity. One of our biggest partner agreements is that we can provide them hardware and software at virtually no cost to the partner whatsoever upfront. We also give them ability to white label brand not only on the unit itself, but also have a certain level of white label branding within the app that we also provide at virtually no cost to the partner. We do offer some product liability insurance, which is actually offered through JAISIN. We extend that to all of our partners at no cost to them. Some of our partners also opt to go for a higher level of general liability, which we also refer over to JAISIN Insurance Solutions.
Where do you see Ride FIIK going in the future?
Our biggest partners at the moment are hotels and resorts. With us going after the leisure rider and not the transportation rider, we primarily go after people that are coming from out of town or out of state; they are staying in a high-traffic downtown area. Our hotel partners offer that client the ability – especially with COVID right now and no one really wants to be in close proximity with one another in a taxi or an Uber– to go explore the local area in their destination of choice at a low cost, typically cheaper even than an Uber, and be able to return that unit back to it. One of our biggest future expansions, believe it or not, is in South America and Mexico. In Mexico, we just recently launched with a resort partner in Cancun. We have about 3 to 4 resort partners in the Cancun and Merida area that we are going to be launching in next 60 to 90 days; that is one of our biggest opportunities. We also are expanding greatly throughout the USA and then we are looking at some options over in Europe.
Why JAISIN Insurance Solutions?
I was actually referred to JAISIN by a very close associate of mine, we had been shopping around for some different options. Like I said, for us to be able to offer a certain level of protection to our partners, which is very important, and we do offer that product liability to all of our partners,. But after quoting around (and it really does not come down to just price with us), it is more about the relationship that is being established. Anytime we reach out to Jason or any of his associates, we typically either get an answer immediately or within 30 minutes. Anytime we need flexibility on certain terms, he is there to help, so having that close relationship with the insurance-provider to us is very important, especially in our type of business that has some level of risk. It’s just deeply rewarding to us, and Jason was able to help us a lot.
