Are Scooters The Answer To Sustainable Urban Mobility For Businesses?
Wasting hours stuck in traffic? Spending too much on taxis? Or perhaps you simply need ways to boost productivity?
For businesses large and small, travel can be a real problem area. By providing sustainable and active mobility solutions, businesses can see huge benefits.
Let’s look at scooter fleets and why they could be the answer to sustainable corporate mobility.
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Environmental Sustainability – reduce or offset CO2
By swapping car and taxi rides for scooter miles, you can reduce your business’s carbon footprint
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Boost employees health and well-being to increase productivity
Scooters are fun and accessible to all abilities. Get staff scooting to build a healthier workforce! A healthier office culture means less spent on statutory sick pay but also boosts productivity when in work.
Are you interested in shared scooters for the work-place? Find out how to get in touch at the bottom of on our fleets page.
Here are 7 case studies showing the advantages that come with the bespoke corporate scooter fleet from Swifty Scooters.
Windmill Green – A Fleet to Maximise The Building’s Energy Efficiency Goals
Windmill Green was the first Manchester company to embrace kick scooters as a mobility solution for its tenants. It is a forward-thinking office space based in central Manchester. They’re focussed on being an environmentally friendly building and aim to make themselves ‘A beacon of sustainability right in the heart of Manchester’.
As a result of Windmill Green's sustainability efforts, of which the Swifty fleet is a key part, they have been shortlisted for the 2020 RIBA MacEwen award, an 'annual award recognising architecture for the common good'. On top of this, it's also the first multi-let office in the city to be rated 'BREEAM Outstanding'!
At Windmill Green they have a fleet of six SwiftyZEROs based in the foyer of the building for all the tenants to use. The scooters are customised to be Windmill Green’s signature green and they have their 'WG' branded decals on the frames.
The nature of a large office block means people will always be coming and going throughout the day, so scooters are the perfect option to help tenants get around. Whether a quick trip to a shop or a longer journey to a meeting our adult scooters allow tenants the possibility to get where they need to be quickly and while having some fun! Windmill Green also boasts cycle storage and showers, so there is something for everyone.
A lovely day to Swifty Scoot 👋🏼 @swiftyscooters pic.twitter.com/MiLTmRXlBr
— Windmill Green (@WindmillGreenNW) January 17, 2020
Importantly the scooters give the tenants a chance to get active and get their heart rate up during their day. Putting aside time to focus on exercise can be a struggle for a lot of people, especially when it comes to fitting it around your working week. With a fleet of scooters at your disposal you can start to integrate physical activity into your working day rather than trying to fit it around it This, in turn, will really make a positive impact to your health, both physically and mentally.
It’s important to see city central businesses providing micromobility options for people to use in the city. If we can encourage people to embrace active travel instead of relying on taxis, then we are all making positive movements towards lowering CO2 emissions in our cities. The change needs to happen collectively and it’s great to see prominent city developments leading from the front.
Managing Partner Basil Demeroutis says in his own words ‘At Windmill Green the building is all about sustainability and what the future of real estate looks like. We’re incredibly excited to provide our community with different options to get about town, whether it’s getting to and from meetings or getting fit and active over lunch. Scooting is a cool and quick way to get about the city. It’ll keep you fit and make you feel great’
Find out more about the Windmill Green Swifty Fleet HERE
Greater Sport – A Fleet to Reflect The Mission Statement of The Business
GreaterSport is a Manchester based charity whose focus is to change people’s lives ‘through Physical Activity and Sport to help make Greater Manchester the most active region in England’. Since encouraging active travel is one of Swifty’s biggest goals they’re a fantastic company to have embracing our adult scooter fleet.
Greater Sport have three SwiftyZEROs in their fleet that are branded with the charity’s custom decals. The fleet is in their office and available for employees to use whether they’re off to meetings or just looking to get a bit of fresh air during the day. As a charity where physical activity is absolutely central to its mission, by supplying scooters for staff, Greater Sport is spearheading that mission.
Listen to our discussion with GreaterSport CEO Sara Tomkins in Episode #6 of The Swifty Podcast
As CEO Sara Tomkins says “The Swifty Fleet is a fantastic addition to Greater Sport, and I’m so pleased that my staff use them all the time. As a charity working to inspire others to make room for 150 minutes of physical exercise per week, it’s obviously best practice to lead by example. They are fun and easy to use and even our less sporty members of staff use them to get to meetings‘
GreaterSport has also introduced a scheme wherein the company will pay employees 20p per mile to scoot to meetings. This is basically the same as offering a business mileage for your car. Instead of contributing to petrol costs though, employees are being paid to get active instead. This, in turn, gives them the incentive to embrace active travel and ultimately cuts down the overall emissions the business is responsible for! It’s innovative ideas like this that we love hearing about at Swifty. As a fleet operator, you have so many options to create positive change!
Use.Space - A Fleet to Stay at The Cutting Edge of Sustainable and Luxury Business Mobility
Use.Space is an innovative co-working, event and meeting space based in the heart of Manchester, close to Piccadilly train station. They pride themselves on being a ‘family-owned, anti-corporate, curated community’. Attracting small businesses and independent creatives, the interior is designed to feed creativity. Filled with light, plants and colour, Use.Space is sure to become a real destination and a melting pot for innovation.
They have 2 folding scooters SwiftyONEs in their fleet complete with their own Use.Space custom decals and wicker baskets. These are available for anyone at the space to use whether they’re heading out for lunch or off further afield.
Since Use.Space have our folding commuter scooter fleet they can perfectly integrate to the busy city centre lifestyle the tenants lead. Easy to fold up and hop on a tram if needs be, easy to store when they visit clients and ultimately easy to diversify the amenities Use.Space can offer!
In the growing sector of co-working spaces, it’s important to diversify and to stand out from the crowd. It’s great to see businesses like this one adopting sustainable and positive options for tenants to travel sustainably – the foldable SwiftyONE is a great option to promote public transport too, as you can take it onto the tram.
Team GB – A Fleet for Athletes to Rest and Recover Between Events
Team GB had their own fleet of ten SwiftyAIRs that were used by athletes during the Winter Olympic Games 2018 in Pyeongchang. They were painted a custom colour and branded with special Team GB Olympic decals.
The scooters were used by athletes to get around the Olympic Village and as a positive distraction before competing. The low impact nature of kick scooting meant they were the perfect means of transport to keep athletes active while allowing them to rest between events to avoid injury or fatigue.
Olympic medallist and TeamGB snowboarder Billy Morgan found them to be a great asset to have for the duration of the Olympics - ‘They’re seriously fun and easy to ride. The last thing a snowboarder needs is any more stress on the joints. I like the low impact, but full-body movement of scooting. I don’t like gyms, so getting out on them was great fun while we were waiting around for our event days.’
Billy and fellow snowboarder Jamie Nicholls enjoyed the kick scooters so much they made us a little video of the fun they had with them!
The Swifty fleet was also used by World Champion speed skater Elise Christie after her fall in the final. Elise gladly used the scooters as a mobility aid with her injured ankle strapped up - “these scooters are a godsend!”
Dirt Factory – A Fleet to Diversify and Excite Their Current Audience and Provide a New USP
Dirt Factory is an indoor bike park in Manchester that aims to make the thrills and fun of outdoor mountain biking accessible in busy cities where people may otherwise never get the experience. They have a fleet of five SwiftyAIRs that customers are able to hire for as little as £5 an hour to take out over their dirt tracks, pump tracks or ramp and airbag!
Dirt Factory is making use of its adult scooter fleet as a unique selling point to enhance their business. Providing their customers with the option to try out a dirt scooter, something few people will have been on before, broadens their audience and allows a whole new group of people to get involved. It’s also likely to create extra revenue from punters who are curious about how a scooter might hold up to the MTB experience.
Our SwiftyAIRs are perfectly suited to this kind of riding, they’re designed to tackle dirt tracks and harsh terrain with ease with their wider 2” GMD tyres. The large 16” wheels mean you’ll have no problem gaining the right amount of speed to take on the same tracks as the bikes. It just goes to show whatever your business is; a fleet of scooters can have a positive impact!
Owner of Dirt Factory Danny Makin says ‘It’s a different vehicle rather than just having bikes all the time, people love it! We get 80% mountain bikers and when they get on a scooter it’s something completely new and fun. In business terms it is a selling point for us, It’s easy to service and maintain and they look cool as well.’
Learn more about our fleet of adventure scooters HERE
Green Scooter Hire – A Scooter Fleet To Hire Out For A Fun Family Activity!
Green Scooter Hire have also adopted a slightly different business model to utilise their fleet of Swiftys. Their business is in fact built around the Swifty Fleet entirely! They hire out their kick scooters so that you can use them to explore the scenic Waterford Greenway in County Waterford, Ireland for only €7!
As Waterford Greenway is a popular destination to explore with the family they have something for everyone to get out riding on. From SwiftyAIRs, SwiftyZEROs and SwiftyIXIs they have everyone covered, you can also take your younger children (aged approx. 3-5) along for the ride with the children’s boosters. If that wasn’t enough they also have some Swifty e-scooters in their arsenal too! By embracing the range of adult and children scooters Swifty offer Green Scooter Hire will appeal to anyone who’s visiting the popular trail.
Scooters can be hired from €7 for an hour to €18 for a full day, with plenty of group or family saving options if you’re going with a few of you. They also have added packages where you can have a helmet camera to record your journey.
Green Scooter Hire also run a ‘Kick-Biking’ session twice a week for those interested in scooting for fitness. The group meet and scoot together from Carriganore Waterford Greenway to Kilmeaden and back, roughly a 15km round trip. Offering this course further opens the business up to a new audience while promoting physical health and the range of benefits kick scooting can bring!
AppyWay - A Fleet To Keep Employees Active
Appyway is a London based company who aim to help local authorities in urban areas understand how kerb spaces are being used. By doing this they’re able to see how efficiently city spaces are being utilised and can adapt city plans accordingly, to ultimately make the best use of kerb space. They originally started off as AppyParking, an innovative solution to dealing with the frustrations that come with finding a parking space.
They have 2 folding SwiftyONEs in their scooter fleet for their staff to use when they’d like, whether it’s to head to a meeting or get some fresh air during the day. They chose our Sunrise Yellow scooters, with their own branded decals added to the frame.
London is, of course, an ideal place to make the most of our folding commuter scooters. For a city that’s always on the go, it’s a breeze to get around on a kick scooter, and simple to fold it up and hop on the tube if they need to go longer distances.
The problems that come with urban transport, for example, the amount of time wasted stuck in traffic and the emissions city driving is responsible for are important to us at Swifty. As a result, it’s great to see our scooters embraced by a like-minded company. The future of movement in cities is a multi-faceted challenge and we’re happy that companies like AppyWay that are pushing forward positive change are embracing our own sustainable and active mobility solution.
Say Yes More – A Scooter Fleet to be Taken on Adventures
Say Yes More are another group that has adopted an interesting use for their scooter fleet. They’re ‘a social enterprise run by a growing team of volunteers who met through the YesTribe’, the emphasis is all on the community and supporting one another. The enterprise was all begun by Swifty ambassador Dave Cornthwaite. The group create events, spaces and situations to help their community members say yes more, whether it be to making brave decisions, encouraging adventurous thinking or ‘designing a lifestyle that fits perfectly with our individual personalities and needs’. They have 2 custom SwiftyZEROs with their own decals to brand them.
Their fleet is available for people to use that are looking for an exciting and unique adventure but might not themselves have the money a scooter themselves. They have a couple of ground rules based on the hiring of the scooters such as a refundable deposit to make sure they’re looked after. They also mainly lend them to people that are ‘raising funds and/ or awareness for a worthwhile cause during your trip’. It’s great for us to see out scooters being used to raise funds for charitable causes, and a further example of the positive ways in which our fleets can be used.
The scooters themselves have already been on a couple of exciting journeys. Say Yes More founder Dave Cornthwaite has taken one of them on a monster 1000-mile journey all around Japan as a part of his Expedition1000 challenge. You can learn all about Dave’s marathon trip HERE.
Sophie Rooney has also used the Say Yes More Swiftys for a leg of her trip from Land’s End to John O ‘Groats in order to help raise funds for the International Aid for the Protection & Welfare of Animals!
Canada House – An Adult Scooter Fleet to Introduce Scooters into the Co-working Lifestyle
Canada House is a co-working and workspace in central Manchester. The building is an old textile warehouse that now houses a community of businesses and freelancers in an open and modern workspace. The space has its own independent Café on-site as well as a gym and swimming pool available for tenants.
They have a single SwiftyONE in their fleet, branded with custom decals and on its own specially made plinth! The plinth that the scooter is on is designed to work in multiple ways. Firstly, it works as the dock where the scooter can be left and locked after a ride either folded on unfolded. The scooter and plinth have been branded to fit Canada Houses image so work as a striking and stylish representation of the building that is encouraging positive
The information on the plinth is also there to help people understand the benefits of scooting and why it’s something they should use. For a lot of people, the idea of using an adult scooter is quite an alien one at first. By putting clear information for riders to read like ‘Why Scoot’, ‘How to Scoot’ and ‘Scooter Safety’ it helps them get to grips with the many reasons it can help them out on their day, all while doing so safely.
The SwiftyONE is designed specifically for urban use so perfect for city centre buildings like Canada House. Their scooter in the foyer of their building and freely available for anyone to jump on and head out around the city, whether off to lunch or a business pitch! The co-working lifestyle is an active one and often involves needing to get around on a typical day, so it’s brilliant to see co-working buildings offering their tenants carbon-neutral options to get around.
As you can see, the Swifty Fleet can provide a positive impact to many different types of businesses. As you can see there many ways you can integrate a fleet of scooters into your business. Whether you’re looking to promote health and well-being amongst staff or hoping to stick out from the crowd and offer customers a whole new experience, a Swifty Fleet might just be the key you’re looking for to diversify.
If you like the sound of our Swifty fleets and want to learn more find out more HERE or send us an email to info@swiftyscooters.com so we can discuss the various packages we offer further!
Learn more about how a fleet of custom Swifty Scooters could complement your business HERE