“Psst, Fiets kopen?” “Hey man, wanna buy a bike?” Everyone who has been in Amsterdam for longer than a few days has heard a shady person say these words to them at least once. But if the three student-entrepreneurs from LegalBikes have got anything to say about it, the city’s drug addicts are about to lose their main source of income. Bike shops selling second hand bikes for 150 euro and onwards should also fear for their income, as LegalBikes wants to make it easy for everyone to buy a cheap bike, anywhere in the city at anytime, and without fear of getting a criminal record. They are even getting support from Hewlett Packard Enterprise to get them ready for business.
Familiar Frustration
The idea was born out of a frustration familiar to many students: your bike just got stolen, you don’t want a brand new one as that’ll only get nicked straight away, you don’t want to fork out 150 euros for a second hand bike from a shop, but you also don’t want to succumb to the temptation of buying a stolen bike from a junkie from 20 euro. What other options do you have? That’s when UvA Minor Entrepreneurship students Gijs de Groot, Julie van Lieshout and Friso Gramsma found out about the city’s bicycle depot. Friso explains: “Every week there are about 1000 unclaimed bikes that this depot needs to get rid of, as they’ve been there too long. This amounts to 50.000 per year. Some of these are old barrels, but some of them are in great condition, or only need a little bit of fixing”.
Locks, stock and two working lights
The depot already has a deal with a company called TradeFRM, that LegalBikes buys its bikes from. They then sell them with prices starting from 69 euro. Gijs adds: “Our target audience of students and expats don’t care if they don’t have a brand new nicely painted bike”. Julie explains LegalBikes initially started selling bikes through Facebook by setting up times and delivery points with customers, but they are already struggling to keep up with the demand. “We’ll now just have facebook posts saying ‘this bike is at this & that location’”. The idea is to have an app or operational website running asap. The next step is to have supply points with locked LegalBikes throughout Amsterdam. You pay online for the bike you want and you get the digits for the number lock. (Yes these bikes come with locks, and even lights!)
Fear for criminal record
Gijs reckons that although LegalBikes main selling point will be the hassle-free buying process, they have another big advantage over the city’s infamous illegal bikes: “Nowadays the cops are actually out checking that junkies aren’t selling bikes to students, and fining the buyers. That has made a lot of students wary about buying a bike from a junkie; if you get caught, you get a criminal record for buying stolen goods. That record can follow you for the rest of your career. And besides that, it just doesn’t feel right”. Yet Gijs also wants to make sure they are not getting into scaremongering, so LegalBikes is all about ease: “We are convinced there is a huge group of students willing to pay a bit more for a bike as long as it is easy and legal”.