Jan Střecha of Rekola Bikesharing tells us about the bike-sharing business.
Tell us about you, your career, and how you joined Rekola Bikesharing.
Jan Střecha: I came to Rekola bikesharing in 2017. Vitek Jezek founded Rekola in 2013. Originally it was a volunteer-based project repairing old bikes. I started in Rekol as a bike repairer and gradually worked my way up through customer care, sales and other parts of the company. I love that Rekola gives me the freedom to go to university and work as a CMO simultaneously.
Do you have small habits that made a meaningful impact on your life and business?
Jan Střecha: I try to follow the concept of GTD – Getting Things Done. I write down every small and big task in my to-do list, giving it different priorities, and mark them according to time demands. Every morning I look at what I have to do that day and put the tasks in the proper order.
How does Rekola Bikesharing market its product/services online?
Jan Střecha: Our strongest communication channel is newsletters. We have over a quarter of a million subscribers, supplement everything with social media and segment our newsletters into different groups. We hardly do any acquisition campaigns at all and have a large influx of new users even without them. Our main focus is on retaining users and driving them more frequently. We try to gradually get them into a mindset where they see bike-sharing as a daily means of transportation.
What specific tools, software and management skills are you using to manage your online marketing?
Jan Střecha: Our marketing team is very free. It consists of 4 members, no one works full time except me, they are part-timers or freelancers. But we’re really agile! We use Basecamp for task management, which is perfectly suited for the whole company, and Slack for communication. We also use Canva, which we absolutely love. It’s a very handy and inexpensive tool for creating graphics in such a small team without a designated graphics designer.
Tell us a customer success story of yours.
Jan Střecha: Last winter it snowed in Prague for the first time in a long time. So we decided to start bobsleigh sharing. We managed to get bobsleigh on the hills in 4 cities in the Czech Republic in 72 hours including programming in the app. Thanks to that we appeared in the Czech Forbes. After each ride, it was still possible to support the Nocleženka project, which helps homeless people who are not happy about the snow in the cities.
Your final thoughts?
Jan Střecha: I am very happy that people are gradually realizing that the bicycle can be not only a sporting tool but also a full-fledged means of urban transport. Although Prague and the Czech Republic, in general, are still car-centric, people are beginning to realize that cars should not be the centre of urban transport.
0 Comments