The Quick, Quiet, and Low-Cost Road to an Eco-Friendly Future

Steinbeis Consultant provides support with the setting up of e-scooter sales structures

What’s the quickest and most inexpensive way to travel a mile to work? This question resulted in the development of the business model for eScooter-fun.com. For Alexander Heinzelmann, a business founder and alumnus of Steinbeis University Berlin, answering this question properly would involve intensive research and many rounds of testing. And his answer? An electric scooter. But before Heinzelmann could get on with setting up his company, a number of key issues needed addressing that would be central to success. Support with this came from Doris Deichselberger, director of the Steinbeis Consulting Center for Change Management and Business Coaching – plus an EXI Startup Bonus.

Heinzelmann is totally enthusiastic about his modern travel concept: “Door-to-door, the car journey to work used to take me between 8 and 10 minutes. Using an e-scooter only takes 4 minutes,” explains Heinzelmann. The ongoing cost of his e-scooter is also very reasonable. The electricity required for up to 1,000 kilometers on the road is only less than 5 euros. So in a nutshell, the e-scooter is quick but it’s also ecofriendly, clean, quiet, and inexpensive.

The idea of entering into the commercial distribution of e-scooters first came to Heinzelmann after observing that his colleagues and friends also enjoyed using them. He had already been involved in various topics relating to business startups through his degree at the School of International Business and Entrepreneurship (SIBE), which belongs to Steinbeis University Berlin. The management degrees offered by SIBE lay emphasis on entrepreneurial thinking, an aspect which is reflected in the large number of alumni who subsequently set up a business.

Heinzelmann still had a number of unanswered questions about starting his own business, so he turned to the Steinbeis Consulting Center for Change Management and Business Coaching. After the first consultation sessions with Doris Deichselberger, who was his Steinbeis Consultant, the duo identified a variety of specific topics that would need discussing with e-scooter manufacturers to establish a sensible framework for the new business.

Once the target group and its needs had been captured, the emphasis of a subsequent fast-track consultation shifted toward topics relating to planning and designing communication instruments. The key priority throughout was visibility on the internet, and this raised a number of central questions: How will his target group find out about eScooter-fun.com and where? What’s the best way to get the highest possible Google ranking? In what way will eScooter-fun.com be different from the competition?

Help through the Steinbeis Network from an experienced management consultant like Deichselberger gave Heinzelmann an important helping hand in setting up his company successfully. The young entrepreneur has already acquired a number of customers and his product has appeared at a variety of trade shows. “As well as her ideas regarding the actual project and lining up a variety of contacts through her own networks, the sessions with Ms. Deichselberger galvanized my resolve to pursue the discussed targets as agreed and make a success of it,” concludes Heinzelmann. No exhaust fumes, no noise, no problems finding a parking space. With a winning formula like that, the product has already turned a few heads at the Steinbeis Headquarters in Stuttgart. And now, the Steinbeis Network head office also has its own e-scooter.