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) Flexicar Flying High 1st November 2007If you're flying Qantas this month, tune into Radio Q to hear Flexicar Co-founder, Monique Conheady, interviewed by Peter Switer on Talking Business. You can read the full transcript below or click here. PS: My next guest on Talking Business is the Chief Executive Offi cer of Flexicar, Monique Conheady. Monique is the 32-year-old green entrepreneur behind a new business model in Australia called car sharing. Flexicar has been in business for just two years and already has over 1,000 members and 40 cars on the road in Melbourne and Sydney. Taking the lead from successful ventures in the US and UK, Flexicar parks cars around inner suburban streets and has been shown to take 7 to 10 cars off the road for every 30 members. In an age where car owners are being hit with rising petrol prices, costly upkeep and growing environmental concerns, the concept of car sharing would seem like an attractive option for many. Thanks for joining us on Talking Business, Monique. MC: Thanks, Peter. It’s nice to be here. PS: Now why don’t you tell us your background? You’re a green entrepreneur and you’ve got this great idea. Where did it all come from? MC: I guess it came from a few different directions over time. My father is a small business owner and had a small business family background and he always encouraged us to think about having our own business, doing our own thing. So there was that right from an early age, and I think I entered the workforce in the dot com boom and there was lots of entrepreneurial activity going on and it was quite exciting. Several of my friends were involved in that stage but I guess I had a particular interest in entrepreneurial businesses that had a sustainability or a green focus, that had sort of social and environmental benefi ts, so like Anita Ruddick and those sorts of people were kind of entrepreneurs that I had looked at and aspired to. So, those sorts of infl uences and background was why I decided to start my own business in the sustainability/green space. PS: I must admit when I heard that Anita had passed away I thought to myself, how many young men and women around the world have been inspired by what she did. You know, in the course of your answers it just showed how prevalent and what a big impact she’s had on entrepreneurs. Tell me this, the Flexicar idea, did you go overseas and see something like this or did you read about it? Where did you get the idea for Flexicar? MC: I was living in London in the late 90s and one of the other co-founders of Flexicar, Tim Watts, was living in Boston and I visited him on a holiday and he said, “check this idea out.” A service that we’ve modelled our business on called Zip Car was launching in Boston and in North America in the late 90s and, really intrigued by it back living in Europe and travelling around Europe, looked at and investigated the concept further and sort of logged it as one going, yeah, I can understand why it works in Europe, will it work in North America and is there an opportunity for it in Australia? Five years later we were both back living in Melbourne thinking about the next thing in our careers and next opportunities and investigated the success of Zip Car and other services in North America and felt that if it worked in cities like Boston and Seattle and San Francisco, Toronto, Vancouver, that it had potential here in Australia so we started the market research, did a business plan and then decided to launch the service. PS: You’ve picked on cities that I guess are similar to Melbourne or Sydney because they’re not as big as New York or London. Did you select those cities in particular because of that? MC: Not necessarily but it has shown to work very successfully in cities where there is good public transport but not a public transport totally city. In New York and London there is very much the Tube and the subway that predominates the transport mode, and in cities like Boston and Toronto, San Francisco, like I mentioned, and also similar to Melbourne and Sydney, good public transport network but not a predominating public transport network. PS: Yeah, good observation. So why don’t you explain to people listening now how it actually works because it seems to me there is a paradigm shift needed for this business to really take off because we are stuck in our own ideas – we jump in our car, we listen to radio along the way, we go to work, we park the car – that’s what our brains tell us to do. Tell us what you do, and the next question is going to be, how are you going to achieve that paradigm shift? MC: Okay, how the service works is people join as a member and they get a smart card which we call a Flexi Card. They make bookings over the internet – they can make bookings for as short as an hour and then in half hour increments after that. They walk up to the car, or cycle or catch public transport to the cars – ours cars are dotted around inner city suburbs in designated parking bays… PS: Do they have advertising on them? MC: They have bay marking. We have a number of cars that are parked in designated on-street bays provided by city councils that we work with in Melbourne and Sydney and they are similar to like a taxi rank/disabled zone. The area is designated specifically for the Flexicar vehicles and so there is signage and marking on the bays to say “No Standing. Flexicar Car Share Vehicles Only”. Our off-street parks are parks that we have in private locations – we do advertise more in those locations to bring awareness. So when a member has arrived at one of the locations, they use their Flexicard to swipe across the reader, it unlocks the doors, it deactivates the engine immobiliser in the vehicle. The keys are located in the car, they then start the car, drive it around for the period of their booking, bring it back to that location and use their Flexicard to swipe out and that locks it all, immobilises the vehicle, and it’s ready for the next member who’s got a booking. PS: And you’re also sort of saying that you have designated parking spots as well? MC: Yes, we’ve got some fantastic partnerships with a number of city councils in Melbourne and Sydney where they’re providing designated parking spots. The support of councils has been absolutely fantastic for this service because it makes it very visible on street locations – the locations that we seek are highly visible, are safe traffi cable areas, so often a lot safer than off-street locations – and the councils have been really keen to get on board because parking pressure in the inner city is one of their key issues that they deal with with their residents and local businesses. As you said at the beginning, car share services have been shown to take approximately 8 cars off the road for every one vehicle that we have on the road so if we can ease the parking pressure, if there can be 20/30 people in a local area using one of our cars rather than all having a car on the street, it means the parking pressure is decreased in the area. PS: Can you give us an idea of how much it costs if I’m the kind of person who really uses public transport to go to work each week but on the weekend I probably want to drive the car maybe to markets across town or something like that. Maybe, let’s just say, for a 5 hour usage on a Saturday and possibly 2 hours on a Sunday, so I’m a 7 hour type user. What’s it going to cost me a week? MC: It will cost you around $70. It’s around about $10 an hour, so it’s very cost… PS: And there are no other costs after that? It’s $70? MC: Yeah, our rates are between $9 and $12 an hour depending on what plan you’re on, so the average sort of use like that would be about $70 a week. PS: So about $3,500 a year? MC: Well, yes. PS: Sorry, my mathematics being too quick. MC: Yeah, that’s alright. Compared to car ownership, you can see on RACV or any of the motoring sites that even a small car costs about $650 a month to run – that is around $8,000 a year to run – so significant cost savings. PS: Yeah, okay. So how are you going to get the world to change their minds? Like listening to this program, I reckon I’ve given you some business because some people on the plane are going to say, yes, this sounds great but how are you going to reproduce it, how are you going to market this? MC: Our marketing has been mainly through direct marketing. Referral, word of mouth, from our existing members is by far the most common way that new members come to us. As soon as people give this a go, see how much money it saves, see how convenient it is and it fits into the inner city mobile urban world to just pay as you go, pay as you need, pick up a car when you want, drop it back, so it really fi ts into the lifestyle of our target market inner city, young working professionals; couples that maybe have one car occasionally need a second, inner city small businesses that don’t have fleets. So word of mouth is our main source of new market. PR and having the opportunity to speak with people like yourself, Peter, is great to get the awareness of the concept and the brand out there. We also do a lot of internet-based marketing. We’re effectively an internet based business so a lot of marketing is online. PS: Okay, fantastic. Now if people want to see about what you’re doing, what’s your website? MC: The website is flexicar.com.au PS: Monique, thanks for joining us on Talking Business. MC: Thanks, Peter. |
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