Business: Arav’E-bike: e-mountain bike hire and guiding
Location: Le Grand Bornand, France
Business life-cycle stage: start-up/early years
Key takeaways:
Setting up a new adventure business in France has similar pressures to the UK but a gourmet food-related offer is perhaps more of a differentiator!
Seize the moment: hopefully we won’t have another pandemic, but can a setback give you the time you need to focus?
Make time for yourselves
This story is a bit different from all our others to date because it features a business that isn’t based in the UK. Arav’E-bike can be found in the French Alps in a village called Le Grand Bornand, not far from Annecy. It’s also our first e-mountain biking business to be featured and, as you might expect from a French business, one that pays serious attention to food as part of its offer alongside expert guiding and high-quality bike rental.
Like some of our other featured businesses, the Adventure Collective first ran across Arav’E-bike as a client. We’ve rented their bikes both with and without guiding, and had a great experience on each occasion, so we got talking to business-owners Marion and Alex (who are also a couple) about their story of setting up and running their enterprise.
The pandemic ‘push’
Like several of the other entrepreneurs we’ve spoken with, Covid proved a bit of a watershed for them both. Alex had been working as a ski instructor and Marion was working in marketing for a ski school network. With the closure of the outdoor industry, it felt like time to put plans into action.
Marion says, “We both found ourselves without a job and for a long time I’d wanted to have my own business, and I’d thought about it a great deal – I’d wondered about setting up a ski school but there’s a lot of competition in that market, and I’d also experimented with a business renting ski clothes. What tipped the balance for us though was an offer from some friends of ours who run a ski school called Starski in Le Grand Bornand’s upper village, Le Chinaillon.”
She goes on to say, “Alex was chatting to them, and they said ‘our shop is empty half the year’, why don’t you take it on and run a mountain bike school? He was already qualified as a mountain bike instructor and so the idea began to take shape, especially as we both had very strong personal connections to the village – my grandparents lived there so I spent a lot of time there as a child.”
During 2020, they developed their business plan. The couple could see that the opportunity was with e-bikes because, unlike other Alpine resorts, Le Grand Bornand only has limited ski lifts operating in the summer to provide uplift for bikes. They did a lot of research into equipment and thinking about the niche they wanted to operate in.
Marion takes up the story again:
“Our target market from the start was holiday makers – we knew that July and August would be the big months for us, but we hoped we could extend the season into spring and autumn. There are a lot of second homeowners from Lyon and Paris who come here for weekends throughout the year, so we felt there was potential for a longer season.”
Although it was the shopfront on Le Chinaillon’s high street that had sparked the idea, when they initially opened for business in spring 2021 the Covid restrictions meant that they had to offer a ‘click and collect’ service, meeting clients in suitable car parks to drop rental bikes off.
Once the restrictions eased, the business as it is today was able to take shape: offering bike rental and guiding from their village base, focused on tours around the beautiful Aravis mountains, graded for all levels of rider.
Standing out from the crowd
The company’s first differentiator is that they are a ‘one stop shop’ being able to offer premium bike hire (they currently rent Cube full-suspension e-mountain bikes) and guiding under one roof, whereas most of their local competitors will hire bikes but then provide an introduction to a freelance guide rather than have their own instructors. And because they maintain their own bikes, Arav-ebike are able to provide rapid fixes where needed.
The personal service also extends to their focus on setting up the bikes in advance for each customer’s height, weight and experience, meaning clients have a really comfortable ride. Marion says,
“We’re the only company to do this round here, and we get lots of comments saying ‘Wow, the bike set up was perfect!’”
Other differentiators are their choice of guided trips which are tailored to all levels of rider, from complete beginners and families to experts wanting the thrill of gnarly downhill with some expert instruction.
But, in addition to the technical aspects, they’ve added in some lovely elements which showcase the history, nature and gourmet delicacies of the region. These range from a longer excursion with stops at mountain restaurants for local reblochon and potato fritters, washed down with a glass of Savoyard wine, to a family ride touring the blueberry fields in the high mountain pastures, concluding with a picnic of blueberry pie. They’ve also invested in a mobile smoothie system to keep younger (and older) riders motivated!
The final differentiator, which extends their season into winter, is e-biking on fat bike tyres on the snow once the ski slopes have closed at the end of the day: a very different experience, even for the expert rider.
And it’s also worth a mention for us English-speaking readers that both Alex and Marion speak excellent English which also helps attract the growing number of overseas visitors to the Aravis mountains.
Marketing – personal recommendations matter
We get on to talking about how Arav’E-bike market their services. As with many of the enterprises we talk to, getting great reviews on Google, Facebook or TripAdvisor, or via their own QR code feedback form, is key. While only about 10 per cent of their business is direct repeats, a great deal of business comes from word of mouth, and recommendations from owners of holiday lets to their visitors. Social media is also important, along with a good website and creating new content for their blog: Marion says posts such as a guide to determining your level of skill, and picking the right grade of trail, has been really successful in terms of generating web traffic. However, she always feels she could be doing more (again, in common with many of our other interviewees!):
“Given that my background is in marketing, I always feel I’m not doing enough but you have to balance it with all the other things there are to do in the business. This winter, I’m really going to sort out our website though!”
I was interested to know how much of a difference the French tourist office system makes, given that tourism plays such a key role in the national economy (nearly 8 per cent of French GDP in 2019) and the fact that the role of the local tourist office is better defined and supported by national, regional and local government than in the UK.
Marion is a bit equivocal about how much the Grand Bornand tourist office website listings have helped them, but she does emphasise the role that the staff in the tourist office can play.
“Visitors go into the office and ask for recommendations so it’s vital that the customer service staff are aware of your offer. We realised that they didn’t really know what e-mountain biking involved and thought it was very difficult and scary. So in June this year we invited the customer service team to come on a ride with us, and they saw that it was genuinely accessible to everyone, and they had a great day out, and that’s really encouraged them to recommend us to a wider range of visitors.”
The vital money bit
We go on to talk a bit about the vital financial side of things including how their revenue breaks down between the different elements of their offer. Standalone bike hire and guided rides generate equal amounts of revenue, but there are higher margins on the guided rides. Their pricing tends to be a bit higher than some of their competitors but this fits with their personalised, high-end service, particularly as they can’t offer the block booking discounts to the big hotels that competitors can.
In order to smooth the seasonality of income, they’ve invested in the fat bike capability for snow as we’ve mentioned, but they also have a regular kids club that runs throughout the year, and are thinking of setting up a similar club for adults who maybe ride alone and would like to go out in a group and get some instruction at the same time.
The other major financial consideration is their commitment to replacing their hire bikes every year. With a ‘stable’ of around 20 bikes costing an average of 5000 Euros, that’s a significant investment but it’s important to ensure quality and minimise technical issues for clients. Plus reselling the bikes after a year means they have retained a significant percentage of their value. Obtaining the right stock and spares has been a bit of a headache in the past, especially during the pandemic, but Marion says that Cube are a good supplier with an excellent distribution network and reliable bikes that are well suited to rentals.
While Alex and Marion clearly love what they do, they have agreed that they’ll review their future as a business after three years of operation. They don’t want to grow beyond the two of them working together, but they do want to feel they are making a decent living from the business. [Stop press! We checked in with them very recently, and they are delighted that for now they are hitting the targets they need to continue in business :-)]
Advice to others
When the discussion turns to advice they’d share with other start-up or growing adventure, they have two key learnings:
1. Be clear about who’s doing what in the business. Marion says it’s hard not to tread on each other’s toes, especially at the beginning, with two of them equally committed to the start-up. But now they’ve found their roles, set up systems, and focused on their particular expertise: while both of them lead clients on rides, Alex focuses on the bike maintenance and set-up, while Marion looks after the bookings, back-office and marketing.
2. Make time for yourselves. Marion says this can be particularly challenging when you are also in a relationship and living together, as it’s hard to identify ‘down time’. But for anyone starting out, she says:
“There’s always a pressure to do everything as well as possible, to be always available and to respond quickly to clients. And that’s important, but you also need to make time for yourselves. In our third year, we’ve managed to do that a little in the high season and take the odd day off – but you still feel guilty doing it!”
We look forward to hearing how the business develops in future: au revoir et merci!
Top business tips:
Work with reliable suppliers, especially when you have a lot of money tied up in equipment, and factor resale value into your cash flow projections
Identify a clear niche and don’t be tempted to compete on price
Be creative about how you can expand your offer, whether it’s with gourmet picnics or low-season kids clubs.
Key links:
Arav-ebike: https://aravebike.com/
Le Grand Bornand: https://en.legrandbornand.com/
Starski : https://star.ski/