Friday, 29 March 2024
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cykelOS launches multi-solution platform in bid to become ‘Cycling’s Operating System’

Formerly known as BikeBookings, cykelOS launched during the start of 2019, and has now expanded its range of bike industry specific products to include rental, workshop and custom iOS and Android app solutions, all connected via its free CRM.

BikeBookings was the company’s initial product, a retail management software system that focused on workshop efficiency for the bicycle business, launched back in 2016. Since then, the company has processed more than $25 million worth of service revenue through the service platform, with BikeBookings now re-branded to cykelWORKSHOP.

Co-Founder, Kristen Britz, said: “We have received lots of support and feedback from the industry appreciating our efforts in creating industry specific software. After two years of us providing a highly regarded workshop solution, our customers started asking us if we could create a rental system based on the same user experience.

“We promptly delivered this solution, realising there is significant scope for other innovations. The bike industry is under-served with software solutions designed for its unique requirements.”

This year, the company launched cykelRENTAL and cykelSHOPAPPS functions designed to help users engage with their customers via events, shop rides and group conversations in an attempt to boost community engagement.

Britz continued: “We give bike shops the tools to capitalise on this engagement by enabling them to post announcements (new releases, sales, etc.) and we also offer targeted push notifications. We let the cyclists and app users determine what they want to hear about and only send notifications to users on the list for that specific broadcast.”

cykelOS, cykelRENTAL, cykelSHOPAPPS and cykelWORKSHOP are all designed to link seamlessly with each other and the CRM. cykelOS has a built in SMS and email tool which integrates with LightSpeed, Bike Index and SmartEtailing, meanwhile the team are working with Specialized, Ascend, Service Reign, Shopify and others to further integrate and expand the API for a more connected environment.

Britz said: “We plan to expand our integrations in the future and make our open API available to all our customers, allowing them to integrate extensively with applications not currently on our list. I believe that integration between solutions leads to greater benefits for shops. The more opportunity for synchronisation and deeper data learning will empower retailers to make even better decisions on how they manage their business.”

Shops have flexibility over which solutions they use with cykelOS offering a 5% discount for two products and 10% off if all are selected. Each module is $50 per month all inclusive, with no limit on amount of SMS’s sent or received, users, inventory items, rental items or transactions.

cykelOS’ co-founders Britz and David Book work closely with shops and are upgrading their solution continuously to get the right fit for shops. cykelOS’ biggest customer is a group of 46 stores in Australia called 99 Bikes. Britz and Brook split their time between Australia and the US, with cykelOS having customers across 10 countries.