For reducing carbon emissions, assisted pedalling is much more efficient than electric vehicles
In the early days of the pandemic, when US buyers began snapping up electric bikes at unprecedented rates, the Belgian e-bike start-up Cowboy took notice. Before then, says the company’s co-founder and CEO Adrien Roose, Cowboy had looked at the US as a backwater where per capita sales lagged in comparison to Europe. The boom convinced Roose to jump in, and in September Cowboy began taking orders from US customers.
Like many of its competitors in an increasingly crowded market, Cowboy sells its e-bikes directly to consumers. The company has a brick-and-mortar store in Brussels and one in Berlin, but none outside Europe. Of the more than 25,000 units it has sold so far, most have been online. The low-overhead sales model made it relatively easy to enter the US market. The only property the company bought was the “cowboy.com” web address, which belonged to a forum for actual cowboys.
To make this contact possible, Cowboy launched an on-demand test ride service in ten cities, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. The idea, which has also been tried by direct-to-consumer rivals such as Rad Power Bikes and VanMoof, is a new spin on the old door-to-door sales model. Customers go online to book a one-hour ride and a Cowboy “ambassador” brings the bike out to them.
The broad shift to e-commerce has begun to cool as pandemic restrictions have eased, making it that much more important for retailers to try to connect with potential buyers in person. “The consumer is going back into stores and back into the shopping experience,” says Don DiCostanzo, CEO at Pedego Electric Bike, which sells through 208 dealerships across North America. Traffic and sales at Pedego’s stores has increased dramatically this spring compared to 2021, according to DiConstanzo.
Hanan’s approach was low-key. He mostly let the product speak for itself. The Cowboy 4 has a minimalist design, with most of the wires and guts hidden inside its aluminium frame. There is a mount in the middle of the handlebars for attaching a smartphone. Once a rider downloads the company’s app and connects to the bike via Bluetooth, the phone becomes a dashboard, displaying battery charge, speed, weather and a map.
Cowboy’s closest competitor is the Dutch direct-to-consumer brand VanMoof, which also makes high-end commuter e-bikes built to interface through smartphones. Like its Dutch rival, Cowboy custom designs most of the parts on its bikes. VanMoof, though, has a seven-year head start in the US market. The latest versions of both companies’ bikes cost just under $3,000.
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