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Yes, it's absolutely a case of vendor lock-in. While the bankruptcy won't brick your bike, any vendor-specific part (and that seems to be most of the bike) brea
by hnbad 3y ago
Yes, it's absolutely a case of vendor lock-in. While the bankruptcy won't brick your bike, any vendor-specific part (and that seems to be most of the bike) breaking will leave you with a broken bike and no way to fix it.
I'm pretty sure the business plan here was to generate "recurring revenue" by "vertical integration" in the "long tail" or some collection of buzzwords like that but it boils down to making customers depend on you after the sale and forcing them to come back to you for anything they need.
This reminds me of how software is becoming increasingly subscription based and triple-A games have moved to "live services" and "season passes" as a business model. I guess at least Van Moof actually sold you the bike and didn't make you rent it.
- generic92034 3y ago> I guess at least Van Moof actually sold you the bike and didn't make you rent it. The potential loss for the customers would have been much lower if they had rented the bikes for, say, one month at a time. They might lose some days of paid usage in the worst case (as it now seems to be, they would not have lost anything in that one-month-rent case). But then they could switch to any competitor. I guess sometimes renting is not tightening the vendor lock-in, compared to buying.