De Kotmobiel
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De Kotmobiel
Relocation
Private limited liability company
Belgium
Unique, Simplicity
Bernard Van Daele
Simon Landsheere
Bernard Van Daele
Summary
De Kotmobiel was founded in 2015. It offers a very good opportunity for students to move everything from their former room to their new room. They don’t have to disturb their parents and ask them if they want to help them relocating their belongings. Everything is done at a student price so that may not be a barrier to call De Kotmobiel to help you moving everything you’d like.
Background
Mr. Van Daele started this company with the idea of helping students when they want to move to their own student room. He does this project besides his other company, Project Quintus. This is an education company for the secondary school and as he doesn’t have to do presentations in the months July, August and September, he can help students in these months to move to their own place.
He didn’t have to do any financing to start this company because he already had a private limited liability company. He describes his new project, De Kotmobiel as a very useful, fast, intelligent and unique formula that can be used by students to relocate in 1 movement.
Mission
Helping students with their relocation problems.
Vision
Having one removal van in every big student city of Belgium.
Values
Quick response, being friendly all the time and simplicity.
Business Model
The creation of his business model was based on the classic business model of the removal companies. He just changed the target group to students in particular. Students take a lot of stuff to their new accommodation so their parents, or someone else has to drive more than one time from their former living room to their new one. That’s how De Kotmobiel helps them at a very low fare.
De Kotmobiel offers 2 types of services. You can use the removal services for a half day at the price of €50, or a full day at the price of €80. For every extra hour, you pay an additional €10. But the service is flexible, let’s explain this with an example. When you use the service for a half day (from 8a.m. until 12 a.m.), you’ll have to pay €50. But when there is a traffic jam of 1 hour on the highway, then the service will last until 1p.m. You only pay for the hours Mr. Van Daele really worked, this starts from when he leaves his house until the moment everything has been moved to the student’s room. For every km above 100 km, people pay an extra fee of 20 cents per kilometre.
To start up this business model, he didn’t get any information of an organisation. He does everything by himself. So of course, he experienced some advantages and disadvantages. An advantage is that his service is very quick and cheap so students are interested in his service, but a big disadvantage is that students live in the city centre of big cities, so it’s difficult to find parking places. This can give some problems when they need to unload the belongings of the student.
Growth
Like many start-ups, the results of De Kotmobiel are not as good as he expected them to be. He did some promotion by distributing flyers in September 2015, but he only got 12 reservations yet. This might be because he started when a lot of students already moved, but he says that it’s also because Belgians like to move on their own. More than half of his reservations he already had, were of foreign students who study in Belgium now. But after September 2016 he will be able to see if his service will become more popular, and also profitable.
Customers
De Kotmobiel’s main target group are students. But also non-students can make use of De Kotmobiel's services, but Mr. Van Daele doesn’t focalise on those people.
Competitors
De Kotmobiel doesn’t have any direct competitor because his formula is unique. For the moment there isn’t a company who copied his concept yet. Indirect competitors are more common in his sector. Examples of indirect competitors are the normal removal vans of companies like Stock-it, Maxci, … Besides this, other indirect competitors are the parents of the students who will move the belongings of the students themselves.
Conclusion
The opportunities for De Kotmobiel are that the concept starts to work and he has to invest in more vans, employees, … On the other hand, the threats that he fears, are that the concept doesn’t work, or that all the reservations come at once because every student moves at the same time.
The most important thing he learnt about his business model is that the formula works in theory but that it’s difficult to meet your expectations in real life. Besides this, he also learnt that money is one of the most important elements when you create a business. Consumers want an excellent service, but at a very low price. It’s difficult to find the balance in it. He wanted to add that when you start a company, you have to make sure that your business model is really unique, so it has a chance to grow at its own pace.
In a few years, Mr. Van Daele hopes that his customer database will grow a lot in Leuven at first, and after that he wants to expand to the other student cities in Belgium.
Posted on 28/03/2016