SANTA MONICA, Calif. (BRAIN) — A potential buyer may breathe new life into popular bike rental platform Spinlister, which announced last month that it would shut down. The tech company, which launched as a peer-to-peer bike rental program and went on to offer a dockless bike share program and bike rental and demo management software for bike shops, has received multiple offers from companies interested in acquiring its assets, according to CEO Marcelo Loureiro.
"Unfortunately, I can't speak right now ... I am currently under an NDA and I can't share any information at this point," he said in an email to BRAIN. "After our closing announcement we received multiple offers from companies interested in acquiring our assets or engage in partnerships to keep the service alive."
Loureiro announced Spinlister's shutdown in a farewell message on the company's website in late March, and emailed retailers to tell them of the planned shutdown. At the time, he said the company wasn't able to raise new funding to keep the business going. Loureiro was an investor in Spinlister when it launched in 2012 and later invested further and became CEO.
In its short existence the service signed up several retailers, who hailed it for its simplicity of use and integration with POS providers.
"It was a great system," Joseph Nocella, owner of 718 Cyclery in Brooklyn, New York, told BRAIN this week. "They took a 17 to 18 percent cut from each rental, but we handled the pricing and didn't have to do a damn thing. We didn't need to run a credit card for the full deposit on a bike or other crazy things with rentals. It was a great way to post the bikes we had. The software was great and they were really responsive.
"It was almost too good to be true," he added. "It integrated with our POS system, which is Lightspeed. There was no downside at all. It's rare you get to say that. It was convenient."
Other bike rental software companies have reached out to Nocella since. And bike rental software companies that BRAIN reached out to this week all said they've fielded a lot of inquiries from bike shops since Spinlister's announcement, as they try to find a replacement before the busy rental season kicks off.
This is a developing story. Make sure to turn to BRAIN's May 1 issue for an in-depth look at the bike rental software market.
