Moped rentals cruising in Columbia

When Frank Scozzafava was working in Manhattan for an Uber competitor, working the leading edge of the new frontier of ride-sharing, he had an idea.

The former University of South Carolina student wanted to start his own business. He had even pitched a self-customized bikini line on the television show “Shark Tank.”

The upstate New York native had been immersing himself in the world of app-driven transportation startups like car2go, Zipcar and CityBike, and was using a moped to get around New York’s congested city streets.

“So I though to myself, ‘Why isn’t anyone doing this with scooters?’” the 45-year-old entrepreneur said.

That was the birth of Scootaway, an on-demand moped rental business driven by smartphone technology that has popped up all over the Capital City.

Scozzafava and Scootaway board member Mike Campbell – son of the late former South Carolina governor Carroll Campbell – picked Columbia from a list of 157 cities nationwide to launch their new business.

They chose Columbia, in part, because the two were classmates at USC in the early 1990s and had an affinity for their alma mater. But more important, they said, was the fact that the city perfectly meets the company’s business model: a growing city with a large university on an urban campus and ever-scarcer parking.

They didn’t want the service to just be a lark or a curiosity, Scozzafava said. “The real business model is to deliver a viable mode of transportation.”

Rapid expansion planned

The business works like this:

▪ You download a smartphone application that registers and qualifies the renter. The technology allows customers to find a Scooter location on a map.

▪ The vehicles are unlocked through the app, allowing access to on-board helmets. The app also can start the scooter without a key.

▪ The riders just drive and return the scooter to a parking site near their destination. The rental rate is $2.99 per half hour; insurance, a helmet, gas and parking are provided.

▪ The scooters are tracked by GPS at all times, Scozzafava said. The company also can disable a scooter remotely if needed.

“We’ve had four stolen,” he said. “We got them back in 24 hours.”

The business went live five months ago with 38 mopeds. “That’s how many fit in a shipping container from China,” Scozzafava said.

The company has since added another 100 and wants to have 500 spread around downtown by the end of the year.

Because the business is so new, Scozzafava doesn’t know what the optimum number might be: Too few and people won’t consider Scootaway a viable service; too many would cut into the bottom line.

“We’re trying to find the right level,” he said. “But if we get too many we can just transfer them to another city.”

The long-term plan is to expand the business to other college towns and tourist areas.

The next stop for the business, Scozzafava said, is South Beach in Miami. They are also considering the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona State University in Tempe and the city of San Diego.

The owners also are considering franchising the business to smaller cities, perhaps beginning with Myrtle Beach and Greenville. The business model lends itself to franchising, Scozzafava and Campbell said, because it is essentially a vending business like soda or snack machines.

“Just with wheels,” Campbell said.

‘I had a blast with it’

There are presently Scootaways parked at 55 locations downtown, from city streets to private parking lots to individual businesses.

“Businesses like them because it brings them customers,” Scozzafava said.

Most are within 2 miles of campus. And the company also worked out an agreement with USC to place their mopeds on campus as well.

“We’re always looking for innovative ways to enhance transportation on campus,” USC spokesman Jeff Stensland said. “Our interest in this particular project was to test whether scooter rentals could reduce automobile traffic congestion on campus and decrease the need for students to purchase their own scooters.”

The company offers a free course every Sunday from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. to anyone who wants to learn to ride. It comes with a $10 rental discount and a free T-shirt.

“We’ve even had some older people show up for the classes,” Campbell said.

But the business has placed some scooters farther away at the large student housing complexes on Bluff and Shop roads. While the complexes, like Copper Beach and The Retreat, are farther away from campus and have shuttles, Scozzafava said they made sense for Scootaways.

“You don’t always want to wait for a bus,” he said.

Travose Owens, a USC student majoring in public health, lives at The Retreat. He recently decided to take one of the scooters for a spin.

“Parking (on or near campus) is like playing Russian roulette,” said Owens, of Allendale. “Sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you run into a line of cars. And you want to avoid parking tickets if you can.”

He found that the scooter was convenient – especially to park – “and was fun to just ride.”

“I had a blast with it,” he said.

The company hopes to expand dramatically over the next 12 months, Scozzafava said. “We’re hoping to be in 20 cities by this time next year.”

The business can also be expanded to other forms of transportation, like boats, golf carts and Segways.

“The sky’s the limit for this technology,” Campbell said. “It can be applied to anything that moves.”

This story was originally published September 12, 2015 at 7:33 PM.