Innovation

Once we’re inside, dry and settled with a warm cup of tea, Liam shares more about how it all works:

“By using the bikes, we can get around all of the traffic woes of the central city, and we don't rely on parking so we can be nice and consistent with our deliveries. All the while being sustainable.”

This capability to avoid congested roads and negate sparse downtown parking allows them to provide a superior service at a competitive price; currently around 30% cheaper than their fossil fueled local competitors. They transport a wide variety of goods up to 90kg per delivery, including flowers, food, documents, furniture and even ladders. But sometimes the more unusual customer requests come at the smaller end of the scale:

“[Once] I had a call from an international number asking me to deliver a pen from Paper Plus to their partner at a hotel”, Liam recalls.

As we talk, Liam’s phone pings with a last-minute urgent courier request. To book a delivery, customers can either submit a one-off form on the Pedals website or repeat customers can use the easy-to-use booking platform which sends the info directly to active riders on the road. Once received, the team are at the ready to get the delivery underway, or slot later requests into the schedule. The whole process is easy and efficient for both the customer and the Pedals staff.

This innovative delivery service helps contribute to several UN Sustainable Development Goals, most notably SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities and Communities. By replacing petrol powered couriers with e-bikes, the Pedals team has a tangible impact on decreasing traffic congestion, leading to smoother traffic flow, lower emissions from idling vehicles, and enabling more efficient use of urban space. Since the e-bikes require less energy per kilometre travelled, the Pedals service helps to promote energy efficiency by reducing the overall demand for electricity and fossil fuels. This in turn encourages sustainable urban planning, incentivising the local council to invest further in cycling infrastructure which is a critical component of sustainable urban accessibility and mobility planning.

Inspiration

Originally from Dunedin, Liam returned to the city in 2022 after living away for several years and immediately saw a business opportunity for a pedal powered courier service. Since late 2021, downtown Dunedin has been undergoing a number of road and infrastructure upgrades including redevelopment of the main street as well as an impending central hospital rebuild. These upgrades have created challenges for traffic navigating the central city, causing congestion and frustration amongst road users.

“Supposedly, they're going to slow traffic down along the arterial routes of the city. So, it seemed like a good time to establish such a business,” reflects Liam on his decision to start Pedals. “I definitely saw it as an opportunity in terms of the logistical nightmare of navigating the central city by car or van, which all the other courier companies are doing.”

After four months of market research, business planning, building the bikes, and consulting with a similar e-bike courier enterprise in Wellington, Pedals launched into the market in late 2022, and Liam hasn’t looked back. But a good business case wasn’t his only motivation for this endeavor; he was also inspired by his passion for cycling and getting more members of the community commuting by bike.

“I’m a firm believer that more bikes are a good thing in our city, and I thought this business would be a way of promoting or getting more exposure of bikes out on the streets. I think more people out there on bikes showing that they're getting around town faster than anybody else will hopefully lead to more people considering riding a bike.”

Indeed, Liam’s cycle-centered motivations align with burgeoning research showing that cities with high bicycling rates have safer roads (Marshall & Ferenchak, 2019) and higher happiness and wellbeing levels (Cloutier et al., 2017). Not only this, but commuter cyclists show lower mortality risks than their car-driving peers, as well as increased cardio-respiratory health (Andersen et al., 2000; Vuori et al., 1994).

Overall impact

By offering a sustainable alternative to traditional car and van courier delivery, Liam has built a flourishing enterprise using sustainable transport solutions. The human-powered nature of the Pedals service provides a unique selling proposition that appeals to sustainability-minded customers, while their ability to deliver efficiently and at a lower cost appeals to customers whose main focus is their bottom line. There are no other bike or e-bike couriers in Dunedin, and this sustained competitive advantage has led to strong start up growth and customer loyalty, with Pedals retaining all of their initial customers since they first opened their doors. The business now supports three part-time staff on sustainable living wages contributing to SDG 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth. Liam also pays himself a small weekly wage to do what he loves – riding his bike.

In the short and long-term, every package delivered by Pedals equates to one less car or van on the street:

“There are businesses who had their own car that they would use and now they just use us instead. Then there are the other customers who would use another company that would use a car.”

Having delivered over 3,500 packages since opening their doors, Pedals has replaced many car-based deliveries with bicycle powered trips. Since they began, Liam and his team have travelled over 28,700km on their e-bikes, completing deliveries large and small. Using the New Zealand government’s emissions factor calculations, had this travel been done in a post-2015 Toyota Hiace petrol van (a popular courier vehicle in New Zealand), this would have produced about 5,340kg CO₂e emissions. By replacing these deliveries with e-bike powered transport, the Pedals team have saved this amount of carbon emissions from ever entering the atmosphere, and this number only grows every time Liam or one of this team climbs on their bike for a delivery.

Business benefit

As Pedals approaches its 2nd birthday, Liam reflects on how they’ve grown so far:

“We’re slowly building a fleet and we'll be getting a third bike later this year. The team is growing.”

Liam’s approach to business has been all about sustainable growth right from the beginning, so that they have a solid base to expand from:

“One of the things that I've been doing with this business is obviously wanting to grow, but not do anything too outrageous in terms of growth spurts”.

It’s this balanced approach to business development that has led to Pedals’ incremental and maintainable growth in revenue, staff, and customers. The business is now profitable and currently generates between $5-7k per month in revenue, and this is steadily increasing as the business matures. They now have around 70 active client accounts and deliver an average of 60 courier orders per week. All of the company’s ‘early adopter’ customers remain clients to this day, showing the strength of Pedals’ customer loyalty and service offering. These successes indicate how the Pedals business model is both sustainable and replicable.

The brand has received strong local and national recognition, with Liam being interviewed for the Otago Daily Times as well as Radio New Zealand and Critic Te Arohi. Alongside this, Pedals received notable recognition in the Sustainable Business Award category at the ‘Keep Dunedin Beautiful’ awards in 2023, acknowledging their efforts in sustainable entrepreneurship.

Social and environmental benefit

While same-day and urgent courier services are their bread and butter, Pedals also deliver Dunedin’s local paper each day – distributing over 300 papers every morning, fossil fuel free. But delivering the paper by e-bike hasn’t only reduced emissions, it’s also had a huge environmental impact on waste reduction. Prior to Pedals taking on the newspaper route, the paper was delivered by car with newspapers thrown out the car window as it was driven around town. This meant that the product had to be plastic wrapped, since they would usually land in the middle of people’s driveways or lawns, leaving them exposed to the weather. By being on e-bikes, Liam and his team are able to get closer to people’s houses, front porches or letterboxes, placing the newspapers in safe places protected from the elements. This has meant most newspapers no longer need to be plastic wrapped:

“We’ve managed to basically remove 95% of the plastic… We're talking 1000s of metres of clingfilm plastic wrap that we’re not even letting get into circulation, let alone removing completely. So, we’re really stoked about that.”

Pedal’s impact extends beyond reducing emissions and pollution to promoting good health and wellbeing throughout the wider Dunedin community, driven by Liam’s passion for cycling and strong community values:

“There's a social benefit to biking, I think, where bikes can bring people together and they can actually help people engage a lot more with their community. So that's definitely something that I want to keep driving forward.”

Cycling in Dunedin enhances transport efficiency, health, economic and social outcomes, with the number of commuter cyclists in the city expected to grow rapidly over the coming years. By leading by example and advocating for increased cycling in the city, Pedals actively contributes to a stronger social fabric for Dunedin, furthering the bike cause and encouraging the growth of the cycling community.

“We're hopefully empowering more people to be a bit more confident on bikes in the city”, Liam shares.

Indeed, as our interview winds up and Liam leaps back on his bike to head out into the rain for his final delivery of the day, I am personally inspired to leave my car at home more often and use my fossil fuel free legs to get around instead. Though, unlike Liam, I’d much prefer to ride my bike when the sun is out.

Interview

Liam Harrison, Managing Director