The year 2020 in Comodule–what a ride!
The past year took quite a lot of unexpected turns, offering challenges, but also opportunities for micro-mobility and connectivity businesses around the world. Despite a pretty hectic year, we still achieved many mentionable goals, in terms of product development. Just to name a few, we managed to significantly increase the Diamonds’ mass production, launched a brand new IoT module called Bonnie&Clyde, developed our own connected light electric vehicle called Co-Scooter, and developed new features to our White Label App. Comodulers decided to take a look back in other areas as well and gather up the key takeaways of the year 2020. What was successful and what could we learn from? Take a look!
Industry retrospect to 2020 and what to consider in 2021
IoT takes over. Not hardware. IoT has become the next evolution of light electric vehicles (LEV). Why? Because it can be easily differentiated from competitors. Knowing the opportunities connectivity offers can enable you to create new business models, and helping you to stay ahead of the game in this fast-growing field. Considering that the pace of micro-mobility is faster than ever, it is also important to know when to market your products. A great example is the Swedish motorcycle brand CAKE which recently launched a customized app and connectivity features on the vehicles, bringing the customers’ user experience to a whole new level.
Business models diversify. Of course, they do. It’s because of what IoT allows us to create. By being more popular than ever, micro-mobility captures both OEM-s and fleet operators, and the roles of the players can vary. For example, Future Positive Capital recently described in their blog about why they decided to invest in Cowboy connected bikes with a total round of €23m. The investors were captured by the idea of connected LEV’s accelerating the adoption of electric bicycles into cities, thereby removing cars from the streets and helping to reduce the damages of mass urbanization (source: Future Positive Capital).
Exploding market. The new way of doing things is here. This also concerns the way people are accustomed to commuting, preferring LEV-s as an answer to socially distanced commutes. This means that the time for handcrafted IoT is over - the market needs highly robust and scalable platforms. According to a recent study by Deloitte, the cycling industry is forecasted to take its place next to 5g, smartphones, and robots. Already by 2023, the overall e-bike sales unit is estimated to 40 million, generating a whopping 19 billion euro profit (source: BIKE europe).
Crises or not, we continued growing internationally
In with the new. While everyone else was minimizing their costs by letting people go, Comodule hired 38 new employees. That helped to grow our team to 78 people, increasing the number of micro-mobility, IoT, and production experts in Comodule. We opened our factory in 2019 and by now we have a team of 20 production experts working in the factory. In addition to the growing number of teams, we also had a baby boom and grew our Comobabies’ team by 7 babies. We have always valued work-life-balance and celebrate together when new members join the team.
Automated the work processes. Comodule got certified by Bureau Veritas Certifications ISO 9001, ISO 14001, and ISO 45001 which claim that the Management System of the above organization has been audited and found to be in accordance with the requirements of the management system standards. Since the company is expanding fast it needs more structure and automation. Thereby, our team continues working on both inward- and outward-looking plans for lifting the company to a new level. As it is more in-depth, we have a better way of analyzing the results of our work and creating strategies with a clear structure.
Growing internationally. Besides having 78 Comodulers and 12 different nationalities onboard we continue hiring. Also, Comodule’s team in Germany grew as well, and starting from January 2021, there are 4 people in our Sales team, leading the way of introducing Comodule internationally to new clients. And since the team in Germany grew, they also got a new office where to develop their team-work.
We’re all about nutrition. Roughly, Comodulers have eaten 624 kg of bananas over the past year and as it turns out we consume 1000 kg of oranges in a year. What can we say? Nothing beats fresh orange juice and a sweet and healthy banana snack during lunchtime.
We always keep going. Coffee helps of course. In fact, we drink quite a bit of it. We consumed around 192 kg of coffee beans in the historic year where we spent at least a quarter of the year in home offices, far from the coffee machines. The average monthly coffee consumption was about 10 kg in the office and 6 kg in our Co-Factory.
Keeping the team spirit up. 2020 was tough due to social distancing and lockdowns but nevertheless, we managed to learn how to play tennis and drums together, had a sauna night near the sea, wore high heels and suits in the red carpet gala, and successfully ran two internal hackathons. This is how Comodulers’ hold together and never lose their temper.
Comodule got a new look and built the world's best e-scooter
Launched a Co-Scooters’ test fleet called Tuul. Since launching Comodule’s very own Co-Scooter in May 2020, we aimed to learn all of the challenges our clients face when selling and marketing their products. By now, we have a much better understanding of these processes, which help us connect to our customers better than ever before. We have validated our hypothesis and are happy with the results: Yes, the scooter lasts! Yes, it is extremely good to drive! Yes, there is no point in stealing it! Yes, it even works after being 4 weeks in the river; and yes, people prefer it over the competition!
Should you be interested in testing Co-Scooters on your fleet, don’t hesitate to contact our sales team– sales@comodule.com.
We got a new look. We also built a brand new homepage in only two months. The idea was to clear up everything too complicated and to bring viable information closer to our visitors. In order to do so, we didn’t re-arrange anything but started from scratch. Relying on the feedback we’ve gotten so far, the new look has been a success. What do you think? Agree?
Adapting to a new way of communication. Since participating in global fairs(as we used to) was not a possibility in 2020, we turned it around and held our own webinar, regarding our newly launched IoT product, Bonnie & Clyde. The goal was to interact with OEM-s and fleet operators, get new contacts, and introduce Comodule’s activities on a global scale. Mission accomplished!
Thank you for keeping an eye on us and reading our articles. 2020 has been challenging but exciting and on behalf of team Comodule we wish you all the best in 2021! Let’s empower emissionless transport and make the world a better place!
