Nationwide coverage
In little more than a year, the number of dealers that offer the Tracefy GPS system has grown to 350. With this, the young company has quickly gained good national coverage. “When we started with our proposition for the aftermarket in 2021, we had no clue how big this would become,” explains Jeroen van Kester, Tracefy’s commercial director and cofounder.
“In addition to our B2B proposition for fleet management and our Connect & Go concept for OEM, we thought it would be amazing if we could also offer a GPS solution for consumers. A solution so that the consumer always knows where his/her bike is, even after theft. Irrespective of the e-bike brand.”
Compact GPS tracker and several connectors
This was not easy. After all, every electric bike is fitted differently, and there is often little room to install the GPS tracker. “We have been able to develop a very compact GPS tracker and several connectors for plug & play connections for the more widely known e-bike systems and we can pretty much equip any electric bike,” Van Kester adds.
Insurance companies require a GPS tracker
Because the GPS tracker makes it easy to locate the bike, several insurance companies are already offering a 20% discount on theft insurance if the electric bike is fitted with a Tracefy GPS tracker. As of April 2022, ENRA insurances even requires installing a GPS tracker on any cargo bike of more than €3,500. And as of now ENRA has only approved Tracefy GPS for the aftermarket.
Dozens of dealer requests per week
Van Kester: “We were already growing exponentially, but because of this we are receiving dozens of dealer requests per week. Pretty much every cargo bike has a sale price upward of €3,500, and they are sold a lot. We expect that this requirement will be imposed on other electric bikes above a certain price, just like having a second lock, as is currently often required.”
Interest from OEM
There is also a lot of interest in the Tracefy GPS solution from OEMs. “Currently there are a number of bike brands that offer ‘Tracefy connected’ models as a standard. We developed a custom white label app for every OEM client. We are talking to several other bike brands and this summer we are starting an interesting project where we are taking care of the installation afterwards for Amslod, a large e-bike brand in the Netherlands who delivers directly to consumers. In the meantime, there are also approximately 10,000 e-bikes fitted with the Tracefy system that are used for delivery or are rented out in the Benelux and Germany. And we’re looking forward to having our booth at Eurobike in Frankfurt again this year,” Van Kester says enthusiastically.
Ambitions
Tracey has also expanded internationally. The company has already 75 dealer locations in Belgium, has its first dealer in Copenhagen and is talking with a French distributor. There is even interest in distribution to bike shops and OEMs in North America. “Our newest GPS hardware version is equipped with a 4G chip with worldwide coverage, our app and other software are multilingual which makes it fairly easy to roll out the system in other countries as well,” Niels Penning, technical director of Tracefy, explains.
“We want to continue to grow in 2024. In the Netherlands and Belgium, but also in Germany and the Nordic Regions, France, and perhaps even the US! To facilitate this growth we recently moved to a new location in Rijswijk, the Netherlands, with lots more space where we can offer our growing team the best working atmosphere.
Eurobike
If you are interested in our IoT solutions or if you want to become a partner please visit: www.tracefy.com or contact us at info@tracefy.com or visit us at booth F27a in hall 8 in Frankfurt during Eurobike 2022.
This article is sponsored by Tracefy
