Do it better: the case study of Flixbus

[Deleted78083]

In the early 2010's, a new bus ride company emerged in Western Europe: Flixbus. At the time, the market was fragmented between two big companies, Eurolines and Megabus, and several regional companies. It was a crowded market and in a niche where it is not too easy to innovate or radically transform the industry. But Flixbus got it right because most buses companies at the time, utterly sucked.

Here, I ll outline how they managed to grow to become one of the biggest coach travel company in Europe.

Step 1: sell better for cheaper

The biggest competitor of Flixbus was Euroline, and, well, I don't want to crap on the company, but as a former extensive customer of bus travel, everyone knew that Eurolines sucked AND was expensive. They were also rude and dishonest, had a terrible web interface and ticket system. I have never taken megabus so I can't say anything regarding this company. When Flixbus first started, they made sure to be on popular routes for extremely cheap (they were by far the cheapest transportation mode between two cities). The fact that they had an easy app, easy website, nice drivers, comfy buses and (not at the beginning) wifi in the bus didn't take me long to become an avid customer. They had also a generous refund policy, where you could cancel and get full refund up to 2 hours before departure.

When I started taking Flixbus, I was almost always alone because they were brand new and people didn't trust them yet. But rather fast, people started switching and before they could react, Megabus was bought by Flixbus.

Step 2: buy your competitors:

The first 5 or 6 years, Flixbus lost money because the tickets they were offering were super cheap to lure customers towards their services. Quickly enough, competitors started losing customers and money and Flixbus bought them all to consolidate its position, leaving in the market one big competitor to satisfy anti-trust laws.

Step 3: monetize:

Once they emerged as first in their market (after only 5 or 6 years!!), THEN ONLY they started thinking about making the company profitable. They slightly increased ticket prices and started selling extras, slashed unprofitable routes, increased coaches capacities, while keeping the quality they had had since the beginning.

Today, Flixbus is one of the most popular coach travel in Europe with a revenue of +215 million euros. They achieved this by seeing what was wrong in the coach travel market and give a similar service of higher quality while being cheaper at the beginning to acquire customers.

Bottom line: no need to come up with the new Netflix, choose a niche where companies give a crappy service and offer something that will change the standards of the industry.

 

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[Einfamilienhaus]

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[Putt]

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[Oden]

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[Bobby_italy]

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[Knugs]

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Ev vji ipf O qsifunopepvimz djuti vji nusi iyqiptowi FC uqvoup et ov xet vuu nipvemmz veyoph huoph xovj gmoyvseop.

 

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