2023-08-12 13:00:00
Dusseldorf The northern German coasts are so popular that it sometimes gets crowded. Getting hold of a beach chair from one of the more than 400 private rentals and communities on the North Sea and Baltic Sea is therefore not that easy. Where exactly the baskets are and whether they are fully booked, holidaymakers can only guess before the trip.
Strandbutler wants to change that. With an app, tourists are able to reserve their place by the water and pay online in advance. The start-up wants to make beach chair rentals easier and more accessible. Landlords should also benefit. You can manage inquiries in the app, rent beach chairs in the evenings and out of season and at the same time get by with fewer staff. “We want to digitize the entire vacation on the coast,” says founder Bernhard Sourdeau.
Sourdeau has startup experience at fintech Payever and Ritual, a hospitality marketplace. In 2019 he founded his own company together with Christian Henk and Jens Hinrichs. In November 2022, Strandbutler merged with its main competitor, Beachbuddy. Its founder, Jens Bliesener, introduced better locks with water protection, exchangeable button cells and Bluetooth functions.
How does the Strandbutler concept work?
Beach chair owners get the locks from the beach butler and can manage their beach chairs via the app. Strandbutler receives an average commission of ten percent on every booking.
Holidaymakers book via the app or the website, the landlord releases the basket and users can unlock the lock with their mobile phone.
If you don’t have a mobile device or don’t want to take it with you, you can get a chip from the landlord to unlock the beach chair. Strandbutler takes care of the maintenance and charging of the locks with an external company.
What are the challenges?
According to the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA), there are 100,000 beach chairs in Germany. The beach chair market has a clear upper limit. An investor in a large European venture capital firm, who knows the tourism industry well, notes that the addressable market is too small for a venture capitalist, the frequency of bookings in a year is too low and the cost of customer acquisition is too high.
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“Strandbutler’s business model is highly seasonal without a broad or international range,” says e-commerce and digital expert Nils Seebach, managing director of digital consultancy Etribes. Expanding the offer is not sufficient, as there are already established competitors such as Open Table or Getyourguide. He sees the potential as low.
Who invests in Beach Butler?
In July 2022, the start-up closed a seed financing round of 1.2 million euros.
Lucius Bunk, founder and managing director of Auerbach Schifffahrt GmbH & Co. KG, has invested in Strandbutler. In his opinion, Strandbutler has achieved a good market position, both in terms of innovation and in terms of the number of partner communities and private landlords. Now the start-up has to achieve the goals it has set itself in order to be able to sustain itself and grow organically. The priority is to break even in the next 18 months.
The concept works because Strandbutler addresses partners and users in a friendly manner and creates the basis for a digital platform on the coast. On the Sylt website, for example, visitors who want to book a basket in Kampen are forwarded directly to Strandbutler. The rush to the beach chairs is now enormous. In Kampen, 60 percent of the turnover at the beginning of the year should already be generated. “It’s like selling tickets at a concert. In the first year, our server even crashed for a short time,” says Sourdeau.
What’s next?
Strandbutler wants to be able to offer 30,000 baskets by 2026, and the app currently has 10,000. Next year, Strandbutler also wants to be operationally profitable and then also be in the black on the bottom line by 2025. The founders are expecting sales of one million euros this year.
A test is also running: Strandbutler has included gastronomy offers in the app at two locations. With a QR code, the guests should order food directly in the beach chair.
In the future, it should also be possible to pay the tourist tax directly in the app. New solar-powered locks are also being planned. “In the future, we may be able to offer landlords an all-rounder package including locks and beach chairs,” says Bliesener. Lakes in Germany, coasts in Poland, the Netherlands and Italy are other opportunities to expand.
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