Local Estimates of Segway Usage

[albaby]

Sure, Segway sales may be chugging along. But discussions like the South Carolina and Pasadena sightings make me think that some of the national Segway sales estimates are a little high.

While it might seem plausible that there are 10K or 13K Segways in the general population, it doesn't jibe with the relative infrequency with which people report - okay, don't report - seeing an "unsolicited" Seg. The total [u]urbanized</u> area of the U.S. is only about 60-65K square miles. The rest consists of rural areas in which Segways are exceedingly unlikely.

Having 10K Segs zipping about the U.S. means that you'd have Segs in households every 2-3 miles. Casual Seg sightings shouldn't be all that infrequent.

You'd also have to have hundreds of Segs in each of the major metropolitan areas...and no one has reported that kind of density, outside of Seattle and maybe Chicago. Admittedly, I only know from Miami - where Opti has reported that there are only a handful of Seg owners in a community that "ought" to have between 130-170, if not more.

Of course, Seg purchases won't follow a uniform distribution, either by land area or population density. In fact, quite the opposite - you'd expect Segway usage to "clump" a little bit, as some areas are more suitable for Segway usage than others. Which makes it even more surprising that while we might estimate national Segway purchases at one level, we see virtually no local estimates of Segway usage that are consistent with that national estimate. For there to be 10K+ Segways in the national market, there would have to be cities have have several hundreds of Segways in use. So which cities are they?

Here's the question, then, to folks in the major urban areas (New York, LA, Chicago, Philly, S.F., Boston, Dallas, DC, Atlanta, Detroint, Houston, Seattle, Tampa-St. Pete, Minneapolis, Cleveland, Phoenix, Miami, Denver, Sacramento): how many Segways do you estimate are being used in your area? I'm be curious to see some local reporting, some local estimates.

Regards,

Albaby

[pt]

it's well over 10,000...if and when there are any sales stats released, i'm 100% sure this is more than accurate. but at the end of the day, it's a guess with just a lot of data i've gathered over the last year.

the usa is a big big place, with millions of ways to reach destinations, since most of us are not on highways and in suburban / off main streets, we're invisible...in seattle and the washington state area there are a several hundred.

there are a few people that have them in my area, and i've never seen or met them- only heard about them from a dozen people. you'd think that after 1 year and 1,500+ miles i'd see them once in my own neighborhood, but i haven't.

i think you're assuming every time someone sees a segway they'll post here or something, i saw 3 in minneapolis last week- it wasn't a big deal.

cheers,
pt

[Sleepy]

I have a list of 20 Seg owners in the greater SF Bay Area. But this doesn't include others that are not involved with the online community. Considering that the monthly group training in San Jose only lasted a few months, I'd be surprised if there are more than 100 Segways in the area.


-Alex

[pt]

most segway owners do not know about this site, post here, or if they do...they do not register or post.

that's the way web forums and online communities work. tivo has sold 300,000 units over the last 4 years and they have about 30,000 members on all the online communities. that said, i rarely meet anyone in person that has a tivo, knows what they are...and if they do- know there is a tivo community site.

cheers,
pt

[q]

i haven't seen any where i
live (or in denver), but
others tell me about them.
(...guess we don't glide in
the same "circles," which
means that they don't belong
or post to segwaychat.com,
yet.)

kthxbye.

q.

http://www.pcisys.net/~qwhew/segway/jpg_segway_sfest_08312003_sunday_3d.jpg

//

[ftropea]

Before 9-11, the WTC (twin towers) were the tallest buildings in NY and among the tallest in the world. However, you couldn't see them from 90% of the standing locations in Manhattan (there was always something in front of you obscuring the view.) You knew they were there.. and about where to look for them.. but it didn't matter.

Point is, at any given time, there could well be a Segway within 2-3 miles of you - especially here in NYC - but the chances of actually seeing one is still pretty slim.

For various reasons which we've discussed in greater detail in other threads, I agree that the actual number of Segway HTs sold safely exceeds 10,000 units. About what pt said - he's right about the lurking activity. Lots of people visit/read this site - every single day - and don't register to post. Lots more don't even know about SC. I bet lots of owners didn't even know about SegwayFesT!.



Regards,

Frank A. Tropea

[/sc] Admin - "Keep your wheels on the ground!" - Contact Me (segwaychat@segwaychat.com)

[Sleepy]

pt,
I'm sure there are a lot of anonymous owners out there who aren't online. My guess was about a 5:1 ratio of not online vs. online owners. That's how I guessed at 100. But even at 10:1,like the tivo, that's only 200 owners.

BTW-- I think tivo's must be really "in" around where I live. Because just about everyone I know has one, and would go through serious withdrawl symptoms if it were ever taken away.

-Alex

[pt]

here's something that might help you out albaby...

amazon have "purchase circles" that shows what's popular in many areas...

http://www.bookofseg.com/images/amazon_circ.gif

it's also worth noting that the segway has been in the top 1,000 products and in the top 500 products for a long time (today it was 283 when i checked). depending on who you ask they will say it's ranked by all $500 products (amazon's cut) or by total value, or by total number sold in electronics.

i've had a couple books and a few products on amazon and it's pretty easy to make some good guesses based on time / sales rankings.

but again, all guesses :-]

cheers,
pt

[albaby]

quote:i think you're assuming every time someone sees a segway they'll post here or something, i saw 3 in minneapolis last week- it wasn't a big deal.

No, I'm not really assuming that anyone will necessarily post here if they see a Segway.

I guess what I'm suggesting is that the high number given for a national sales estimate seems inconsistent with the reported experiences of those who do post here. There ought to be hundreds of Segs in the Seattle area....and apparently there are, which is somewhat consistent with the national estimate.

But there also ought to be hundreds of Segs in Houston, Miami, Atlanta, Philly, etc. I'm not assuming that all, or even more than a bare handful, of those Seg users will post here. But there are SC posters who do live in those communities. I'm curious to see whether they also have reason to suspect that the Segway population in their communities is in the triple-digits.

The Seg is different than a Tivo. It's used outdoors and over a distance, so it's observable by other people - heck, a single Segway on a single trip in a populated area may be seen by hundreds of people. And it's expensive enough, rare enough, and "fun" enough that folks who own Segways have a lot more incentive to try to identify other Segway users in their communities for joint glides and other collective efforts. You can't all take your Tivo's to the park together.

So I'm curious whether folks in areas outside of Seattle, Chicago, and New Hampshire report evidence of the same usage densities...

Albaby

[ftropea]

Sleepy,

Here is one strange but true fact: There are reportedly well over 100 participants in Segway's Celebration usage study. Out of all those folks, only 6 have registered here in SegwayChat. That's only 6 members from a large group of owners which kinda know each other. I mean, they live together.. probably talk about their Segs - you would think - yet only 6 joined here. Imagine those 100 participants were spread out across the US. The percentage is really small.

Regards,

Frank A. Tropea

[/sc] Admin - "Keep your wheels on the ground!" - Contact Me (segwaychat@segwaychat.com)

[ftropea]

One more thing..

I check out other discussion sites on the Internet talking about Segs. Segway sightings are reported in hundreds of unrelated forums.. like music forums, fan sites for actors/tech/etc.., political forums, the list goes on and on. In other words, people are seeing Segways everyday and go off topic in their discussion circles to report the fact. That's a pretty good indicator.

Regards,

Frank A. Tropea

[/sc] Admin - "Keep your wheels on the ground!" - Contact Me (segwaychat@segwaychat.com)

[ftropea]

Albaby,

My wife rode a Segway HT home during the blackout. She was seen by thousands.. maybe 100,000.. people. It got a one line mention in the newspaper.

Regards,

Frank A. Tropea

[/sc] Admin - "Keep your wheels on the ground!" - Contact Me (segwaychat@segwaychat.com)

[pt]

albaby, with this method, i think this is going to be really hard to get any type of any real data, your best bet is to track amazon sales, talk to local dealers (attend segwayfest, well the next one) etc.. i know for a fact there are several hundred in my area- yet i haven't seen one, yet i'm told by dozens of pals, they see them all the time. people who post here are likely to be out on their segway, not in their car, gliding, not staring out the window of a glass and steel cage :-]

i go weeks without people seeing me, seattle is a huge place. as far as segway not being a tivo...more people watch tv than ride segways, you'd think everyone would know about tivos and i'm not one to go for group glides in parks (even if i could).

if you read the segway press releases the dense areas are ny, cali, texas, fl and wa (i think they said that at segwayfest too).

cheers,
pt

[toybuilder]

The thing about Segway sighting -- you only see them when they are in use. Most of us don't park it outside very much.

The man that I saw "by chance" on Sunday night, RB, happens to live only a mile away from my house! And we bumped into each other about 3.2 miles away from my house...

Now, of course, it's more likely statistical coincidence that the first "random" sighting occured with a person living only a mile away from me... But he and I have been in the same area (and I glide by close to his home on my way to work) with our Seg's for 6 months, and only ran into each other now...

The other thing about Segway sightings that differs from car sightings -- cars tend to converge on major throughfares and so you have a higher chance of seeing a particular car. There were 30,000 Mini Coopers sold in the U.S. in one year (and many more in years past -- I just pulled this number real quickly off the web) -- yet, I still only see a handful operating on the road (as opposed to parked).

Also, if normal distribution meant that Segs are spread out every 2 to 3 miles, the chances of two adjance Seggers bumping into each other at random is fairly low, unless there is a major Segway "throughfare" where they tend to converge. (That was the case with me and RB -- the train was the major thoroughfare.)

http://www.pasadenasegway.org/

[Sleepy]

Frank,
I was wondering about the Celebration study as well, and the low number of SC members from there... but then I started to think-- if my neighbors all had Segways, and I saw them all the time, would I be inclined to chat online about them? They probably get their fill from interaction with Segway LLC and their neighbors... just my theory.

Albaby, I agree with pt... you're never going to get a good answer unless you have some inside connections at Segway. We're all guessing here (although pt always seems to have the cool facts on high tech stuff.)

-Alex

[albaby]

quote:i've had a couple books and a few products on amazon and it's pretty easy to make some good guesses based on time / sales rankings.

On that minor note, I can be relatively confident that Segway hasn't sold 10K units through Amazon.

Amazon's overall sales figures are readily available, and they break them down by segments. Here's the link to their Q2 2003 earnings release:

http://tinyurl.com/mpph


original URL
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=97664&p=IROL-NewsText&t=
Regular&id=433784#Segmentinformation

We see that Amazon's total sales in "Electronics and other general merchandise" were about $177M. Which means that if they sold 5K HT's during that period, HT's alone would equal 14% of their total sales of everything other than books, CD's, and DVD's. That's all their electronics, toys, kitchen, apparel, house and garden, camera/photo, computer, and Target shops. And that's durn unlikely.

More to the point, the earnings release also gives us a comparison to last year's Q2. We see that Amazon had about $47M worth of additional sales from last year in the "Everything Else" category. If Amazon sold 5K worth of Segs, that would be $25M in revenues. That would more than 50% of all of Amazon's incremental growth in that category - from a single product. And yet not even a mention in the earnings report or press release?

Amazon's overall sales and sales growth are simply inconsistent with selling more than a few thousand Segways in that three-month period.

Albaby


URL edited for forum readability. Pam/Mod

[RAG1247]

quote:Originally posted by ftropea

Before 9-11, the WTC (twin towers) were the tallest buildings in NY and among the tallest in the world. However, you couldn't see them from 90% of the standing locations in Manhattan (there was always something in front of you obscuring the view.) You knew they were there.. and about where to look for them.. but it didn't matter.

Point is, at any given time, there could well be a Segway within 2-3 miles of you - especially here in NYC - but the chances of actually seeing one is still pretty slim.

For various reasons which we've discussed in greater detail in other threads, I agree that the actual number of Segway HTs sold safely exceeds 10,000 units. About what pt said - he's right about the lurking activity. Lots of people visit/read this site - every single day - and don't register to post. Lots more don't even know about SC. I bet lots of owners didn't even know about SegwayFesT!.



Regards,

Frank A. Tropea

[/sc] Admin - "Keep your wheels on the ground!" - Contact Me (segwaychat@segwaychat.com)


Frank:

this is one of the potential problems in setting up a local or state group. In florida over 200 have no doubt been sold (including celebration), but this forum lists about 16 (2 of which are nevrland and jm lexus).

With DK's request for local/state groups, I passed this comment along to him, in that maybe somehow LLC can let purchasers know of the forum, local group, etc. they might not partake in this forum but they certainly can't if they don't know it exists.

also, excluding commercial purchasers, I doubt that 10k units have been sold. 5k I might however agree with

Richard
Ft. Lauderdale
http://www.sonyguy.com/stars_rag2.gif[/img=left] [i]If you can’t change the people around you, change the people around you

[pt]

amazon doesn't get the full $5k, they get less than $500 per ht.

total sales, including commercial--is over 10k. that my guess. i do live in the same city as amazon and know a lot of folks who work there-- they're *thrilled* with the sales of the ht.

in fact, amazon has said it's been their most popular item.

===
The machine will only be shipped beginning March 2003, but pre-orders already place the high-tech scooter in the top half percent of sales, Steve Frazier, vice president of electronics, tools and kitchen goods sales at Amazon told Reuters on Monday.

"It's selling better than many of our digital cameras," Steve Frazier, vice president of electronics said. "If this were ranked in our top items in electronics, it would be in the top five when it first went on sale, and still be among the top 200 out of about 68,000 total products."
===

cheers,
pt


quote:Originally posted by albaby

quote:i've had a couple books and a few products on amazon and it's pretty easy to make some good guesses based on time / sales rankings.

On that minor note, I can be relatively confident that Segway hasn't sold 10K units through Amazon.

Amazon's overall sales figures are readily available, and they break them down by segments. Here's the link to their Q2 2003 earnings release:

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=97664&p=IROL-NewsText&t=Regular&id=433784#Segmentinformation

We see that Amazon's total sales in "Electronics and other general merchandise" were about $177M. Which means that if they sold 5K HT's during that period, HT's alone would equal 14% of their total sales of everything other than books, CD's, and DVD's. That's all their electronics, toys, kitchen, apparel, house and garden, camera/photo, computer, and Target shops. And that's durn unlikely.

More to the point, the earnings release also gives us a comparison to last year's Q2. We see that Amazon had about $47M worth of additional sales from last year in the "Everything Else" category. If Amazon sold 5K worth of Segs, that would be $25M in revenues. That would more than 50% of all of Amazon's incremental growth in that category - from a single product. And yet not even a mention in the earnings report or press release?

Amazon's overall sales and sales growth are simply inconsistent with selling more than a few thousand Segways in that three-month period.

Albaby

[fredkap]

I know that there are at least 10 within 3 miles of me. I saw a pair of newbies near Century City a few months ago (they were going ridiculously slow), when I went to a breakfast spot on mine, one of the other patrons told me he owned one. I've been told of other riders but our paths just don't seem to cross. Of the ten, there is only one other that chats here.

Fred

[billh]

Albaby,

I live in San Diego County. The population of San Diego County equals about 1% of the populaltion of the U.S. I have Segged over three hundred miles in the city of San Diego and many of its suburbs. I've never seen another Segway on the street in San Diego County. I've talked with hundreds of people about the Segway. I typically ask them if they've ever seen one before, and while many of these people have seen Segways at our local rental operation (in Mission Beach) or on T.V., very few have seen one "in person" anywhere else. I am aware of less than 5 privately owned Segways in San Diego County (other than the rental shop). I would be very surprised if there were more than 50 in San Diego County. A simple, but very unscientific, extrapolation from this very tenuous "data" would suggest that there might be 5,000 Segways in the U.S. (50 divided by 1%). I have no idea how many are being used in warehouses, are located in out-of-the-way places, or are never seen by the public for other reasons. My guess is that less than 10,000 Segways have been sold to the public. All very unscientific, but my guess, for what it's worth.

Bill H.

[Murray Fisher]

quote:Originally posted by pt

albaby, with this method, i think this is going to be really hard to get any type of any real data, your best bet is to track amazon sales, talk to local dealers (attend segwayfest, well the next one) etc.. i know for a fact there are several hundred in my area- yet i haven't seen one, yet i'm told by dozens of pals, they see them all the time. people who post here are likely to be out on their segway, not in their car, gliding, not staring out the window of a glass and steel cage :-]

i go weeks without people seeing me, seattle is a huge place. as far as segway not being a tivo...more people watch tv than ride segways, you'd think everyone would know about tivos and i'm not one to go





for group glides in parks (even if i could).

if you read the segway press releases the dense areas are ny, cali, texas, fl and wa (i think they said that at segwayfest too).

cheers,
pt
PT, I am across the state from you. Have had my Segway HT going on 4 months now........there are 3 Segs in Walla Walla, WA which has a 30K population....however one is on a farm and never taken anywhere else and one is being raffled off by CZAR and his group for an Alternate Energy Club. I am the only one left..... One Segway doesn't exactly mow them down when I ride mine, which is quite a bit. I took mine with me to Wallowa Lake, Oregon for a month recently. Fantastic place to ride and I averaged a bit over 10 miles per day. Even took it up the Tramway on Mt Howard and rode it around the trails there...over 8100 feet elev!! My first two months average was 8 miles per day. My total is about 900 miles since I got it. I have it rigged to carry a lawn chair safely for parades and grandkids ball games.....also built a compact holder for my umbrella. Great for a sudden rain and hot sun, Not good if wind though!! Built a carrier for the car similar to bike carriers....light weight and goes on and off in a few seconds.Same for the motorhome. I have said this before, but I am 82 and enjoying every minute of it!! I m not able to walk very far and this is FEET.


Murray Fisher

[pt]

82 wow, murray- that is amazing. if you're ever in seattle, i'll glide with ya!

cheers,
pt

[zorglub]

Albaby,

Thanks for the excellent discussion topic. As a keen reader (but infrequent poster), my guestimate after reading these posts and earlier discussions is that there are only about 5k Hts sold. This raises for me two issues/questions:
(1) why is Segway LLC not marketing/advertising the product more aggressivly. Basically, I can see no marketing done at all except for the banner ad on top of Amazon's page. Special interest group events like Segfest do not really qualify as they are geared towards a population that already knows about the product. If you plan to sell up to 40,000 units (reported plant capacity) of any $5,000 item, it would make sense to have a substancial sum devoted to marketing (in a customer acquisition phase, probably up to 25% of expected sales --- but let's take just a tenth of that, i.e. 2.5% * 40,000 * 12 * 5,000 equals $6,000,000). This kind of marketing is compatible with the aledged capitalization of the LLC ($90,000,000) and should generate some buzz! What are they doing marketing wise???

(2) Distribution policy. Basically their model today is to distribute only through amazon. The other distributors do not have a footprint in the targeted markets (i.e. large urban centers like NYC, LA...) except Houston to have much impact. However, people do not buy unknown large ticket items wihtout seeing them first. Even ultra well known brands benefit from public exposure (Apple stores comes to mind). This distrubution model could be viable for LLC except that is prevents segway from capitalizing on the tremendous free PR they are getting from news sources. If you do a google news search on Segway, you are likelly to see a couple of new entries every day for the past 6 month!!! This is enormous (well above Ford, GE or Apple for a single product). Also, this seemed to have been anticipated and catered for by the LLC (my only source is the Ginger book which talks about that issue towards the end). My question is: when you have such a flow of publicity (and you have known and planned it for a while), why don't you exploit it by putting your product in front of customers?

Conclusion, i completly miss the sales strategy of Segway. If this is a product by enthousiasts for enthousiasts -fine. If they have all the time in the world to make an impact -fine. But if they've geared for mass production, have press support for the product and funding to aggressivly launch, then what they're doing escapes me.

Thanks very much for your comments/observations/rebuttals.


Zorglub
(soon owner of a P series in NYC - PS: never saw an HT in the city yet!)

[stevew]

Speaking of sightings in the wild, I attempted to meet up with SC members sleepy and jbauer at the pro bike race in SF last weekend, unfortunately never saw them in the huge crowds.

But miles from where we were to meet, after I'd stowed my Seg in the trunk I turn around and whoosh! a segwayer glides by (on the sidewalk! in SF!) and turns the corner before I could flag him down and hear is story and whether he's on SC. So that's my official first sighting in the wild!

[ElectraGlide]

Well, there's one way to find out exactly how many Segways are in use.....but they arent talking!!! As far as local numbers....there was one used one for sale on EBAY awhile ago with a Boca Raton address, I've never seen the owner riding anywhere, and as far as I know I'm the only other one here. It's surprising to me with the nice year round weather and great sidewalks that I dont see any here.

Steve

[fathertime]

When Ladytime and I were in Celebration we were anticipating seeing HTs everywhere since there are over 140 owners there in a very small area. We saw one and that was because we were standing inside of Nevrland and the owner came in on his Seg to purchase something. The amazing invisible Segway HT! [:O]

JR

[Freddy]

As I do demos the one question I always seem to get is "Where do I get one" and
"I didn't know they were available yet"
So I had business cards made up saying contact-LLC www.segway.com
This helps alot because of people know about the HT but don't know what it's name
Or where to get info ( Saves me having to say it over and over )

[muckle]

I wonder if Segway LLC is getting the Amazon banner ad for free in exchange for exclusivity of advertising for a year or something.

From the book, Dean Kamen seems to hold a pretty low opinion of marketing/advertising (especially if he's got to pay for it).

[Murray Fisher]

quote:Originally posted by pt

82 wow, murray- that is amazing. if you're ever in seattle, i'll glide with ya!

cheers,
pt




Thanks Phil. I am still the 12 year old kid with a new balloon tired bike! Ho Ho. You are the first I ever talked to on here....at the time I had asked you how much "noise" the Seg made and you thought you might put a sound clip on your site...I can see now that would have been pretty useless really. It is pretty much silent. We DO get to Seattle now and then to visit our daughter who works at the U and lives nearby, but we always fly and I probably would not be bringing the Segway....she mentions seeing them at Green Lake sometimes. Tell me, what part of town do you live in. Might be possible to get in a short visit sometime!!

Murray Fisher