Nate Woiwode owns West LA Bicycle, near the Venice Pier in Los Angeles, California. The store is the community; and built on the belief that riding a bike can be extraordinarily healing. Nate and his team of four rents out secure bikes and ebikes for extremely fair prices for visitors from afar, or elsewhere, who are willing to get out into the great outdoors.
Before Booqable, Nate’s team handled bookings with Google Calendar, which initially worked fine for new or expanding businesses, but eventually, with inventorying becoming difficult to maintain and there being no clear method for managing customer security deposits, it became an increasingly inefficient way for them to run their bicycle rental shop.
Nate needed a rental management platform that could handle online bookings alongside their walk-in customers, and integrate directly into their existing Shopify website. He found Booqable, embedded the product catalog onto one of their web pages so customers could browse and book bikes online, and was up and running with upfront security deposits and ROI tracking.
Protecting his fleet with online security deposits
Renting out bicycles means putting real assets in the hands of customers you have just met. Without any kind of deposit system in place, damage or loss could come straight out of the business. For Nate, this was one of the most pressing problems to solve.
Booqable handles security deposits through its Stripe integration at checkout. You can set deposit amounts per product or across your whole inventory, and Booqable calculates them automatically. When an order is returned, the order management flow prompts you to either release the deposit back to the customer or mark it as kept, depending on the condition of the rental.
For West LA Bicycle, this means:
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Deposits are collected at the time of booking, not chased after the fact
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The return process includes a clear prompt to handle the deposit, so nothing gets missed
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The whole flow runs through Stripe, keeping payments consistent and traceable
Nate highlighted security deposit authorization holds as one of his favourite features in Booqable. Having deposits built into the booking flow means the team is protected before any bike leaves the shop, and the return prompt keeps the process consistent regardless of who is handling the order that day.
Tracking bicycle ROI with performance reports
When you have a fleet of bikes at different price points, it is not always obvious which ones are pulling their weight. Without data, decisions about what to stock, repair, or retire come down to gut feeling. Nate wanted a clearer picture of how each bike was actually performing.
Booqable’s performance report includes a dedicated ROI column for each product in your inventory. You can see how individual items are performing and filter the view by time period, so it is easy to compare across seasons or spot trends over time.
For the West LA Bicycle team, the ROI feature helps them:
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See exactly which bikes are generating the most rental revenue relative to their cost
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Make informed decisions about when to invest in new inventory or phase out underperformers
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Track performance over time rather than relying on rough estimates
Rather than guessing which part of the fleet is worth maintaining or expanding, the team can look at the numbers directly. It turns inventory decisions into something evidence-based, which matters when you are a small team managing a physical fleet.
A bike rental built to last
West LA Bicycle isn’t looking to scale into a chain. Nate’s aim is straightforward: continue renting bikes in the neighbourhood they adore. Even a community-oriented bike rental business involves some logistical complexity, and Booqable made the job easier to handle.
The platform provides the team with the means to keep up with day-to-day business activities without becoming bogged down by administration, including guarding the fleet against issues through deposit holds and discerning how valuable bikes actually are.
“Security deposit authorization holds and the ROI feature are my favourite Booqable features,” said Nate. From collecting deposits at checkout to seeing which bikes perform best, Booqable takes care of the admin so the team can focus on what they do best.
