Campus, News

Carry your loot on a scoot

Cal State Long Beach alumnus have merged scooting power with carrying power in an attempt to change students’ means of transportation in both a convenient and environmentally-conscious fashion.

Urban transportation company Nimble Scooters designs kick-scooters that allow riders to kick-scoot cargo wherever they go. The company aims to change the way students both get around campus and carry their belongings, according to CEO of Nimble Scooters and CSULB alumna, Alix Armour.

“When I was a student, I would have to carry around so much … these things got bigger and bigger,” Armour said. “If I had a cargo-scooter, I would have been able to put everything in there and go to campus straight from my house.”

The advantage of Nimble Scooters’ kick-scooters is no matter what one has to carry, they can place their belongings in the scooters’ baskets, according to Armour.

Founders and CSULB alumni John Kim and Jose Rivera, along with Armour, conceptualized this form of transportation, aiming to make carrying goods around more accessible, in Armour’s senior industrial design class.

The goal was to create a device smaller than a bicycle and ideal for distances under 12 miles.

“The team tinkered with modified bikes with trailers, but often were upset with the maintenance, cost and bulkiness of a bicycle,” Armour said.

Armour, Kim and chief operations manager and CSULB alumnus Aaron Wong launched their latest scooter design, the Nimble Urban, this spring and made Nimble Scooters’ focus solely on making cargo-carrying kick scooters.

“It’s really convenient for all sorts of errands and tasks,” Wong said. “What’s useful as a designer is that every time you learn how someone uses it for a new purpose, it makes you think about new designs for that application.”

Both Wong and Kim streamlined the manufacturing of the scooters. They currently have three models catering to urban mobility and designed for end-consumers and warehouse-job tasks.

The company is looking forward to going electric, as well. Nimble Scooters began with non-electric models to get the base models working, says Armour.

“We are electrifying our products to help save students more time,” Armour said.

Because the entrepreneurs visualized what would become Nimble Scooters at CSULB, they have not forgotten their roots at the university. The company is currently providing internship opportunities for CSULB students.

“We’ve had interns work at Nimble Scooters from CSULB. We’d love to hire people directly from the university,” Armour said. “I look forward to hiring people in sales, engineering, marketing, etcetera.”

As of late April, the fundraising campaign for the Nimble Urban raised over $20,000. The company hopes to stretch the funding for its newest model to $40,000 in the next month.

“We want to help people save time and get their work done faster,” Armour said. “We think our scooters can help people save both money and time.”

A Nimble Scooter is pictured here, courtesy of Alix Armour.
A Nimble Scooter is pictured here, courtesy of Alix Armour.

2 Comments

  1. Avatar
    Aristotle Bean

    $299!?

    They’re still too large and bulky to pit somewhere while you attend class.

    A beautiful BACKPACK is significantly lower in price, and practically free if you come by a giveaway one or find a few at the Goodwill store. Plus body serves s a shock-absorber should you decide to carry anything electronic like, say, a computer, iPad or iPhone — which are costly if they’re destroyed by a single bump in the asphalt or sidewalk crevice it must run over to get somewhere.

    This is a solution in search of a problem.

    A bad idea.

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