Market segments
Next up (or really, in conjunction with everything else), we need to consider Who is this product for? Which inevitably leads to more fundamental questions like, What is this product? And Why are we doing this?
All the bullshit “vision” and “mission” statements you hear about start to make sense at this level, because with a new business, we need to start somewhere. Answering these questions is tough, but the exercise is valuable because it helps guide decisions that work in the same direction, make a cohesive product that’s easy to understand (and thus market and sell).
For example, once we decide what the product actually is (that is, what form it takes, what customers will experience), we can consider who our market segments are (what do the cohorts have in common?), and from there start developing a marketing strategy (how will we reach these people?)… and finally, marketing tactics (for example, what content will social media posts contain? How often should we post?).
It’s Product Development 101 to consider who your product is for. There’s value in specialist products (tend to drive loyal users, because you’re “scratching their specific itch”, but we need to be careful not to be too narrow because there are not that many people who have that itch (at least, who are in the geographic region where we will run our business).
There’s value in generalist products as well – everyone needs toilet paper, right? It’s always going to sell – but those markets tend to be crowded, competitive and very low-margin at smaller scales (typically, unsurvivable).
There’s a big area in the middle, something that appeals to a bunch of people sometimes, but not everyone all the time. We don’t want to deliberately exclude anyone, but we must accept that not everyone will enjoy the activity (though having done it a few hundred times, I cannot imagine why 🤯).
Originally I thought our target market would be Extreme Sports Enthusiasts, people who are “thrill seekers”. They’ve probably done bungee jumping, ridden mountainbikes or motorbikes, surfing, skiing / snowboarding, rock climbing, rafting, rollercoasters, etc. When they go on holiday, they tend to seek out exciting experiences. They proudly show scars and share x-rays depicting broken bones and trade “war stories” of their adventures.
The opening of the local Warburton mountainbike park (and its funded plans for expansion over the next few years) certainly inspired me to develop my business, and having that built-in base of Extreme Sports Enthusiasts (ESEs) drove my ideas forward between 2020 and 2023.
But we’re in the product development phase. So I wonder… can I design a product that appeals to ESEs, but also other groups, without taking away from the experience of ESEs? All mountain bike parks and ski fields do this – they have tracks or runs that are graded (eg, beginner, intermediate, advanced, etc), and of course I’d planned to have that variance in our product.
But imagine a couple, where he’s a thrillseeker, but she’s more timid. He’s throwing himself down steep hills with little regard, chasing the dragon for a more thrilling experience. She sees his excitement and wants to have a go herself, but she’s concerned about things that might go wrong (eg, injury, damaging equipment, getting stuck remotely). Rather than just have a warm couch for her to sit on with fast internet while he has fun, could we develop options that suit both him and her?
Of course, the answer is to have beginner tracks that are suitable for more-timid riders, but also, to appropriately market those tracks to those people. They’re definitively not thrill-seekers, they’re seeking a moderately safe adventure, maybe see some nice views.
Sometimes, if the stars align, and more-timid riders can “convert”. This happened with my wife, we were in NZ near Queenstown on a fact-finding mission to ride mountaincarts at Cardrona (ski resort in winter, mountainbikes and mountaincarts in summer).
My wife is generally pretty timid – she’s cursed with bad knees, and is quite protective of them (quite reasonably so), so she’s not much of a risk-taker with adventurous activities.
The Mountaincart tracks at Cardrona are all graded the same (equivalent of blue / intermediate), and the activity is really aimed at mountainbike riders on the mountain anyway. My wife encouraged me to go on ahead (knowing I am a bit of a thrill seeker), she’d go down the tracks at her own pace. That’s fine, mountaincarts have excellent brakes and steering, the tracks were not busy, she’s sensible and does not need me to ride with her.
We did not see each other for two hours and when we reconnected, I asked her how it was going. I expected her to be hanging out in the cafe with a hot chocolate after a few rides, but it turns out she was having a great time and allowed that she’s even skidding around corners (ie, drifting!). I watched her come down a track and she was confident and having a great time.
Seeing this transition gave me a lot of hope that mountaincarts really do have a wide appeal, the cart control and the track design can really open up possibilities. Here’s another similar experience;
In August 2025, I did a ride-test with a mid-forties couple. Kind of similar to my wife and I, he’s more of a thrill seeker, she’s more cautious. Now we have three carts, I ride down following two test riders to watch their approach, support them as necessary, and learn about how people use mountaincarts.
Neither of them had ridden mountaincarts before. He sped off confidently, Elka used the brakes too much, and came to a stop in the first 20 metres. The test track has some flat sections which are fine if the rider uses the momentum coming out of a corner to roll across the flatter section… but if the rider breaks too much during and coming out of the corner, they come to a stop soon after.
This is a shortcoming of the test track (design for MTB riders, who can pedal), which is good to learn – we need to have a gentle slope even on “flat” sections. Anyway, I guided her to use her hands to push the rear wheels of the cart to get moving toward the next downhill section (15 metres away). It’s a little tedious, but quite do-able. She was apologetic, of course, it was no problem.
This happened 15 more times down the track, often at the bottom of a MTB jump where she’d braked a little too much (so she did not catch air).
The run that normally takes me 4m30 took us about 12 minutes. But on her second run down the track, she did not stop once! She’d learned the “consistancy” or “language” of the track, knew what to expect, and managed her braking to suit. On her third run, she got faster and was using one brake only to turn corners sharply!
It’s satisfying to see that progression, and she was very pleased with the progress she had made, she felt accomplished (and really enjoyed the real-time guidance I provided, which has inspired me to develop that part of the product, customers can employ a guide for a number of rides, the guide can provide tips via radio).
I think of the appeal of activities like Mountaincarting to be a spectrum roughly divided into groups;
Group 1: 🛌🏼 A nice walk or bike ride in a local park
Group 2: 🚶🏼➡️ 4 hour walk in a state / national park; bike ride on roads and parks
Group 3: 🏄🏼♂️ Surfing, skiing / snowboarding; cross-country MTB; full-day hikes; SCUBA diving
Group 4: 🏍️ Motocross, downhill MTB; rock climbing; multi-day hikes or rafting expeditions
Group 5: 💀 BASE jumping; wingsuit flying
Of course, each of these activities has differing degrees of adventure, and you’re sure to know people who fit into some of these Groups. Developing this business, I wonder how we can segment our product to appeal across more Groups, instead of only Group 4.
Maybe those in Group 5 will never be interested – our product is just not thrilling enough (some test riders have shared this, “it’s ok, I wouldn’t pay for it” as they hop on their dirtbike and scream off with no helmet and a vague plan to visit a mate this afternoon 130km away on uncharted dirt tracks through dense forest).
And maybe those in Group 1 may be difficult to reach – even if the max speed is 10km/h, there’s good visibility, there’s no one zooming past or yelling at you to go faster, it all just presents as too risky (I need to do more test rides with this group to understand their concerns better – and perhaps modify the design of our product to address their concerns).
Ok, so our target market segments are Groups 2, 3 and 4. Mmmmaybe some people from the edges of Groups 1 and 5. My gut sense is that, if someone from the top end of Group 4 sees marketing aimed at someone from the bottom end of Group 2, they’re going to be less-inspired to visit our business. They may think “if it suits timid riders, this activity would be too tame for me!”.
Similarly, if we use imagery and language that appeals primarily to Group 4, more-timid riders may feel like it’s “too dangerous” for them. We’ll definitely need to segment our marketing to allow for this. I’m not sure if we should even have a “one brochure for all”? Or just a brochure for each segment? Or maybe the back page shows a marketing blurb about the selling points for other Groups of customers? Hmm.
Ultimately, I settled on the following segments for end-users;
- Extreme Sports Enthusiasts (ESEs)
- Young Couples / DINKs
- Families
- Older couples
Each category will have different expectations for outdoor activities, and even though the price point is the same, our approach to “getting them in the door” will be differentiated.
Of course, this is all for end-users – there’s also a large piece on B2B users and also business to government. Gotta utilise that asset! I’ll make a separate blog post about that.
Calculations
I devised a spreadsheet that lets me vary the pricepoint, and see how seasonal ridership generates revenue. What revenue do we need to break even, or make a modest profit? What if we charge this much?
In addition to the price-point, the other big unknown is, how many customers can we expect to get? It’s fun to make spreadsheets with many customers, but best-practice is to make realistic estimates, halve them, and halve them again. Maybe then you’ll be realistic.
After setup (capital expenditure), the main operational cost is labour, and the amount of labour we need varies by the number of customers in a given day. For example;
If we have a peak of 60 customers in one day at 1pm, with a solid 40 customers on the shoulders (10am to midday; 2pm to 5pm) we’ll need six staff to support them.
But if the peak was 40 and 20 on the shoulders, we could do fine with three staff.
Of course, the Amusement, Events and Recreation Award (government mandated working conditions and pay rates for a sector) applies to all staff, which also sets out penalty rates. Staff are to be paid more on weekends and public holidays (and night time, but that won’t apply to us).
I added the variable costs to the spreadsheet, along with our expected fixed costs – waste disposal, electricity, cafe supplies, consumables, etc.