Rocket science this is not: the stronger your cash sales, the more viable your business. What you might not know is that among the best cash generators you can carry these days are scooters—especially the new low-cost models. “The introduction of scooters to an existing product mix can be very helpful,” says Nick Binson, director of rehabilitation for Binson’s Home Healthcare Centers, Centerline, Mich, adding that the dealers who stand to benefit most from scooters are those who have been focused on respiratory and thus have a heavy dependence on continually shrinking reimbursements.

At family-owned, full-service Binson’s Home Healthcare Centers, only about 1% of scooter sales are reimbursed by some form of third-party pay. “Scooters are an insurance-covered item in many instances, but nearly all our scooter customers prefer buying with cash just to be able to avoid the hassles,” Binson says. “They don’t mind paying $1,000, $1,500, or $2,000 out of pocket if that is what it takes to be free of the headache of first seeing the doctor for an order and then filling out forms. Cash is easier by far.”

No complaint about that from Binson, who predicts benefits-cutting insurers are sooner or later bound to target scooters for hefty reimbursement reductions. In fact, he is convinced that, eventually, scooters will not be covered at all under the terms of many policies.

For now, however, not only do scooter sales inject welcome immediate cash, they also create a touchpoint with consumers that can encourage them to make you their sole source of other HME items. “If you sell them a scooter and they are happy with it, and you service them properly, they will come back to you for everything they need,” Binson says.

Moreover, just having scooters on display in the shop is advantageous in and of itself, because consumers shopping for scooters will also buy small-ticket products and medicine-cabinet supplies before leaving a showroom, whether or not they walk out with a scooter. “Scooters encourage people to discover the rest of your store, which promotes impulse buying,” says Binson. “A person might have come to look at scooters, but then while they are in the store, they see all the other products you carry in your other departments, and that reminds them that they need a new cane or maybe some compression hosiery.”

It works the other way around as well. “A person might come in for a cane, but it has been known to happen that they will leave with a scooter,” Binson says.

Rubber Meets the Road
Binson’s Home Healthcare Centers operates four showroom locations (ranging in size from 4,000 sq ft to 10,000 sq ft) plus 14 additional joint-ventured outlets across Michigan. In every showroom, scooters are a significant piece of the merchandise array. The flagship store alone displays upward of 35 different makes and models at any one time. “Our stores focus on retail sales like no other,” says Binson. “Really big showrooms, lots of product. Scooters fit perfectly into that formula.”

Lately, room has been made for low-cost scooters, which, in just a few short years since their debut, have come to dominate the travel mobility category (products typified by ultra portability and high maneuverability). Says Binson, “Until now, a lot of people who have wanted a scooter have been shut out by price.”

Low-cost scooters are not meant to supplant higher priced models, though. These are entry-level conveyances lacking the features, power, durability, and endurance of standard or up-market scooters.

But just because they are down-market, it does not necessarily hold that they are unsexy. Indeed, manufacturers have gone to considerable lengths to dress them up with stylish body contours, cool colors, and hot decals. In case that is not enough, makers also have endowed low-cost scooters with attractive consumer-financing packages.

That notwithstanding, the dealers who will achieve the greatest success with low-cost scooters are, as always, those who most aggressively and skillfully build community awareness of the product and then support purchasers with excellent service.

Spruce up my scooter
The key demographic for scooters high and low on the price ladder continues to be the elderly. That’s good, because there are more and more of them with each passing year. Even better, the steadily swelling ranks of oldsters include a huge subgroup made up of over-65ers with an appetite for the kind of freedom mobility scooters offer. Many of these aging freedom-seekers fall into the category of active-lifestylists, while many others are simply living independently and desire nothing so much as the ability to roam the house and perform routine chores without anyone’s assistance. “Today’s newly elderly have different attitudes about life and how best to live it compared to people of that same age in past decades,” says Binson.

Binson firmly believes Baby Boomers entering their golden years will push demand for scooters through the roof. “Boomers and others see these products in use, they see them advertised; they know about these products and they want to use them,” he says.

But since that particular generation begins with those born in 1946, they will not reach age 65 until 2011. Interestingly, people who have already achieved senior-citizen status say they prefer to own a scooter that emphasizes functionality over form. “The elderly of today don’t care what color it is,” says Binson. “They just want it to work right and do what it is supposed to do. Younger users want both styling and capability together.”

Accessories bought commonly with scooters include cushions, cupholders, and reachers. The accessory bought least often with a scooter is a lift (truest if the purchaser or intended user is geriatric). “Many of my elderly customers do not own or drive cars anymore because they live in self-contained retirement villages or assisted-living communities and rarely leave the grounds in the course of their normal day-to-day activities, so all they need is the scooter,” says Binson.

Important to customers of all ages is a scooter backed by the promise of good service. “They want you, the provider, to be there to fix it when it breaks,” says Binson. “Whatever goes wrong, they want to be able to call you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; they want to know you’re there, they want to know an actual person and not a recording is going to pick up the phone when they call with questions about their scooter or with a request for repairs.”

Building a Head of Esteem
While the introduction of low-cost models has handed scooter dealers the means to easily overcome prospective-purchaser objections rooted in price, they have done little to help overcome a more fundamental source of objection: pridefulness. “It is remarkable the number of people who hesitate over buying a scooter no matter whether you are talking low-end or high-end because they don’t want to admit they need one to get around,” says Binson, noting that he encounters such individuals after they are dragged into his showroom by concerned kin. “It still takes the same amount of good salesmanship, the same patience, and the same friendliness to counter people’s pridefulness. If you can get the objecting prospect to just sit on one of the scooters, usually that starts lightening them up. Their resistance fades even more after they’ve ridden around the showroom or the lot because they begin to appreciate how helpful this is going to be.”

Binson thinks the problem of pridefulness could lessen as scooter ownership burgeons. Right now, one of the triggers of pridefulness is fear of being stigmatized. Scooters out and about in public are still a rare enough sight that users can draw unwanted attention. But all that could change before long. “With the entire population getting older, scooters will be much more common,” he says.

It is like what has happened in the field of orthodontics. Time was that kids with braces felt stigmatized and hated the metal devices. Nowadays, thanks to the advent of colorful designer plastic bands, wearing braces is a real status symbol among the youth set. The same might well happen with scooters. If it does, then brace yourself (no pun intended) for a crush of business. And, if it does not, well, you should brace yourself regardless. Scooters—the low-cost ones and the top-of-the-line models alike—are just that hot.

Rich Smith is a contributing writer for Dealer/Provider.