‘This is not the Segway of old’: How Segway is rebranding as a robotics company with go-karts & kick scooters
For many people, the name “Segway” brings to mind an image of a bulky, two-wheeled, self-balancing scooter — the same one featured in the 2009 film “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” and used in sightseeing tours throughout the 2010s. But Segway retired that model in 2020, and for the past four years, it’s worked to rebrand as a major name in electric transportation.
Segway, which was acquired by the Chinese robotics startup Ninebot in 2015, now has 13 million riders globally and an extensive lineup of products: kick scooters, go-karts, mopeds and even lawnmowers. It’s inked partnerships with Best Buy, Sam’s Club, Target, Costco and PC Richard & Son, and it’s integrated technology such as Apple’s “Find My” into its products. The company has sold 13 million eKickScooters, as of October 2024. In 2023, this product generated $537 million in revenue. The eKickScooters retail from $200 to $1,300, excluding sales and promotions.
Next year, Segway will launch new models of e-bikes, a greater focus for the company. E-bikes have been in high demand since the pandemic; according to Circana, e-bike sales for 2023 were up 238% over 2019.
“This is not the Segway of old,” Tom Hebert, Segway’s vp of sales marketing, told Modern Retail. “We’re a robotics company… and we have close to 5,000 IPs that our organization owns in this space. We’re an innovator, and we’ve continued to bring sustainable innovation to a category that’s desperate for new ways for consumers to get from point A to point B.”
Still, it hasn’t always been a smooth ride for Segway. The company launched its first product, the Segway PT, in 2001 to much hype. But the product was too large to ride on many sidewalks or take into office buildings. Segway expected to sell 50,000 to 100,000 units in the first 13 months but ended up only selling 6,000 units by 2003. That year, Segway recalled its scooters after riders reported losing control of their vehicles. And in 2010, tragedy struck when Segway’s then-owner Jimi Heselden died after riding one of the scooters off a cliff and into a river.
Segway has managed to climb back, however. In 2013, Segway’s new owner Roger Brown reportedly trimmed costs and negotiated a better battery contract, allowing the company to turn a profit within a year of his arrival. In 2015, Ninebot acquired Segway for an undisclosed sum and raised $80 million in funding from investors. The combined company now has a presence in 100 countries, and in October, it rolled out new product displays in more than 50 Best Buy stores.
Segway’s Hebert spoke with Modern Retail about the brand’s turnaround efforts, its plans for 2025 and its work to woo young riders. Here are some excerpts from the conversation, edited for length and clarity.
How has Segway tried to modernize since retiring its original model in 2020?
I really love talking about this journey because I’ve been with the brand for five years, and so I’ve really seen how we’ve evolved as a company over that time. When I started [at Segway], I got the same question of, “You’re going to go work for Segway? Are you giving tours in downtown Chicago?” I can give a heck of a tour in downtown Chicago… but we’ve really embraced our history because it’s good feelings and it’s good fun.
When I have the opportunity to share with our distribution partners who Segway is today, their eyes just light up. And who we are today is the leader in micromobility and electric transportation. We’re also the manufacturer, so it’s our product. And the biggest compliment that I can give to who Segway is today is that the two most important things in my life, my boys, ride our products to school every single day…
You can look up and down the line of folks that we’ve worked with, and you’ll see that they’re having the thrill of riding our products because of the quality that we put into [them], because of our attention to customer satisfaction.
How are you thinking about your product pipeline for 2025?
What we’ll be really emphasizing as we grow in 2025 is our new division inside of Segway, which is our e-bike division. We’ll be launching new, innovative e-bikes in the industry. The technology that our engineers… are putting into our e-bikes that are coming to market truly has the customers’ needs first.
We’re one of the only micromobility companies that integrates Apple’s “Find My” into our products, and a lot of our products have “Airlock” in them, so over the app, you can lock [the product] to your phone… We’re really engaging and investing in technology to help the consumer [have] an easier, much more simplified and enjoyable experience with our products…
Our go-kart also is really fun and innovative. It’s three products in one. It will go almost 26 miles an hour… but then you can bring it inside and hook it up to a PC game and it becomes a driving simulation… You can also take the frame off the go-kart, put a little handle in the top of the self-balancing product, and it becomes a traditional Segway.
We’re bringing unique ways, unique things, unique products as a manufacturer to the table.
What customer segments are you focused on?
There are a few different segments that we look at. One is males 35 to 55… That type of customer uses the product to go around town, but primarily, they use it to go from home to the train.
College is also a huge segment for us. When I was in school… there weren’t lot of places to drive or park, and a lot of times you even didn’t have a car. So [Segway] really gives [students] an easy, efficient way to get from point A to point B.
And then, many kids today are using our products to get from home to school or home to baseball practice or soccer practice, because [their] mom or dad may not be there all the time [to take them].
Can you tell me more about the kids’ business?
We have our own line of kids’ products that we’ve launched that will be a primary driver for us during the holidays. It introduces kids to Segway. It introduces them to what true electric transportation is about. A lot of that product you’ll see in Sam’s Club. Sam’s has an exclusive product that we built for them that is really geared towards the kids… We made the handle so it’s now adjustable, so that as the kid grows, so will the product.
We’ve been in kids’ products for about four years now. And it’s done really well for us. We aren’t the least expensive product in the kids’ aisle [at $200 to $300 a scooter], but we do have the best quality. And what I mean by that is, even the battery technology that we use is really geared to making sure that it’s UL-approved [a certification from a safety organization] and safe for kids.
[Customers] love our kids’ products, because while they’re not the cheapest thing, we don’t want to be the cheapest thing. We want to make sure that that our product isn’t left in the back of the garage after a couple uses. We want to make sure that our product is the one that they can use for many growth spurts.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated that Segway sold 13 million eKickScooters in 2024. The story has been updated to reflect that the company has sold 13 million eKickScooters in total as of October 2024.