Rabbit Movers has carved out a comfortable niche with an arty, urban crowd by offering unusual extras like feng shui consulting and massages.
BusinessWeek:
Moving doesn’t have to be stressful. At least that’s the pitch from Brooklyn, N.Y. based Rabbit Movers, a 14-employee, 3-truck outfit that has built a reputation for putting clients at ease during and after a move.
Rabbit markets itself as an anomaly in an industry with a bad rep, capitalizing on a staff of artistic types, word-of-mouth referrals, and a Web site that posts positive customer testimonials and descriptions of extra services traditional moving companies don’t usually offer.
So far, its bare-bones sales and marketing strategy - except for maintaining its site, the company spends no money on advertising - is working. Rabbit’s founder, former itinerant writer Shawn Lyons, who started the moving company in 2004 for $1,500-the cost of a 1981 Dodge Ram cargo van-estimates revenues will be around $300,000 in 2006. This is up one-third from a year ago. ‘Originally, I was just going to do the ‘man with a van’ thing and have time to write,’ Lyons says.
But about 9 months into helping friends move their furniture in his spare time, he decided he was onto something because demand kept increasing. So he pursued the licensing and insurance required by New York City and State and started to build Rabbit into more than just a traditional moving company, carving out a niche with young urban dwellers. More.
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