It all started in a garage…
The year was 2010. My best friend from high school Navid Mazloom and I were living and working in Ocean City, Maryland with friends for the summer. The pay was decent, the weather was great... However, getting stuck in traffic was a pain. We wondered if there was a better way than a car to get around the congested beach town.
Scooters had been popping up around Ocean City like wildfire, and also at our respective schools of Salisbury University and University of Maryland. Scooters seemed like the perfect way to avoid traffic and gas prices all at once. However, when we went out to buy scooters, we found the experience to be way more difficult than one would expect. Navid and I both found over-priced, low-quality scooters at the local shops, plus unhelpful and unknowledgeable staff. So, we decided to find alternative ways to purchase scooters.
Navid took Craigslist route. He found a Magnum 50 scooter from an Eastern European exchange worker for $300 bucks. It seemed like the perfect deal! However, upon arriving at the purchasers house, it took about 20 minutes to get started instead of 20 seconds. After getting it running, $300 still didn't seem like a big gamble. Hundreds of dollars later and more breakdowns than one could count, it was evident that the investment wasn't a good one.
I took the online route, and found a brand new scooter from a sketchy website, delivered to our house for $800 (at local stores this scooter was close to $2000). The site claimed the unit was assembled, however upon it being dropped off, about half of the components were not installed, and many others were missing! When I called the website to try and get the missing parts, they were unhelpful and didn't provide any after-sale support. After a full day of getting assembled, the scooter then wouldn't stay running. Numerous repairs and part replacements later, I spent way more trying to keep it running than the initial cost of the scooter new.
These experiences had us come to one thought: there has to be a better way.
COLLEGE SCOOTERS WAS BORN
After a fun summer in Ocean City, we were frustrated enough with our respective scooter experiences that we knew something had to be done to fix these issues of a growing product category. We were both in college at the time, and saw a huge opportunity for college students to commute on scooters. Since universities are seriously lacking parking and students have tight budgets, scooters seemed like a great solution. From those ideas, College Scooters was born. College Scooters was founded to provided students and non-students alike with a better way to get around. We wanted to create a true customer-centric business that just happened to sell scooters. We sought to provide quality scooters, at reasonable prices, with great customer service - something we thought should exist in the scooter world but was strangely absent in our region.
Throughout the first "school year" of the business, Navid and I established connections with scooter wholesalers, who liked our new concept and were willing to sign us up as dealers. Our first official "shop", pictured below, was a 200 square foot storage garage on First Street in Ocean City, Maryland. With 5 scooters in the showroom, 15 helmets, 10 bottles of oil, 5 spark plugs, some tools, a sign, and a business license from the town of Ocean City and State of Maryland, we were in business!
After a successful summer of selling scooters in Ocean City, it was time to take the idea back to Salisbury and College Park. The Ocean City shop served as a great pop-up shop to test the idea, but we knew there would be greater opportunity in the year-round markets of Salisbury, and College Park, Maryland. In the summer of 2011, we opened their first stores in Salisbury and College Park.
From 2011 to 2020, we grew our College Scooters brand, succeeding with ten consecutive years of revenue, profit, and team member growth. We partnered with esteemed organizations such as the University of Maryland and Children’s National Hospital to raise money for charitable causes. We employed dozens of passionate, hardworking individuals who gave so much to the support and growth of our brand. Most of all, we grew ourselves, from young adults, to thirty-somethings, with a unique “founder’s story” under our belt, and bright eyes to future career and business opportunities.
In 2020, we decided to sell College Scooters with Navie and I still on great terms to a new owner. Navid has since pursued a new career in corporate finance, and I continued owning and operating Shore Cycles, a motorcycle shop in Salisbury, until 2024 when it was also sold to new owners. Today, College Scooters is still in business under the new owners in College Park, MD. They service and sell motor scooters to DC-area commuters, professionals and students alike.
Every once in a while, I’ll still pop “College Scooters” into Google. When reviewing the search results showing a successful business, I still have feelings of awe, surprise and joy for our then nineteen year old selves, who took the leap, started a business, and succeeded.
A picture of our humble first location — a 150 square foot commercially-zoned storage unit located in downtown Ocean City, Maryland. It was from this small space that College Scooters came to be, and eventually grew into two stores and millions in sales.