Ontario Tech Firm Plans Car Use Reduction By Gifting $3,500 E-Bikes To 54 Staffers

Fifty staff of London, Ontario, digital agency Northern Commerce will be presented with $3,500 e-bikes at a presentation on Sunday, June 26. Only one of the employees has opted instead for a merchant gift card of the same value.

The gifting is the idea of Andrew McClenaghan, a senior vice president at Northern Commerce and a former chair of Downtown London, the municipal business body.

Northern Commerce is a web development and digital marketing firm founded in 2015. It has 190 staff. The firm acquired McClenaghan’s agency Digital Echidna in 2020, with 50 staffers moving across to the larger outfit.

Those staff that stayed with the business will be those gifted with the $3,500 electric bikes. The e-bikes — either a HSD P9 electric cargobike or a Vektron Q9 folding e-bike, both Tern pedal-assisted models — are supplied through London Bicycle Cafe.

McClenaghan is a new investor in this bike store, which is adding a second location later in the summer, adjacent to the 21-mile Thames Valley Parkway multi-use recreational trail.

“This gift for my former employees aligns with my new business London Bicycle Cafe,” said McClenaghan.

“Northern Commerce will develop active transportation options for employees with my guidance.”

“This,” he added, is an “actionable step to combat climate change.”

Three of the former Digital Echidna staffers opted for gift cards instead of bikes, but after a test ride, two of those switched back to the bike option.

Northern Commerce specializes in e-commerce design.

“E-bike costs are one of the strongest barriers to adoption,” said Dillon Fitch, co-director of the Bicycling Plus Research Collaborative Research Faculty at the University of California, Davis.

Businesses—and some cities—typically offer money-off vouchers for employers to purchase e-bikes. Starting in 2015, Google gifted employees with free bicycles, switching this in 2019 to a cash incentive of $500 to buy an e-bike. The tech giant found that employees typically now spend 1.7 to 2.3 days a week commuting to work by bicycle.

A Swedish study found that the use of e-bikes reduced so-called vehicle miles traveled, or VMT, by up to 8.5 miles per day per bike.