Interview with Alessandro Bottamedi, CEO of Mowi Space
May 11, 2022
Interview with Alessandro Bottamedi, CEO of Mowi Space, the startup that offers the exclusive solution to promote and live the sporting experience of your locality.
Practicing outdoor sports brings numerous benefits, not only for the body, but also and especially for the mind. Immersing yourself in the world of sport is not only fun and relaxing but also allows you to socialize with other people. The outdoor sports activities in fact help to put aside the stress related to daily fatigue, allow you to be in contact with nature and, if desired, allow you to easily meet new people, because the passion for sport is shared by many. For you who love outdoor sports, the best solution is called Mowi Space!
What’s Mowi Space
Mowi is the app designed and built directly on site in collaboration with the locality itself, its operators and the leading industry professionals. There are two types of applications, one for the world of mountain biking and one for winter sports, to offer you only what you need in a few simple actions, always accessible by browsing the 3d map of the area concerned. It is currently used, with success, in some of the top locations in the outdoor sports market and has contributed to increasing its value and visibility.
To learn more about this innovative startup, we interviewed Alessandro Bottamedi, CEO of Mowi Space.
Hello Alessandro, it is a pleasure to meet you and thank you for your time. Tell us more about Mowi Space.
Hello everybody and thank you for this beautiful opportunity. For me it is always a great emotion to be able to tell the project that with passion we managed to create in these 2 years. So much work but at the same time so many satisfactions and successes that gave us the driving force to grow and overcome the obstacles encountered along the way.
I am sincere and convinced when I say that one of the main aspects of the success and the birth of MOWI SPACE has been and still is our multifaceted team.
A team made up of heterogeneous professionals and unique personalities that together have created a working environment and ideal links for the development of our innovative products. The innovative Mowi Bike platform dedicated to the world of mountain biking has returned incredible feedback and has started its expansion.
The same goes for the sister Mowi Snow, launched this year in Paganella and dedicated to outdoor winter sports offered by the resorts. The road is still long and certainly uphill, but the enthusiasm expressed by those who today are using our service, gives us the right charge to grow and establish ourselves more and more both on the national and international market
How and when was the idea of Mowi Space born?
Our team is based on the Paganella Plateau, in Trentino (Italy), where we live and where we operate, surrounded by the Brenta Dolomites, which we love to call our “Lab”. In recent years, for a variety of reasons, we have witnessed an explosion of active mountain biking tourism. Our zone is very appreciated and renowned for its “Dolomiti Paganella Bike” area, and constantly invests in facilities, tracks and services to best meet this specific target in strong expansion.
At the end of 2019, after a careful analysis of the sector, we realized how much riders lacked a tool to explore and live a bike area in a simple and safe way. At the same time we understood how much the bike area needed a quality tool to make the most of its product and territory, to make it enjoyable in an intuitive way and be able to communicate in real time with their riders in a targeted and effective way.
In that moment we realized that there was ground for us to create an ideal digital tool to fill the gap. After an intense process of analysis and design, which involved bikers, tourist agencies and local stakeholders, MOWI Space was born and with it, the first MOWI Bike product.
What skills were needed to carry out your project?
The team is large and makes use of internal and external professional figures. In addition, due to the type of relationship we establish with our areas, these partnerships become an active part in the realization and development of our products. Promotion bodies, local managers, mtb guides and riders are all resources with which we constantly confront and work. In simple terms, they are part of our great team too.
Among the founding members and main members of the MOWI team, we have the undersigned Alessandro Bottamedi, CEO and front end developer, active in the management of mountain tourism for several years, Kocis Miggiano, marketing & sales manager; Franz Geiser, back end developer and product manager; Filippo Frizzera, gis, spatial data & media manager; Marcello Frizzera, engineer, software developer, chief. R&D. This heterogeneity of skills has allowed us to better understand all the facets needed, capable of create a successful product.
How did you launch your company? Did you use crowdfunding campaigns?
Convinced of the validity of our idea, after a meticulous and in-depth marketing study, we presented our project in detail to Luca D’angelo, APT Director Dolomiti Paganella, and to the Dolomiti Paganella Bike team. From the very beginning, we drew the attention of the director and his team who were enthusiastic about the idea and the type of innovative tool we presented. We knew we could make the point.
The talks continued for a few weeks, until the APT decided to believe in us by financing the realization of the project Mowi Bike for the Dolomiti Paganella Bike Area.
What are the features of the apps you have designed?
We have developed two main products: Mowi Bike, dedicated vertically to the world of MTB (dh, enduro, cross country, bike tour, e-bike…) and Mowi Snow, dedicated to outdoor winter activities (skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing, winter hiking, sledding, cross country skiing, ski touring). Apps are just the tip of the iceberg of our platform, which consists of three main tools:
APP
Tool that the Area offers to its audience as its own local service and that we could synthesize metaphorically as “Everything I need at hand, in a simple and immediate way”
Offline maps, tracks, dedicated services, real-time info on track status, lifts, real-time location, live group track and more. All designed to be visible and accessible directly from the 3D map of the area. At the same time the app is also the main, powerful and fast tool to connect the Area and its Guests.
WEBAPP
That is the navigable 3D map of the area with the same user experience of the mobile app, only in a big format accessible from desktop and integrable in the site of the locality.
DASHBOARD
A simple but at the same time essential tool, through which the area can access a series of statistical data related to the profiling of its guests. For example: preferences, main actions and searches carried out in the app, most frequented and displayed trails, most requested services, flows on the territory.
All a series of useful data to analyze, plan and strategically organize investments and actions on the territory over time.
In addition to this, the ability to quickly communicate with your audience with geolocated notifications, messages and other special features.
Which partner areas have chosen to rely on Mowi Space?
Mowi Bike, after the remarkable success obtained with Dolomiti Paganella Bike area, on the Paganella Plateau in Trentino, was chosen as official app also by the nearby Val Di Sole Bikeland. As their technical partners, we had the opportunity to exhibit and present our product at the UCI World Championship held in Daolasa (Val di Sole) in August 2021. A great international showcase that has allowed us to further increase our visibility. The success and positive feedback collected in our two main partner areas (among the most important in Europe for the mountain bike market) allowed us to be chosen by other 5 important Italian bike areas for the 2022 Bike season:
- Plan de Corones, in South Tyrol
- Bologna Montana Bike, in Emilia Romagna
- Mount Etna, in Sicily
- Monti Sibillini Bike, in the Marche region
- Val di Non, in Trentino
We are already in contact with other bike areas, Italian and European for the inclusion of new areas in the short term.
Also for the winter version Mowi Snow, were excellent results achieved in the winter season 2021/22 in Paganella. So much so that, for the next winter 2022/2023, we will go out with 8 of the most important Ski Areas of the Alps. Do you want to know who they are? Well, follow us on our channels and you’ll find out during this summer 😉
What are your plans for the future?
Within the next year we plan to export our product outside the national borders, in the main Bike Area and Ski Area of Europe but always keeping our values and aspects that distinguish us from the rest of the more general and global offer.
We are studying new features to increase the engagement of our users but also the safety of Biker, Pedestrians and Skiers in the area, prevent accidents and allow prompt and accurate rescue.
Curiosity: Why should territories invest in Mowi?
In order to express and communicate the value of its tourist offer and its territory, through an exclusive, precise and of the highest quality.
Tourists should be attracted, involved in exploration before and during his experience on site, should be facilitated in the use of the territory that must be simple, intuitive and sewn on the individual reality.
In today’s world, where everyone has a smartphone in their pocket and they use it constantly to explore and move, the digital experience that guides you and motivates you in the real discovery of extraordinary places must also be special.
MOWI is a strategic tool that becomes a fundamental part in the communication, enhancement and use of the outdoor product promoted to its audience.
At the same time MOWI becomes an indispensable tool to facilitate communication and loyalty with its users, monitor and analyze their audience and the actions carried out on the territory so you can plan strategies and investments over time.
We try to provide the best tools to allow these territories to reach the public in the right way, to value their reality in the best possible way, to make each territory special by exalting with the highest quality its strengths. Only in this way, we believe that the efforts and investments of a territory are not in vain. This is what we work on and for which we make a difference!
We are often asked: there are already maps and apps for routes and sports activities, what is different about MOWI? It’s true, there are several digital tools and apps valid for outdoor sports tourism for both Mountain Biking and Winter Sports. However, all of them adopt a “global” character, often generalist, aiming to standardize the information they offer. We chose a more local, exclusive and quality approach instead of quantity. Each partner’s reality has its own history, has different needs, has peculiarities that must be valued more than others, and has its weaknesses and strengths.
On this we work together with our partner areas, constantly improving and optimizing our products, sewn on the territory and an integral part of the tourist offer of the territory itself.
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