It's the end of the road for Fortune, one of the city's largest bicycle renting companies.

The business shut up shop this week, selling off thousands of its bikes for 50 yuan a piece and pulling the plug on its 200-plus bicycle renting outlets, Mirror Evening News reported on Monday.

"The broken bikes sold for even less. They went to recyclers for 20 yuan each," said a branch manager surnamed He.

Most of the people who used the service in the past and who returned bikes to the rental station to get back their deposits praised the high quality of the bikes, He said.

"The municipal government was very hopeful about this industry in March," He said. "They planned to build 500 more bike rental stations by 2012 and provide more than 20,000 bikes. I don't understand how this happened."

The closure of Fortune surprised many people but analysts noted that the company had been suffering for some time.

Founded in May 2007, Fortune opened 150 outlets in Beijing with an investment of 2 million yuan.

The company started to lose money just three months later.

After securing more investment in January 2008, the company expanded the scale of its operation to 200 outlets but still failed to become as successful as its supporters hoped.

He said there should have been additional revenue from such things as the rental of advertising space on the bicycles.

"I guess the advertising space on those bikes was the real potential business opportunity, like those on the buses," he said.

Renters could get their hands on a bike by depositing 180 yuan. After making their deposit, they had only to pay 1 yuan to rent the bike for half an hour. By paying 30 yuan, they could use a bike for a month.

However, the business ran into trouble when advertising on bicycles was outlawed and the potential revenue from that part of the business was lost.

Bike Rental, another Beijing rental company, is also thought to be in financial difficulty and have income that is less than its expenses.

(China Daily November 9, 2010)