De Fietskoerier and Cargo Velo are merging. The combined company becomes Belgium’s largest bicycle courier operation: roughly 50 (part-time) couriers on the road, projected revenue well above one million euros, and a combined distance cycled of more than 250,000 kilometers a year. Two pioneers of sustainable city logistics are turning into a logistics player of real weight. What does it take to make that succeed?
That question sits behind an exploratory study by the Hogeschool van Amsterdam (HvA), carried out for Topsector Logistiek: what can social and sustainable entrepreneurs in city logistics teach the rest of the sector, and which strategies do they use to scale their businesses while scaling their impact? Eight social and sustainable entrepreneurs in logistics shared their business models and success factors for the research.
Value first, scale second: not the other way around
The study, led by lector Maarten Hogenstijn (HvA), identifies two essential differences between social and sustainable entrepreneurs and financially-driven companies. The first is how they define value: social and sustainable entrepreneurs pursue multiple forms of value creation at once, while financially driven companies focus primarily on profit. The second is what growth is for. In a conventional firm, financial growth is the driver. For social and sustainable entrepreneurs, it is expanding positive impact that drives the business — and that expansion doesn’t have to stay inside the company. It shows up in organizational growth and strengthening, but just as often in influencing policy and shifting public perception.
That second point deserves more attention than it usually gets in city logistics debates. We tend to evaluate scaling purely in operational terms — more vehicles, more volume, more revenue. This research suggests the entrepreneurs worth learning from are scaling something else entirely: the argument that logistics can be organized differently. A merger that produces the largest bicycle courier company in Belgium is not just an operational milestone; it is a credibility milestone. It makes the alternative harder to dismiss as a niche experiment.
The obstacles are familiar, and that’s the point
None of this happens without friction. The entrepreneurs in the study report running into sector conservatism, price-sensitive clients, uncertain government policy, and a persistent lack of awareness about what logistics actually costs. None of these obstacles are unique to social enterprises. They are the same structural problems that make city logistics resistant to change in general. What differs is the response: these entrepreneurs point to strengthening business acumen, making impact visible and measurable, collaborating between companies rather than competing on price alone, and actively lobbying for consistent, forward-looking policy.
That combination is worth pausing on. It is not a call for more subsidy or more goodwill. It is a call for the same commercial discipline expected of any logistics operator, applied in service of a different definition of value plus a willingness to do the political work of changing the rules of the game rather than simply operating within them.
Scaling strategies aimed at the organization itself are:
Scaling in, strengthening the organization itself;
Scaling out, growing the organization or expanding into other areas.
Scaling strategies aimed at the ecosystem are:
Scaling across, strengthening the position of social entrepreneurs in general;
Scaling up, influencing laws and regulations;
Scaling deep, influencing public opinion or discourse.
Why this matters beyond the social-enterprise niche
It would be a mistake to read this research as being about a special category of “green” logistics companies operating at the margins. The real finding is that social and sustainable entrepreneurship is not merely an alternative to the conventional business model. It functions as an innovation engine for the wider sector. The pricing models, cooperative structures, and policy strategies these entrepreneurs are forced to develop — precisely because they can’t rely on scale or subsidy alone — are exactly the kind of experimentation the mainstream sector needs and rarely produces on its own.
The full report, Schaalstrategieën van sociaal en duurzaam ondernemers in de stadslogistiek – lessen voor de sector, is available via Topsector Logistiek. [in Dutch]
Source: Topsector Logistiek