I think the new Drops store is great, I continue to enjoy seeing the Zwift experience evolve and develop!
I appreciate the ability to get new gear, but I also think it would be amazing if Zwift would continue their corporate support of various charities and perhaps offer some way to use points to support worthy causes. Not sure what form that would take, but say, for example, 3 million Drops and you can “purchase” a Buffalo Bike for World Bike Relief, and Zwift donates that bike.
I realize that Zwift is a company and not a charity, but this would be great PR for Zwift, supports worthy causes, and it would allow users to feel like their hard work was supporting these causes…
How about it Zwifters? A drop shop option to donate your drops to a good cause? The idea is that you could select to donate your drops and Zwift would in turn donate cash to a charity of your choice or their choice. Those are the details that would need to be worked out. I am thinking three or four levels of donations levels – 100,000 drops for $25, 200,000 for $50, 400,000 for $100 and 800,000 for $250. Or something like that. Zwift could in turn donate to a charity like People for Bikes or Trips for Kids or, heck, to my local bike advocacy group, BikeAthens!
I can’t see this happening. Certainly not at those numbers. Zwift would potentially be paying out more than they get in subscription fees every month.
Considering normal drop rates, it’s possible to get 30,000 or more for an hour of effort. So 4 hours of riding and you’ve earnt over 100,000 - i.e. more than the monthly subscription. Many riders will earn more than a million drops in a month. That’s potentially $250 cost every month for a rider only paying in $15 in fees.
Not forgetting you get 100,000 drops for some levels (10, 20, 30 etc.) and 25,000 for others (5, 15, 25…).
True. My suggested numbers may not be feasible, but as I noted the details would need to be hammered out. But the idea–what about the idea of donating drops for dollars?
I think it’s a noble idea, but I think they’ll be much more comfortable with the more well-defined types of charitable donations they already make, like $1 for everyone riding the Greipel ALS ride tomorrow, up to a limit of $10,000.
They’ve done matched donations in the past as well, but the liabilities are either capped, or limited in terms of the time frame of qualifying rides. Mostly I think they tend to be “hit this target and we’ll donate this amount”; the Ride With Reason series is one example (RIDE WITH REASON | Zwift).
It’s a lot more predictable than maybe paying $10,000 one month, $20,000 the next, $2,000 the next etc.
Of course, they could do this and put a cap on the amount they’re willing to donate. So you give your 100,000 drops and that contributes $5 towards a total. If it’s $3,732 at the end of the month they donate that; if it’s $7,193 they donate the $5,000 cap. So yeah, I think it could be made to work if there’s enough demand for it.
Thank you for making me aware of the Ride With Reason series! I was not familiar with it; I will look into it.
And thank you for your thoughtful analysis on how a feature like this might work. I appreciate it! I am not tied to any particular way the feature works other than I would prefer an option to donate my drops rather than buying a new kit!
Sure, why not? Here’s an example from Eric of ZwiftInsider:
HOW QUICKLY DO DROPS ACCUMULATE?
Quite quickly, really. In a recent 90 minute workout on the Road to Sky route I earned just over 58,000 Drops with an average power of 228 watts for the ride. This calculates out to an hourly Drop rate of around 39,000.
If I ride at that pace for an hour every day of the week I’ll earn ~270,000 Drops weekly, or over 14 million Drops annually.
I would assume you have a tonne of new riders paying each month due to the COVID-19 lockdown… so I would love to be able to convert my earnt ‘drops’ to ‘buy’ a charity donation in the ‘drop shop’?
Yeah- most companies have made some sort of charity donation towards the epidemic. Zwift will have benefitted from an increase of paid memberships during this lockdown period… so why an then not pay a bit back to charity?
