Kyle
Earlier this year we brought you an interview with Rentstuff co-founder Chris Yaeger. The Nashville startup had quickly rose to prominence in the peer to peer renting category, with the idea they cultivated as part of the JumpStart Foundry program.
With $600,000 raised to help them along the way the startup relocated to Chicago’s 1871 in July and debuted their Chicago based team at TechWeek earlier this summer.
Their original idea, had a lot of holes in it in terms of insurance to the renter, and market viability but the concept was rock solid. One user could rent that DSLR camera that sits in the closed for $30-$50 a day to their local neighbor and make a few bucks on the side. You may have even been able to go as far as to call the idea “AirBnB for Stuff”.
At last look you could find anything from tents and sleeping bags, to weed-eaters and iPads. While I admitted to a friend on the phone just the other night, I would never rent out my personal iPad, if there was a market for it, I may pick a used one up off Craigslist just to rent out on rentstuff.com.
While couchsurfing and AirBnB made it ok to crash at a complete strangers house or even on their couch, it seems that letting a complete stranger rent my crock pot, serving trays or video camera, wasn’t in the cards.
The company, now based in Chicago, has pivoted to a more mainstream, portal to connect folks with businesses in the “Rent To Own” industry like RentACenter and Aarons. Now, you go to rentstuff.com and you can fill out a form which lets you request rental quotes from local companies. You can attempt to rent anything from a limousine to a laptop, to a sofa, whatever you need you should be able to get it.
A note on the site tells you that letting a rental company call you can get the process done faster. Of course, bidding out your rental should also mean that you get better deals.
Call me crazy though, the original idea was much more innovative. In fact the crazy guys that produced the Wipple video below, used a leaf blower that they rented from the “rentstuff.com marketplace” to produce this video.
There is definitely a market for the new version of rentstuff, similar to the way that there is a market for the pivoted SpareFoot.com which we covered earlier this month.
Linkage:
Check out rentstuff.com new site here
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