For James Zimbardi, renting items is a win-win-win: it's environmentally conscious, cost-efficient and during the coronavirus pandemic, a good way to earn extra cash.
"We've all experienced this: we all buy products where we only need them once, but a lot of times it's your only option," Zimbardi said. "We all have too much stuff and we need to be doing a better job utilizing those items and make it more of a sustainable model. And it can generate either a supplemental or full-time income, just from items I've listed."
Zimbardi launched his company, RentItems, in Q1 of this year. It is an online platform that allows anyone in the country to rent out or rent items, with a specific focus on Tampa, Orlando, Boston, New York City and San Francisco.
The idea originally came to be after Zimbardi, who lived in a closed community, posted that he needed camping gear on an online platform.
"I was part of a closed community that shared items — within five minutes of the post, I had all the camping items I needed and more," he said. "I saw the power where I don't have to go out and buy it and someone already had all the materials."
However, he wanted to provide the security he had in the closed community to a wider audience.
"The big thing about RentItems is it's a formalized rental place," he said. "Which is different than Facebook marketplace or Craigslist. We handle 'when do you meet, where, the payment.' We're dealing with a lot of logistics and expectations that aren’t handled in an informal marketplace."
The company is bootstrapped and is looking for potential investors who could serve as advisors to the business as well. There are 12 people involved in the business, which has a distributive leadership model.
With the marketplace also comes patent-pending technology to further ensure security and ease. Unique codes are given to the renters and owners, which helps with communication between parties, if an item is not what was advertised and if the owner or renter is a no-show.
"Our technology handles the fulfillment process of checking out and checking in an item at the start and end of the rental period," he said. "If you think about the traditional e-commerce process of buying and selling, once the item goes out of inventory, it doesn't come back to you. When dealing about peer-to-peer and how to facilitate that, we can track if and when an item has been provided and returned."
While Zimbardi is just foraying into the online marketplace, he hopes RentItems will eventually serve as a space of disruption.
"The grand vision is we want to help with proven categories or items like kayaks and camping gear or sports gear, but our real hope and desire is to be identifiers of disruptive ideas," he said. "Things that aren’t even done today or conceived. For example, the rentals of robotics. So, being the catalyst or conduit for those. Sharing those items is the way to go."
