Over the weekend, Rentcycle celebrated two firsts: our first television debut and our first mention in one of our favorite publications, FastCompany Magazine!  It's great to see increased media coverage and interest in renting as a concept.  Look for more of this as Rentcycle brings renting even further into the mainstream!

The TV segment which aired on ABC News Philadelphia was all about how more people are turning to renting as a means to save money.  The report highlighted the economics of renting, stating, "the more expensive an item is, the more money you'll save by renting."  The segment touched on unique items people might not realize can be rented, referencing services like REI (camping gear), BookSwim (Netflix for books), Guitar Affair (guitar rentals) and ZipCar (on-demand cars).  Rentcycle was cited as, "a really great aggregator of the things you can rent," by rental expert Eric Ginsburg.  Watch the 2 minute segment for yourself here.

The September issue of FastCompany Magazine came out over the weekend with an interesting article in their Next Strategy section.  Titled "Welcome to the Copy Shop," the article highlights some of the web's most successful businesses with examples of startups who strive to apply similar business models to new industries.  Top business models included Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter, Yelp and Zappos, among others.  Not too surprisingly, Rentcycle was compared to OpenTable which is reminiscent of the TechCrunch article that dubbed us OpenTable for local rental businesses.  Having utmost respect for OpenTable, we are flattered and have aspirations for similar success.  Another interesting piece of the article highlights companies with models similar to Netflix.  Included on this list are Bookrenter and Chegg for textbooks, RentTheRunway for high fashion, and SproutRobot for seeds.  Since Rentcycle serves this space, we are huge fans of these innovative rental services.  Read more by picking up a copy of FastCompany and turning to page 44.