For the past 18 months, my team and I have been working hard to develop the concept, model and product behind Rentcycle -- a website for rental stores to gain greater visibility with consumers seeking alternatives to ownership.  During this time, we've recruited a handful of early adopters from around the rental industry to get direct input and feedback on the product as it came to life.  We had a surf shop in Santa Monica.  A tool rental company in Arizona.  Even a bike store down the street from us in San Francisco.  These initial Rentcycle customers provided invaluable feedback and shed light onto the inner workings of a rental business.  We learned the importance of taking deposits to avoid no-shows, requiring contracts to avoid liability down the line, and other processes specific to the rental industry.  Aside from these few contacts, Rentcycle had a very limited view into the rental world... until a few days ago.

This week, Rentcycle took the cross-country trek to Orlando, site of this year's Rental Show, an annual event hosted by The American Rental Association.  As I've mentioned before, the rental industry is a HUGE space, accounting for $85B and over 65,000 businesses in the U.S.  This show was our first major opportunity to introduce ourselves and we tried our very best to do it with style.

Although we were booth #5043 in the sea of exhibits within the monstrous Orange County Convention Center, Rentcycle's 10'x10' slice of the trade show floor was packed with flare.  Passers-by couldn't miss the vibrant Rentcycle green displays, complete with 2 Internet kiosks (for live demos), plasma screen (for videos) and the friendliest staff to hit the rental world since Avis ("we try harder" campaign).  Video games brought out the competitive side of attendees who played in our Wii Sports tournament.  And a daily raffle of iPod Touches and a Nintendo Wii kept visitors coming back.  All this traffic made for the perfect atmosphere as we debuted our brand new technology to an industry that's trying to keep up with its increasingly savvy customers. 

Rental stores from across the country and world stopped by our booth to learn about Rentcycle.  To be honest, I wasn't sure how a brand new website would be received by an industry that has done things mostly the same way for generations.  But our reception couldn't have been more positive.  I can't tell you the number of times I heard, "this is the way our industry is heading," and "we could really use some help getting more online business."  Business owners were signing their stores up and checking out how they stacked up against the local competitors.  We demoed our online reservation system, which would allow stores to conduct business 24/7.  And we got input on planned features that are in the pipeline to better suit their needs.  In three day's time, we achieved exponential progress.  It was fantastic.

During the event, we learned the nuance of difference between rental categories like party & event versus tool & equipment and will be planning our product accordingly to meet the unique needs of each.  We strengthened our network and developed relationships we hope to strengthen as we continue to grow our business.  More than anything, we got ourselves out there in the community of people we're trying to serve.  This alone made the trip worthwhile.  The fact that they liked what we're doing didn't hurt either :-)

Next year's event is a bit closer to home and I'm looking forward to bringing back the Rentcycle green.  See you in Vegas!

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