One day, Serge had a simple conversation with a customer that sparked an idea that would turn into a brilliant rental business idea. The customer talked about companies that rent out toys, and this sparked an idea in Serge’s mind. He went home and did some research, and what he found surprised him, that nobody in Canada was offering a service where people could rent LEGO bricks.
Serge saw an opportunity and moved quickly to make his idea a reality. He wanted to be the first to offer this service in Canada. Then, someone he knew told him about Booqable, which was the perfect platform for him to launch his business, called Brickanuck, right from the start.
Brickanuck is a Canadian company that operates completely online and ships its products all over the country. They use Booqable to manage their rentals and as a website for customers to book their products. This means that Serge can run the whole business from one place, making it easier to keep everything organized.
Serge is in charge of managing his inventory, and he does this by taking products out of the rental pool when they’re not being used, so they can go through quality control. He also uses email templates to communicate with customers, which saves him time because he doesn’t have to write a new message every time.
Now, Serge runs the entire operation by himself, handling everything from processing orders and shipping them out, to making sure the products are good to go by checking, cleaning, and packing them in three different quality control stations.
His target market is mainly families, especially mothers who want their kids to have fun with LEGO sets without breaking the bank or dealing with the mess afterwards. He also caters to serious LEGO enthusiasts who want to build multiple sets without spending a fortune on buying them outright, by offering a more affordable option.
Saving hours on customer communication with email templates
Running a one-person rental business means every hour counts. For Serge, one of the biggest early wins with Booqable was the email templates feature. Rather than typing out individual responses for every order, Serge can select a pre-built template directly from within each order, and Booqable automatically fills in the relevant customer and order details.
He can also attach documents like invoices, contracts, or quotes that populate with the correct information automatically. Templates can also be personalized or built from scratch in the account settings, giving full control over tone and content.
For a solo operator managing the entire customer journey, this matters in practice:
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Orders can be confirmed and communicated quickly without repetitive manual writing
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Attached documents like invoices go out accurately without extra steps
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Customer communication stays consistent, even as order volume grows
Only a month or two into launching, Serge already points to automation emails and email templates as his favorite feature. For a business built around precision and quality control, having communication that takes care of itself gives him more time to focus on the physical work.
Automating his maintenance by scheduling downtime
When a LEGO set is returned by a customer, it has to go through a special process to make sure it’s okay to rent again. This process has three steps: checking the set to make sure it’s complete and not broken, cleaning it, and then packing it up again. While the set is going through these steps, it’s not available for rent.
The problem is, if he cannot keep track of which sets are in this process, we might accidentally sell a set that’s still being checked or cleaned. To avoid this, we need a way to keep track of where each set is in the process.
Booqable’s downtime scheduling feature solves this directly. Serge can place any item into downtime mode, which removes it from availability both for customer-facing bookings and for internal orders placed through the backend.
He can set an expected return-to-stock date, end the downtime early once a set clears quality control, and assign a status like repair, maintenance, or lost so the reason is always clear.
It also supports pre-booking, so upcoming demand can be planned around items that are temporarily off the floor. For Brickanuck, this feature delivers three concrete things:
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Sets in quality control are never accidentally booked by customers or staff
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The status system keeps the inventory picture accurate at all times
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Downtime can be ended the moment a set is ready, without delay
Serge noted that while the feature itself could still be improved, the ability to pull items out of the rental pool during processing is extremely valuable for how his business is built. Every set has to earn its way back into rotation, and product downtime is what makes that trackable.
A good foundation to scale
Serge has just launched Brickanuck, and it’s only available on Booqable. So far, the platform is doing a great job of handling everything. Serge is hoping that within a year, he’ll have between 200 and 400 people using Brickanuck all across Canada.
He’s got big plans, and by the end of year three, he wants to have over 1,000 customers. Eventually, he even wants to open up multiple warehouses all over the country. Things are already set up and ready to go, and since Booqable is handling the bookings, communication, and inventory, Serge can focus on what really matters.
