For many rental industries, instant booking is a given, but for some, booking is hidden behind phone calls and emails. Damien Pinder and Ashley Hope decided that this needed to change for creatives in Barbados and set about creating their audio visual equipment rental business with Booqable to give customers instant access to inventory, real-time availability, online bookings, and payments.
The route to success isn’t always found by following in the footsteps of those before. Sometimes, it is found in taking a process that works in one industry and bringing it to another. It is easy to rent bikes, cars, and more online, so why not cameras? By doing something different, you can open yourself up to success in a market stuck in traditional ways.
Nu Visual Rentals
For several years, Damien wanted to give creatives in Barbados easy and convenient access to high-quality audiovisual equipment. He believes that creatives deserve better access to the equipment they need, much in the same way that tourists renting cars expect amazing service. So, he thought, “why can’t audiovisual practitioners have the same treatment for renting?”
The norm for camera and audio equipment rentals is to call or email to find out the price and availability of products. This way of doing things certainly has its advantages, but it can also be a significant roadblock for people who want quick and easy access to equipment. After all, we live in an age of convenience and unbound artistic creation, so this isn’t how it should work.
In the middle of the pandemic, the opportunity for Damien to start his business presented itself. His first mission was to research and purchase all of the equipment he needed to get started. In December 2021, he traveled to New York alone and returned with six overweight checked bags full of heavy equipment, and he was well on his way to starting his rental business.
Getting it right
The next step for Damien was to have a way for talented people in Barbados to get access to his equipment. He doesn’t believe in wasting people’s time, “If we have prices, why should people have to call or email to find availability before confirming!?” So he wanted to create a way for people to browse inventory, check availability and make a decision within a few seconds.
To do this, he knew he would need a rental website with the ability to accept online bookings. He commissioned website developers to create a bespoke rental website. However, two months into its creation, he realized it wouldn’t work out as he imagined. So, he set about finding another solution and realized that what he needed was a rental app that integrated with his website.
Soon, he came across Booqable and realized immediately that it was precisely what he needed to operate his business with his vision. So, he asked the website developers to pivot, and they quickly integrated Booqable with his website. This allowed him to start his rental business with the ability for customers to book equipment instantly without jumping through hoops.
Proactive problem solving
Of course, online bookings weren’t Damien’s only motivation for choosing Booqable. He was also proactively thinking about potential problems that could occur within the day-to-day operations of his business. On top of online bookings, he also needed to manage inventory, send emails and documents, and keep track of rentals per item and customer.
The last need, in particular, was key to helping Nu Visual Rentals to be a successful venture. By tracking how much each customer spends, he can reward their loyalty with better rates and discounts to maintain them as a customer. He can also see which items are not rented as much, so he can divert funds when they reach their end of life instead of replacing them.
In addition, being able to generate and send documents and emails from within Booqable makes it easy for Damien to communicate with customers, create quotes and invoice, and track all communication. This allows him to maintain his quality of service and ensure that customers get exactly the experience they have come to expect from his company.
Thinking differently
For Damien and Nu Visual Rentals, thinking differently from similar businesses has allowed them great success. They have noticed customers keep returning to rent from them, not for the price or even customer service, but “simply because they can wake up in the morning, booking something for the same day and just turn up and know it will be ready.”
This is precisely what Damien was hoping for in his mission to make it easier for creatives in Barbados to access high-quality equipment. With the country being a small market (less than 300,000 people) and camera and audio gear being expensive, Nu Visual Rentals offers an essential lifeline for creators. It has given them easy access to the equipment they could only dream of before.
The company aims to allow people to push the limits of what is possible with their projects instead of their pockets. Damien wants to take the Caribbean region by storm with his offering and open up many more locations. He is also working towards opening creative studio spaces that anyone can rent out alongside renting out camera and audio equipment for their productions.
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