Opinions Experts have different attitudes to the idea of online rental
Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2025 4:11 am
Look100,Toyrent,Naprokat.Infoand some other projects have a narrower focus and offer products in a specific category. On look100.ru you can find a wide range of evening dresses for rent, and also add your dress to the catalog if you want to rent it out and make money on your wardrobe. Toyrent.ru offers toys for rent. The company does not cooperate with individuals; here, goods are offered only on a paid basis. Naprokat Info is a bulletin board, a traditional aggregator of rental companies offering sports equipment in different cities of Russia. It also accepts ads from individuals. The site does not provide additional services and does not charge a commission on transactions.
Social charity services are popular in RuNet.Darudar.ru— the first of them. It is an international project, with the help of which users give away their unused things to those who need them. All this is free of charge.
Evgeny Savin , serial entrepreneur, co-founder of the information and fronk oil email database list analytical portal in the field of innovations and startups UNOVA, talks about the pitfalls:
"The rental market is well developed in certain categories and niches, but not developed at all in others. You can easily rent an apartment, a car... And most importantly, it is clear how to do it. But renting something not so large-scale is not so easy. There are a lot of questions about logistics. For example, delivery and return of goods is either a waste of money or time. Or the issue of safety and guarantees: if I gave my goods for use, I want to get them back, at a minimum, at a maximum, in good liquid condition.
And here an economic threshold arises: if the goods are too cheap, neither renting nor taking is profitable, because the risks and transaction costs are not covered by the benefits of the transaction. And expensive goods (apartments and cars) are already rented successfully. Renting is, in addition to business, also a culture of consumption, a culture of home improvement, a culture of attitude to things. As long as our houses have large balconies, people will continue to buy and store all sorts of necessary and unnecessary items there."
Vladimir Dolgov , a well-known IT manager and head of eBay Marketplaces in Russia, considers “sharing” to be a significant phenomenon: “In the Internet business, it seems to me, there has always been a certain latent hope that one day a completely new, unique business model will appear, which will finally turn all ideas about the economy upside down. It seems to me that the sharing economy is that very new model. Moreover, it works on the basis of one of the main principles of Internet business: direct connections between counterparties and the elimination of intermediaries, and, therefore, unnecessary costs. A critical mass of “extra” things has appeared - and there is already a well-functioning channel through which information about them can be distributed en masse. It will be very interesting to see what will come of this now that rental has turned into a new format of business.”
While some businessmen are pondering the prospects of “sharing” in Russia, others have already opened their online rental platforms. Arkady Meshkovsky , CEO of Rentmania.org, an online service for renting goods of all categories, comments: “There are already quite a few projects for renting specific types of things, say, bicycles, dresses, tourist equipment. This means that the market as a whole has been formed. At the same time, a user accustomed to making purchases in a hypermarket will also look for a platform for rent that would offer the widest range of goods for rent. It is much more convenient to remember just one address, by going to which you can find any rental offers for all categories of goods.
Social charity services are popular in RuNet.Darudar.ru— the first of them. It is an international project, with the help of which users give away their unused things to those who need them. All this is free of charge.
Evgeny Savin , serial entrepreneur, co-founder of the information and fronk oil email database list analytical portal in the field of innovations and startups UNOVA, talks about the pitfalls:
"The rental market is well developed in certain categories and niches, but not developed at all in others. You can easily rent an apartment, a car... And most importantly, it is clear how to do it. But renting something not so large-scale is not so easy. There are a lot of questions about logistics. For example, delivery and return of goods is either a waste of money or time. Or the issue of safety and guarantees: if I gave my goods for use, I want to get them back, at a minimum, at a maximum, in good liquid condition.
And here an economic threshold arises: if the goods are too cheap, neither renting nor taking is profitable, because the risks and transaction costs are not covered by the benefits of the transaction. And expensive goods (apartments and cars) are already rented successfully. Renting is, in addition to business, also a culture of consumption, a culture of home improvement, a culture of attitude to things. As long as our houses have large balconies, people will continue to buy and store all sorts of necessary and unnecessary items there."
Vladimir Dolgov , a well-known IT manager and head of eBay Marketplaces in Russia, considers “sharing” to be a significant phenomenon: “In the Internet business, it seems to me, there has always been a certain latent hope that one day a completely new, unique business model will appear, which will finally turn all ideas about the economy upside down. It seems to me that the sharing economy is that very new model. Moreover, it works on the basis of one of the main principles of Internet business: direct connections between counterparties and the elimination of intermediaries, and, therefore, unnecessary costs. A critical mass of “extra” things has appeared - and there is already a well-functioning channel through which information about them can be distributed en masse. It will be very interesting to see what will come of this now that rental has turned into a new format of business.”
While some businessmen are pondering the prospects of “sharing” in Russia, others have already opened their online rental platforms. Arkady Meshkovsky , CEO of Rentmania.org, an online service for renting goods of all categories, comments: “There are already quite a few projects for renting specific types of things, say, bicycles, dresses, tourist equipment. This means that the market as a whole has been formed. At the same time, a user accustomed to making purchases in a hypermarket will also look for a platform for rent that would offer the widest range of goods for rent. It is much more convenient to remember just one address, by going to which you can find any rental offers for all categories of goods.