In the heights! An audiovisual rental business takes flight with Flecto
Rent a Camera is a successful audiovisual rental business that took off in Russia back in 2015. The founder, Aleksandr Vasev, expanded the business to five different cities in the country before moving to Lisbon in early 2022. In Portuguese territory, he found a cultural community that was equally excited about having the opportunity to rent photographic equipment.
The company displays a wide range of items, all the way from cameras and lenses down to lighting equipment, storage disks and batteries. Back when Flecto was still known as Rnters, Aleksandr brought their entire portfolio to the marketplace and saw the opportunity to premiere a new channel for the company. Thought Rnters served as a peer-to-peer marketplace, Aleksandr saw it as the perfect alternative for a business owner like himself.
Since their inception, Rent a Camera used a specific software to manage their rental operations in Russia and started to do the same within the Portuguese market. Rnters — now known as Flecto Market — served as an extra lead generation channel, where the company was able to showcase items and be contacted by interested clients — though the remaining part of operations was done separately.
That was, of course, until the introduction of Flecto.
Dreaming big
Rent a Camera was happy to have an additional sales channel with Flecto Market, seeing the number of people interested in their equipment rise over many months. Their rental business took an even better turn when they started relying on Flecto to manage the full scope of their operations.
The company was able to quickly upload their entire inventory to Flecto, either individually or in bulk. Each item is traceable according to their title, description, category and sub-category, and can even be customized in terms of price range and tax values. This means business owners can fluctuate the prices for their products according to different criteria, such as customer demand, seasonality, days of rental and others. Furthermore, and in order to ensue higher flexibility, Flecto also enabled Rent a Camera to fully manage the availability of each item, allowing, for example, overbooking or their disappearance from the online market.
The rental business found great success and simplicity in managing each of their bookings with Flecto. Additional services like transportation, cleaning and deposit can be added to any booking, making it easier to meet different customer expectations and safeguard the integrity of items. The submission of payments — either to receive or return — can be done at any given time of the rental process and doesn’t affect the progression of the booking on the platform.
Customer proximity is also guaranteed through Flecto, where all communication with the end user is done via Flecto Link. This is a single URL that provides all updated details regarding one booking and deploys more transparency between customers and business owners. Whenever Rent a Camera needs manage quotes, reserve items or schedule pick-up, the entire process is shown on Flecto Link and can be further be communicated via e-mail, as a way to ensure everyone stays up to date with the status of the booking.
Ever since they started managing their rental operations with Flecto, Rent a Camera found great relief to see the platform provides the necessary tools to cover all business essentials. By customizing and controlling their inventory, customers and bookings in a fast, simple manner, the company had more time to focus on customer needs and new leads, eventually witnessing their business sprout and grow.
Flecto has been there in every step of the way. Either through Whatsapp messages or regular, in-person meetings, the collaboration between Flecto and Rent a Camera has been outstanding so both can receive the support and information they truly need. We are proud to see Rent a Camera take this giant step further and couldn’t be happier to be part of the journey!