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RentMy Users Expand Market Reach With ShipEngine

The local nature of rentals can limit the growth of rental businesses. It’s nearly impossible to scale to serve new customers in other parts of the country or world. Until now.

Rental businesses traditionally revolve around a local market. If you need a bounce house for a birthday party in Baltimore, you look for a party rental company in the Baltimore area. If your conference in Kansas City requires audio-visual equipment, you turn to an AV company in the Kansas City area. If you need tree-trimming tools in Seattle, you choose a tool-rental company in the Seattle area.

RentMy.co is an ecommerce rental platform with the goal of breaking down those limitations by giving rental companies an all-in-one solution that allows them to grow beyond local markets.

The Challenge: Simplifying Shipments and Rental Returns

There’s a reason why rental companies stick to local markets: It’s incredibly difficult to coordinate inventory, product availability, and shipping in a way that allows for service outside of an immediate area. RentMy has created a platform that empowers rental companies to overcome the challenges of expanding outside their local markets. The fully white-labeled solution allows for more automation, greater efficiency and an improved customer experience. 

The driving force behind RentMy is an algorithm that manages the entire process. The RentMy algorithm takes into account when rentals are in transit to customers and when they are on their way back. The algorithm creates a timeline that’s connected to inventory and scheduling, allowing a company’s end users to make reservations to rent a given product.

RentMy has mastered the complexities of expanding the rental business beyond local markets. But, to best serve its users, RentMy needed support from an expert in shipping.

The Solution: A Customizable and Affordable Shipping API

To solve the shipping portion of its business, RentMy chose to create a “no-code” integration with ShipEngine. The RentMy platform uses ShipEngine to shop for USPS rates, FedEx rates, and UPS rates (while also calculating outbound and inbound shipping times), to print both outbound and return labels, and to track shipments. ShipEngine allows RentMy users to confidently manage their inventory while minimizing the costs associated with shipping.

As RentMy gives rental businesses the tools to expand, it’s working with a new breed of business. Traditional rental businesses include the party supply companies, audio-visual companies, and tool/machinery rental companies noted above. 

Now, thanks to the innovative RentMy platform, new types of rental businesses are emerging, including companies that rent:

  • Silent discos
  • Moving supplies
  • Medical equipment 
  • And more!

These new types of businesses are just the start. The rental industry is prime for additional growth and expansion with the RentMy platform as a driving force.

The Process: Building a Flexible Solution to Empower New Opportunities for Ecommerce

As RentMy explored shipping solutions for its platform, it continually discovered complex shipping situations: the need for pay-on-use return labels, the need for different services for outbound and inbound shipments, the need to calculate different weights for outbound and inbound services, etc.

ShipEngine provided solutions to those complex shipping situations. ShipEngine also offered existing features, a roadmap for additional features, plus comprehensive documentation and 24/7 support — making it the obvious choice among competitors. 

We looked at alternatives like Shippo, but we came to ShipEngine directly because the documentation and support were solid, and we felt like ShipEngine offered a lot of utility and flexibility for our clients.”

Andrew Chambers
Founder, RentMy 

Initially, the RentMy team explored creating its own carrier integrations, but the related challenges made clear the need for a quality shipping API solution.

The Result: Minimal Development Time & Expanded User Reach 

By investing in a third-party shipping API, RentMy was able to save significant time and money. It requires resources to build direct carrier integrations, and the ongoing maintenance of those integrations requires even more resources. A shipping API like ShipEngine gives users access to 30-plus carriers with just a single integration. Never again do ShipEngine users need to build to individual carrier APIs or worry about ongoing maintenance.

ShipEngine gives us one API that allows us to connect to the carriers we need rather than building and maintaining our own integrations.”

Stanley Baker
Lead Developer, RentMy 

As a result, RentMy has been able to focus their time and energy on building a world-class ecommerce platform for rental companies around the globe. 

The shipping API that powers RentMy is available to all brands, ecommerce platforms, and third-party logistics companies. Are you ready to solve shipping? Get your free API key and start building today.

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