Some time ago I came across a company called Hirebobs which lets you earn money by hiring out your equipment to people. The major advantage of the site is that you can set the cost to be whatever you want. This means that in those ‘off weeks’ during the summer you can rent out that great lawn mower of yours to others around your neighbourhood for a nice tidy profit.
The Money Shed sat down with the guys at Hirebobs to find out more
1) Can you tell us what HireBobs is?
Hirebobs is a website where individuals or organisations can list absolutely anything to hire out to others as long as it’s not illegal, on their own terms
2) What made you come up with the idea and made you think there was a market for it?
I was shutting down my telecommunications company in 2012 and we had some specialist tools that I didn’t want to sell but I thought were too expensive to just leave lying around. I
looked around for a website to list them on for people to hire them from me and could not find one anywhere, Everybody was saying list them on Ebay but I thought Ebay was not the site for this as it was an auction site not a hire site. At this time I also needed a PAT (personal appliance tester) to test some computer power supplies before I sold them and thought every electrician around must have one which they could hire me but once again I couldn’t find a site so I contacted an electrical company who gladly lent me there’s for £10. This was the moment I decided to create the website
3) How long did it take you from idea to working site?
The initial brief for the site was pencilled down at the start of December 2012 after a couple of months of asking people on their thoughts of my idea. I then started the task of finding a website designer to put my brief into a working site. I wanted the site to be based around a character as I knew for this site to exist it would have to be based on trust and not a corporate image as people were losing trust with corporations with the collapse of the banks and other relative news articles. I was introduced to two people now good friends Steve Woods and Phil Cuthbert in April 2013 and we started looking at the initial company branding where bob was transformed from my initial sketches to the branding we have today. The site was completed in January 2014 and underwent beta testing with friends and family who completed numerous listing and contacts to iron out any bugs and the site was launched live on the 23rd of May 2014 and we have created the wanted section where people can ask for items not listed and the news blog in august 2014 bringing the site to the position you see now
4) How have you found the traction with HireBobs? Are you seeing repeat custom from people on the site?
We have found that the people whom we know personally have had great responses to items they have listed on the site and we do spend a lot of time marketing the items and tweaking the SEO to be more searchable
5) What sort of items are popular on HireBobs?
We find power tools are popular and as you can see from the site the most viewed item is a drill. We do track the search parameters of the site and the most searched items people are looking for is garden furniture, Garden tools, cooking equipment, car hire, and this month we notice a shift to Catering supplies being searched and tableware. People getting ready for the extra people over Christmas no doubt. Oh and as I speak a user has searched for carpet cleaner and another searched for decorations
6) How can people use HireBobs to make money online?
People can make money and save money firstly by looking around their home and thinking what could I list on the site that I don’t use much but don’t want to sell or give away. Maybe you have a carpet cleaner as was just searched for and could have had it listed for £10 per day and just made a tenner for simply listing or you could have added value and said I will clean it for you for £30 or simply list your lawnmower as I am sure all 120 houses on my street don’t all need to own a lawnmower and this is the general idea.
Now to the saving money. It’s a sunny day and you’re enjoying a glass of wine in the garden in the hot tub you hired for a weekend party and you lawnmower breaks rather than grabbing the catalogue or rushing to B&Q or your local retailer spending £100 on a new one to take valuable space in the shed you turn to HireBobs.co.uk and a neighbour has one listed for £5 for half a day and within 10 minutes you have that lawn cut,
The simple ethos is that if you need an item for a short period of time or simply don’t want to buy it due to cost or space its likely someone in your neighbourhood will have one and its simply our aim to get them listing and looking for items on www.HireBobs.co.uk
7) What is it you feel makes HireBob different from other UK rental sites?
In the past before the digital age and people actually talked to neighbours from down the road not just next door or facebook, there was a good community spirit and if you were doing something and you didn’t have the stuff you would say “ hey bob down the street has a wheel barrow go and ask him if you can lend it and of course bob new everyone and would happily lend his wheelbarrow and whilst there the neighbours had a chat about what they were doing and a brief social interaction. This is a unique hire experience to our site and we have termed it “The Digital Garden Fence” as you actively seek out and item and can then engage in a conversation regarding the task ahead or simply the weather. Unlike blogs or message boards where it is usually based around a them
We have also created the brand to be a personal friendly recommendation as we know you would lend to a friend for no financial gain but would accept their introduction of someone else. That’s why we called the site HireBobs as to hire an item is for financial gain as you don’t necessarily know the person as a friend, simply an introduction from a friend “Bob”
Since we set up HireBobs in 2013/14 we have found just a couple of sites trying to do the same as us, We feel that HireBobs.co.uk is unique in the way that you can list items for free for 28day periods at a time and we do not take any commission from the transaction as well as becoming a friend not just another faceless website.
We also actively market the site and since March 2014 we have distributed 10,000 leaflets and Bob is a familiar face on the streets of Manchester and hopefully as the site gets more traffic and Bob gets older and we gain investment he will be allowed to visit other cities “With his parents’ permission of course”.
8) What troubles have you come up against so far that you didn’t expect to happen when you formed the company?
Our main problems have been slightly technical in that advertising agency’s try to list things like advertisements for corporate brands in the hope that our search engine optimisation would advertise their products through our site which never entered my mind when we were developing the site so this blindsided me when somebody listed an advertisement and I thought that’s not for hire or a service so we quickly resolved that one, Oh and I nearly forgot the first time Bob went out distributing leaflets within half an hour he was overheating and he had to go and have surgery to install a fan in his head “sounds nasty but if you look at his pictures on Facebook you will see there’s no scars and you can’t even see it” Bobs a lot cooler now and can spend plenty of time out and about in public. Being a young company though I am sure more problems will land on my desk but I am sure we will as always find quick solutions.
9) What facilities are in place to protect those that are offering their items up for rent?
We have a good section in our news articles http://www.hirebobs.co.uk/hirebobs-community-built-trust which explains how to protect yourself during the hire period and as we stated in our terms and conditions that both parties should use the hire agreement as supplied in our resources centre http://www.hirebobs.co.uk/resources-centre
It’s simply a matter of filling the items out and printing it or emailing it for the other party to accept
The items listed should however be fit for purpose and as such should be well maintained and on agreement of this both parties sign the hire agreement and at that stage the liability is transferred to the Hiree so should he she not have the relevant skills or knowledge to use the equipment or simply have an accident they have agreed to be the sole custodian of the item for the hire period and they themselves would be liable. On our road map for further development we will be implementing an insurance option where hiree parties can access a policy to cover loss damage theft and party liability and the hirer can either request or insist this insurance is taken.
So how can you protect the items you hire?
Whilst you do not have to use our resources centre, first and foremost we recommend you do. The form we provide in this section can be printed out and will provide an effective record detailing the hire agreement.
In terms of what you can physically do to protect yourself though here are our top 6 tips that you should bear in mind.
1.Over time our members will be given feedback and this will be a guide to the trustworthiness of a member, however if they don’t have any feedback yet you can also;
2.Request to see a valid, issued ID (such as a driver’s license or passport) when the renter collects the item. You should take a photograph of the ID which most smartphones are perfect for or use a digital camera.
3.Use hirebobs.co.uk hire agreement form and require that the renter sign it, however you are of course free to offer your own version.
4.Request to see a copy of a utility bill with the hirees name and address on it and make sure it is dated within the last 3 months.
5.Require a “fair” cash deposit. Or you could simply ask to retain a passport or driving licence as a deposit. This bit of hirebobs.co.uk is entirely up to you but remember high deposits may deter hirees from hiring your items (see what others are asking for deposits in your categories).
10) What services do you provide if the renter gets into trouble and needs HireBobs help?
Unlike other faceless websites HireBobs has a postal address where we can be contacted at our UK offices and even a UK phone number to our offices as well as the usual emails. We are available to answer any questions and we have teamed up with the federation of small businesses where we have access to legal and business services and will always try and help any user who is experiencing problems.
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