2015-08-20



Add recreational vehicles to the so-called sharing economy. Outdoorsy is a startup that provides an online marketplace for motorhome and trailer owners to rent out their vehicles when they’re not using them- and it could be poised to tap into a market of young and upwardly mobile 20-somethings in search of new experiences.

Renting a motorhome isn’t anything new. Google “RV rental” and you’ll pull up Cruise America and a dozen of other outfits waiting to let you take their camper vans for a spin. But these are mostly corporate, with charmless vehicles generously plastered in their logos.

Airbnb also offers RVs – many of them come with the character and charm Outdoorsy is aiming for. Check out this pastel “vintage caravan” or a gorgeous silver Airstream I found on the site.

But Airbnb doesn’t specialize in the motorhome life, argues Outdoorsy co-founder Jeff Cavins.

“Airbnb is the perfect solution for apartments and homes and chalets and castles, but when you get into the world of recreational vehicles the users they use a different language,” Cavins told TechCrunch. He used location as an example. “Those renting from others in New York can give them the download on New York, but those renting RVs will want to know the difference between Yosemite versus Yellowstone,” he said.  .

Outdoorsy co-founder and the startups lead frontend developer, Ryan Quinn, lives the RV lifestyle out of a vintage ’91 GMC he refers to as his “vansion.” He rents out his home on wheels for $100 a night when he’s not in it himself.

Quinn falls into that age group that Outdoorsy could be the perfect for – millennials (those age 18-34). RVs are mostly thought of as something retired folks or vacationing families motor around in. There are entire residential parks scattered throughout the U.S. and Canada devoted to RVing senior citizens – My parents stay in one every year when they go to Phoenix. There are cooking classes and fitness instructors and a sewing room. A sewing room! They tell me I’m not allowed to live there because I’m not 55 or older.

However, millennials, recession-battered and reluctant to own anything that seems too permanent, seek experiences over material possessions. Outdoorsy offers unique cross-country vehicles just waiting for experiences to be had in them for a short amount of time.

Summer RV travel is a very American past time (though I’ve been told it’s similar to caravanning in Europe) and millennials are the fastest growing segment of traveler in this section of the world. Outdoorsy provides the adventure of the road, the great outdoors and a nomadic lifestyle that might sound quite romantic to this age group – without adding that dreaded permanence of ownership.

The Colorado-based startup also offers RV owners a way to make some cash on their campers with an economic model in the same vein as other peer-to-peer platforms. Owners list their vehicle on the site, with pictures, a description and the price of rental per night, just like homeowners do on Airbnb.

Outdoorsy takes a ten percent cut from the renter and a 15 percent cut from the owner on each rental. Like Airbnb, Outdoorsy also provides a $1 million insurance policy in case a bad apple destroys your RV.

We aren’t just looking to create the next big thing in the sharing economy, we want to create a community of passionate outdoor enthusiasts who are looking to connect and share their experiences with others.
— Jen Young, Outdoorsy co-founder
I ran through a typical rental from San Francisco to Yosemite over Labor Day weekend and found some RVs going for $80 per day on the cheap end, to more than $300 per day, depending on the style and condition of the camper. I tried to compare this to Cruise America pricing for the same trip but the site first told me I had to rent for a longer amount of time, then, after adjusting, I was told the site was out of vehicles to rent in the San Francisco area for that particular long weekend.

According to RV enthusiast and Google Ventures partner Rick Klau – who took a deep dive into RVs on his blog a little while back – it was $100 per day plus $.30-.40 per additional mile for a 1500 mile family trip. Klau goes into painstaking detail of the process and has taken his family RVing around the great U.S. National Parks for the last six years, according to the post. It’s worth a read if you’re an RV noob or seeking some pro tips on the RV life.

The possibilities to rent a camper van of any shape, size, color or even the type of fuel it runs on is much larger with a platform like Outdoorsy. Rising gas prices hit the RV industry the hardest these last couple years and could be something that scares the younger crowd away. However, it looks like Tesla is working on an all-electric RV. No word on when the vehicle billed as the “Model H,” will come to fruition, but the images on Inhabitat look pretty swank.

There’s a huge opportunity for investment in a new type of RV market. About eleven million Americans own an RV and manufacturing has steadily increased since 2007. The rental market within that industry is a $350 million annual business and continues to grow, according to figures from the Recreational Vehicle Industry Association.

We’ve heard that Outdoorsy hopes to capitalize on that and do some growing of its own. Rumor is the startup is in the middle of seeking funding from various VC firms in Silicon Valley.

Outdoorsy calculates that RV owners also stand to make up to $86,000 a year on each vehicle. Some enterprising individuals have already started creating a fleet of multiples on the platform and could potentially make even more.

Money is a good motivator for any platform. But it’s clear that at the heart of this startup is a community with a passion for outdoor experiences.

“Over the last few years there has been a resurgence of people looking to reconnect with nature and detach from the constant connectedness of everyday life,” said Jen Young, the third Outdoorsy co-founder. “We aren’t just looking to create the next big thing in the sharing economy, we want to create a community of passionate outdoor enthusiasts who are looking to connect and share their experiences with others.”



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