How to Start a Beach Gear Rental Business

Beach Gear or equipment rental companies run successful businesses worldwide and enjoy a high-profit margin. The model is simple, and anyone with a good business plan can start it.

Here are the pros and cons of starting a beach rental business.

Pros:

• Requires a minimal budget. You can start the business with only several chairs and umbrellas that may cost you several thousand dollars. But it all depends on your business plan; if you want to offer a large variety of equipment, you must increase your budget. Nevertheless, if you are a person who is looking for an opportunity while you are on a tight budget, then the beach rental business is for you. And you can always start small and build your way up as demands increase.

• High traffic. You may not need to spend a lot on marketing, as beaches are always crowded with people. You just need to create attractive banners and vouchers and employ other creative ideas to grab visitors’ attention. 

• Easy to install and disassemble. If you are going to provide installation services for your chairs, umbrellas, or tables, you can do so with minimal effort. For example, chairs and umbrellas usually come with stands, and they are lightweight.

• High-profit margin. Beach rental businesses enjoy a high-profit margin. People invest smaller amounts to purchase the equipment and profit from them. For example, good quality beach chairs cost around $75 a piece and a quality umbrella costs around $100. Usually, beaches rent out an umbrella and two beach chairs for $40 a day. It means your investment of $250 (the price of 2 chairs and an umbrella) will be fully paid off after 6-7 rounds of rentals. 

Cons:

• Physically demanding tasks. If you plan to manage your business alone, you should be prepared for constant walking and carrying. For instance, some people may ask you to install your chairs and umbrellas in certain spots. In those cases, you should meet customer needs. Otherwise, you need to hire a staff, to whom you need to pay hourly wages. 

• Higher storage fees. Usually, rental storage prices are higher around popular beaches. On the other hand, establishing your office too far from a beach may lead to logistical challenges. You may either need to deliver the booked items yourself or customers may need to load and unload those stuff, which in short, creates unnecessary hassle. Our experience shows that when rental items are conveniently available near beaches, their rentals increase significantly.

• Security issues. Beaches are usually crowded with people, and thus, the likelihood of some things getting stolen is high. So, we recommend having customers sign contract forms and making them responsible for the lost items. Such policies may keep the renters alert to keep an eye on the rental equipment. When you use Reservety, you can create a contract with your own terms and policies and let customers sign them electronically during the booking process.

• Higher Competition. Businesses know that beaches usually have a good amount of traffic, so they bring their business there, causing higher competition in the area. Before starting the business, you should study the competition, procure different and better items, and come up with more affordable pricing. Concisely, your inventories and prices should be above average to beat your customers. 

6 Basic Steps

1. Develop a business plan.

Planning should be an integral part of your business. With planning, you may know how to set up a budget, allocate funds, how many pieces of equipment you need, how to manage your business, what business model you should choose, etc.

Things you need to consider in your business plan.

• Budget. Determining how much money you can invest will be the first step because great ideas go to waste because of the insufficient budget. If you do not have enough funds to realize the things mentioned in a business plan, share it with private investors, lenders, and banks to make your budget sufficient. We have already written a step-by-step guide on setting up a budget for rental in the example of party rentals.You can easily apply those steps for your beach equipment rental business too. 

• Inventories. Try to determine what products you will offer. Here are the ten things you can offer in your beach equipment rental business.

1. Beach chairs and umbrellas. We all know the sun can be brutal near the beaches, and sand can get baking hot to sit on. It means beach chairs and umbrellas will be in high demand.
2. Coolers. Cold drinks are always preferable around the beaches. So, people prefer renting coolers to preserve their drinks and food during long summer days.
3. Swimming suits. Fashionable swimming suits may also be hot beach merchandise, especially when you offer designer pieces.
4. Tables for romantic nights or casual meetings. If a person decides to celebrate his birthday or special occasion, feeling the refreshing breeze of an ocean, they may need to organize their tables on the beaches. Plus, romantic nights for couples may also need some table sets.
5. Surfboards. Some people come to the ocean to surf the waves and enjoy their time swimming. Surfboards will be excellent for surfers and newbies.
6. Baby Gear and Toys. Beaches are an excellent place to spend quality time with a family. Parents may rent baby gear, such as baby seats, cradles, etc., for toddlers, and balls, game sets, and toys for their children to enjoy.
7. Life jackets. Safety gear such as lifejackets, tubes, and other inflatables will be in high demand as people may want to secure their children with safety gear.
8. Outdoor Barbecue Grills. People may prefer to make their own food on the beach. A fast and most convenient way to cook is using outdoor barbecue grills. Considering the high beach traffic, you will have renters for your outdoor grills. 
9. Snorkeling and Diving Gear. Marine lovers may want to explore the bottom of the shore and experience the marine environment within. For those purposes, people may rent your snorkeling and diving gear.
10. Kayaks, boats, jet skis. Who does not like riding on a jet ski, boat, or paddling a kayak? Those fun activities may create a massive demand for boats, kayaks, and jet skis. For amateur swimmers, you may offer your boat ride service as a skipper. 

Note: This list is incomplete; you may offer various other products. But make sure those things will be suitable for demands. If you plan to introduce a new rental item, just purchase 1-2 pieces to check its performance in your target area.

2. Business model.

A business plan should include how you will manage your business (e.g., responsibilities, roles, tasks, etc.). Additionally, it should outline how you will rent out your items. You need to create a system for your rentals to streamline your business operations.

• Are you going to offer your rental equipment only for walk-in customers or online customers? We recommend employing a hybrid business model, which may include serving customers with POS and online booking systems. That way, you will increase your revenues.
• Hourly vs. daily rentals. You must determine which may be profitable and convenient for you and your customers. For example, you can divide rental items into two categories. Ones with daily rentals and ones with hourly rates. For instance, renting out chairs, umbrellas, swimming tubes, toys, etc., would not be suitable for hourly rentals. However, things like snorkeling and diving equipment, jet skis, and boats will be ideal for hourly rates because their prices are higher, and you can rent them multiple rounds in a day.
• Carry-outs vs. Deliveries & installations. Suppose you manage your business alone and have lots of traffic in your office. In that case, you may be unable to provide add-on services such as deliveries and installations. So you may need to ask customers to come to your location and pick up the items from your warehouse. This business model may not be attractive to the elderly and people who are accustomed to lavish lifestyles. To remedy the situation, you may hire a staff who would deliver the rental items to the spots indicated by customers and help them with the installation process. The advantages of the latter option are higher revenues and better customer satisfaction. The good news is you can automatically charge additional fees for add-on services during the bookings. For example, online customers will add them to the basket during checkout, while walk-in customers will request them at the POS register.
• Managing Inventories. One of the essential tasks in the rental business is managing inventories and tracking their availability. Doing it manually is no longer efficient or effective as it may take time and be prone to human errors. As a result, the same item may be booked at the same time leading to the issue of double bookings. A simple way to avoid it is to use Reservety’s Beach Gear Rental Software which comes with a built-in inventory management system. It allows you to add your inventories to a digital database and track their availability through a centralized calendar system.
• Deposits & payment installments. How would you accept the payments? One of the best methods is charging security deposits during bookings. Because it can serve as a financial buffer to fix and replace the rental units that got damaged or lost while in possession of renters. Installment payments can be convenient for renters as they can pay the fees in installments if their budget is tight.

Note: The components of a business model are not limited to the things mentioned above. You can also use several other strategies and methods to enhance your model. Things like management strategies, roles and responsibilities of customers, office settings, and others can be considered while developing your business model and should be included in your business plan.

3. Forming a legal entity and insurance.

To operate your business legally and protect yourself from business-related liabilities, you need to form a legal entity and register your business with local authorities. Once you become a business, you can create a business bank account, get business insurance, and become eligible for certain exemptions. In this article, we will talk a little about forming an entity and insurance, as we have written a step-by-step guide about it in previous articles. However, those articles are written for the party rental business, but the things mentioned there can also be applied to the beach equipment rental business. Here is a guide to registering your business as a legal entity. Here is another article about getting a proper insurance policy for your rental business. 

4. Management Tools and Website.

We recommend having a professional website for your beach gear rental business, as people like to plan their trips ahead of time. For example, if Mrs. Smith wants to organize a family trip to the beach on Sunday, she might check all the fun things she can do there. For instance, if you offer fun gaming sets, boats, jet skis, snorkeling, and diving gear on that beach, you need to make them available for Mrs. Smith to find and book them online. 

A website with a booking system. It is essential to serve online customers by displaying your available inventories and allowing customers to book them online. Its advantages include automated booking, scheduling, electronic payments, enhanced paperwork, etc. You may create a website with a simple domain name and a hosting account, but it won’t be efficient to serve online customers at full scale. Therefore, you need to have a website with a built-in booking system. There are several types of those systems, but most do not offer an all-in-one solution but require each tool to be purchased separately. To avoid unnecessary expenses and fragmentation in a business, you can use Reservety and go live within a few hours.

POS system. Let’s realize that you have set up your shop near the beach and accept dozens of renters daily. In that case, you need to input their information and assign manual orders for them through the POS system. 

Automation tools. For each order, you may need to do the paperwork by obtaining the customers’ personal information and contacts and filling out financial paperwork if they pay with cash. Additionally, you may need to have them sign contracts & liability waivers and schedule time for each rental item. Those tasks may exhaust you, leading to burnout syndrome, which may diminish the feeling of joy from your business management. We have a great solution to streamline those tasks and give you freedom. When you use Reservety, you can automate the following tasks.

• Bookings. Reservety automates both online and offline bookings. Online customers will visit your website, select items, pick rental & return dates and times, enter their customer information, apply active coupons, choose available add-on services (e.g., deliveries, installation, etc.), sign contracts & liability waivers digitally, and pay for the items using credits cards or e-wallets. Customers can do all those tasks independently in the comfort of their homes using either smartphone or a PC. On the other hand, walk-in customers can request beach gear and equipment they need, and you can enter their orders manually using your PC as a POS system. It is similar to the online booking process, but the only difference is that you do it on your customer’s behalf. Another great thing about Reservety is that it is very convenient for repeat customers as the system stores their information. Whenever they order again, you just need to add new items to their account and accept payments.

• Scheduling. Every rental item should be scheduled properly to track its usage periods. For example, if Mr. Smith books two surfboards from 1 pm to 5 pm, you must have a system to schedule that time. Manual scheduling is not efficient for two reasons. Firstly, it is time-consuming, and secondly, it can lead to human errors. To avoid such circumstances, Reservety implemented a scheduling system into its software that schedules rentals based on the booking. For example, if an item is booked for Saturday between 1 pm and 5 pm, the system automatically records that information in the central calendar. Unless there are several quantities of the same stock, the scheduling system will prevent the booking for the same period for the same item to avoid double bookings. Scheduling also lets you track items’ availabilities and expected return times. If a customer returns an item later than a booked period, the system will charge them a late fee based on your late-fee policy (e.g., $10 per additional hour). 

• Inventory Management. Let’s assume that you have hundreds of items in your inventory. To manage them effectively, you need to assign prices and add galleries and specs for each item to display to potential customers. Traditionally, rental businesses have done it through paper-based catalogs. The good news is that you can now add all your inventories to the digital database with Reservety and assign varying prices, add galleries and descriptions, and enter stock quantities for each item electronically. Once you add the inventories, the system will automatically display them on your website and integrate them with booking and scheduling systems. No matter how many pieces of beach equipment you rent, the inventory will be managed automatically, allowing for viewing which items are available, how much they cost, their expected return dates, their performance, etc. 

• Order Management. Doing paperwork for each rental is not only depressing but also inefficient. As mentioned earlier, if you need to do manual paperwork for each order, you may need to hire an assistant for administrative work. It can be both costly and unreliable. However, when you use Reservety, it equips your beach rental business with an order management system that lets you collect the electronic version of customer information, view & change order details, send automated invoices to applicable customers, view & update financial transactions, and much more.

• Payments. Reservety automates payments as well. Whenever a customer chooses a rental item online and indicates their desired rental period, the system automatically calculates the total cost and prompts the renters to payment options. Since Reservety allows your business to integrate with popular payment solutions such as Visa, MasterCard, Autorize.net, PayPal, Stripe, Square, and others, customers can choose their preferred payment options. Additionally, Reservety lets you accept security deposits and installment payments easily. All the received amounts are recorded under customer accounts, allowing you to view the transactions for later reference.

• Accounting and Reporting. Both of these are essential to growing your business. How can we know how our business is doing without relying on reports and accounting records? Reservety’s built-in reporting tool generates daily, weekly, and monthly rental revenue information and reports on individual accounts and inventories. You may also integrate your beach equipment rental business with external accounting & bookkeeping platforms such as QuickBooks and Xero to conveniently manage your finances.

5. Marketing

Most successful business owners agree that marketing is critical to growing your business. It does not matter how good your rental items are or how affordable they are; if no one knows about them, they will remain buried under your competitors. Therefore, we recommend focusing on marketing strategies as soon as you start your beach rental business. Here are the things you may consider:

• Adding your business to Google Maps. Google dominates the online realm with its search engine and Google Maps. And all of its services are integrated. If someone searches for nearby jet ski rentals, your website will appear on the search results if your business is added to Google Maps. Adding your business to Google Maps also leads to the appearance of your business in other business catalogs and maps, as most of those places use Google Maps data.

• SEO. Search Engine Optimization is a great way to grab the attention of online customers. An online search is one of the first things we do when we need something. For example, if we needed wedding decorations on the beach, we would search online to find a company that rents and installs those decorations. To appear in the search results, we must add our website to search engines and add meta tags, titles, and descriptions to our pages so the search engine crawlers can recognize what our website is about. Better SEO can lead to better ranking, resulting in higher visitors to your website as people tend to click on websites that appear at the top. SEO may require some coding knowledge but you should not be worried about it because Reservety provides simple SEO tools that can be handled even by newbies.
• Newsletters and Catalogs. Creating newsletters and catalogs to introduce your rental beach gear to the public is a great strategy. One limitation, however, is delivering those catalogs. You either need to deliver them in person (which may be the most costly and time-consuming option) or do it electronically. Suppose you have hundreds of contact information in your business database. Going to each person’s home to deliver a catalog or newsletter is inefficient. You need to request them to follow you on social media or send newsletters to their emails. Reservety handles that as well. You can send your newsletters and catalogs to thousands of customers simultaneously with a single click.
• Social Media. Almost all internet users around the world use social media daily. It means you may attract greater exposure to your business if you are active on social media. For instance, you can easily share information about your rental beach equipment when you join local groups. Additionally, social media allows you to share your rental items on your profile and gain many followers. Reservety is the best tool for social media marketing. Firstly, it integrates your website with social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and others, allowing you to post the same content across all those platforms through a single click. It also lets you feature the “like & share” button under each rental product, increasing your business’s chances of going viral.
• Incentives. With Reservety, you can set up an affiliate marketing and rewards system. If someone brings in a customer, you can give them redeemable points, which can be deposited into a benefiter’s account, or you can provide monetary incentives. Incentives such as reward points can effectively bring in more return customers. When points are rewarded, those can be automatically available for redemption in subsequent purchases. 

6. Customer Support

Successful companies train their staff to act kindly towards their customers and help them as much as possible. Because they understand that customer support is detrimental to growth. It is not rocket science. People tend to go to places where they are treated nicely. Therefore, we recommend providing excellent customer service to your people. People come to beaches to relax, so you must create the ease and convenience customers desire. 

Things you can do to improve your customer service:

• Offer Complimentary services and items. If you rent out tables, chairs, and umbrellas, help customers bring them to their space and install them for free as a complimentary service. You may also give out cold bottled water for free to show your appreciation to customers.
• Handle orders as soon as possible. All customers like quick service. When you receive a booking request, do your best to fulfill that order fast. 
• Manage your attitude. Even if you can’t do what customers ask, it does not give us a reason to be rude to them. We need to be kind and understanding towards customers and answer their questions after listening to their concerns attentively. Good character can build a long-time business relationship.
• Provide live support. Online customers may have questions before booking your beach equipment. To answer all their questions, you must provide live support on your website. Did you know that people now prefer live chats over phone communication? So, Reservety equips your website with a live chat system so your customers can contact you directly and you can provide live support and share invoices, photos, and catalogs over the chat system.
• Offer discounts. The primary purpose of the rental business is to make money, so offering too many discounts won’t be efficient. But it does not mean you should not be compassionate towards people. If someone wants to rent your equipment but is short on money, you may offer them discounts or bundle deals. Creating discount coupons and bundles is super easy with Reservety.
• Be honest and connect with customers with the right products. We have mentioned honesty and the right products together because some businesses offer unnecessary products up for rent or refer them to higher products to maximize their products. There is nothing wrong with upselling and cross-selling strategies, but we should do them in moderation. Also, if our product is unsuitable for customers’ demand, we should have the courage to tell them so they won’t waste their money. For example, if someone comes to rent jet skis on a stormy day, we should explain to them that it is not a good day to ride jet skis as big waves can prevent smooth rides.  

Takeaways

Starting a beach gear rental business does not require too much investment. Some beginners start their business by renting out umbrellas, beach chairs, and a few coolers, and they expand their inventory as their business takes off.

Things you can rent in your beach rental business: Beach chairs, umbrellas, coolers, swimming suits, tables, decorative items for events, toys & gear for children, lifejackets, surfboards & tubes, outdoor grills, snorkeling & diving gear, kayaks, boats, jet skis and other items that will be useful in beaches.

6 Steps to Start a Beach Gear Rental Business:

1. Create an effective business plan based on your budget and allocate the funds to different activities such as inventory procurement, staff, operational costs, etc. If your budget needs to be increased, you may look for alternative sources such as lenders, private investors, bank loans, equipment financing, etc.
2. Develop a Business model considering how you would manage your business, what products you would offer, setting rates for daily and hourly rates, targeting customer groups (e.g., walk-in customers vs. online), and developing a system to streamline rentals.
3. Register your business as a legal entity and insure it to prevent losses.Forming a legal entity allows you to be compliant with local laws and lets you open up a business bank account. Also, prevents you from becoming liable for business-related injuries and damages.
4. Equip Your Business with Management tools and a website. A Website is important for displaying your rental beach items and allows customers to book online. Management tools such as Inventory management systems, scheduling tools, order management platforms, payment processors, etc., are essential to automate your rental business. These features and more are available in Reservety’s Beach Gear Rental Software.
5. Focus on Marketing. Marketing is a great strategy to achieve optimal growth. However, marketing is all about creativity. If you can develop creative strategies, your revenues will grow proportionate to your visitors. Some of the best marketing strategies are adding your Google Maps, optimizing your website for search engines, being active on social media, giving incentives to new and returning customers with rewards programs and affiliate marketing, and creating catalogs and newsletters and sending them to potential customers using Reservety.
6. Enhance Customer Support. Providing friendly and honest customer service to clients may lead to long-lasting business relationships. People tend to return to businesses where they were treated kindly and compassionately. To enhance customer support, you can offer complimentary services and products, such as free stuff or free deliveries or installations, handle orders quickly, treat customers with kindness, offer discounts, and provide live support on a website using Reservety. 

Please note: If you intend to launch your business as soon as possible but need the management tools and a website, just signup for Reservety’s monthly plan. It will cost you only $28 per month, and you will get over 200+ features to go live within a few hours. Do not wait any longer; start your business with Reservety now.