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InterviewsApril 08, 2022
Brazil Innovation: Freddy Marcos Presents Rentbrella, The Umbrella Sharing Solution to Conquer the World
Freddy Marcos, Founder at Rentbrella
- Written by Sandra Francisco
- Published: April 08, 2022
Interview with Freddy Marcos, Founder at Rentbrella
How do you distinguish yourself from the competition?
The other umbrella sharing companies are our competitors, but we have a very strong competitive advantage, as all the proprietary technology is made internally. So we have our own factory and we have our own development center. The systems and also the production of the machines is developed internally. We have all the certifications for the US and Europe, such as UL, TÜV for safety or any hazards, and we export worldwide. Other competitors cannot buy the same machine. They can try to copy it or make a new one, but they cannot buy the same machine because everything is made by us. The second and very important thing, is that we are the biggest umbrella sharing company in the world today. We are growing quite fast. We are expanding to hundreds of locations, and in two years we expect to be operating not only in the US and Europe, but many countries over the world. Other competitors would have to be quite fast to develop the technology and expand it worldwide.
What is your concept?
Rentbrella is a technology and mobility company that offers a free umbrella sharing service for people, and high impact brand activations for B2B companies. Mainly, we deploy umbrella sharing machines in commercial buildings, residential buildings, malls, subway stations, universities, and people can grab umbrellas for free during 24 hours. So if you take the umbrella today and return it tomorrow, it is completely free. We do not charge the service on weekends and holidays either. We offer a free amenity for the buildings and for their tenants, and it is difficult to find something that is really free today. Basically, 98% of the people use our solution for free, and this is incredible.
Where are you present and where do you want to expand?
One day, my co-founder, Nathan, was coming out of the subway and it was crowded. No one could leave because it was raining and he saw a rental bike pass by and thought: if no one needs to have a bike of their own to move around the city, why are people here waiting for an umbrella? So he called me and then I realized that we could use the umbrellas as a new advertising channel and offer this to people for free. We started in Brazil in 2018. We grew up from 50 machines into more than 500 locations, in Brazil, as well as New York City in the US. Now we are just facing a new challenge for expanding to Europe. We are launching in London in the following weeks, and then we expect to launch in the whole of Europe. From Paris, to Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Brussels, in order to expand this free service to everyone in the world.
Why should an investor trust Rentbrella and why should they invest in your service?
First of all, it is very difficult to find something that is an innovation, and we are a real innovation. There are no huge competitors. There are no similar technologies. We started with something in Brazil. We proved to be efficient. We proved our business model, so we achieved product market feeds, and today we are standing worldwide. The investors have a huge opportunity to invest in something new and a concept that is able to conquer the whole world.
But we are not only focused on umbrella sharing. We were hit by the pandemic and everything stopped. People came back home and no one was using our service because we are mainly on the streets. Some other companies started to come to us asking: “who made this machine for you, because I would like to make a different machine?” We have all the technology to develop the hardware and operate the solution, so we have a huge capillarity, paired with hundreds of locations. One of the cases that is very interesting is Coca-Cola. Coke came to us and said, “Could you develop a returnable bottle machine?” They have a nice, sustainable mission to reduce the purchase of normal Coke bottles and use returnable bottles. We developed a machine so that people could return the bottle, print a voucher, and buy a new Coke bottle with a discount. We started developing machines for other companies, and today we are almost operating as a white label for other companies. We have the umbrella sharing machines, the returnable bottle machines for Coca-Cola and we have a couple of other machines that are going to be in the market in a few weeks. It is quite nice. We are using our technology center to develop the machines, as well as our capillarity with hundreds of locations worldwide to find new revenue streams. That is quite interesting for investors.
What is your vision for Rentbrella for the next two to three years? What will the next developments be?
We see ourselves already operating in more than 40 countries and probably offering more than 1 million umbrellas worldwide. That is our challenge and that is the mission that we are trying to accomplish.
ABOUT RENTBRELLA: Rentbrella is an umbrella sharing solution that enables urban mobility and delivers high impact brand activations in cities around the world. It offers an app that allows customers to borrow an umbrella from an automated kiosk and use it free of charge for 24 hours. The company launched in 2018 in Sao Paulo, a city known for torrential late afternoon summer rains.
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