Rental businesses are often formed from an owner’s experience in their own life. For Matilda Osborne, this was buying dresses for events only to wear them once. She knew others must be experiencing this and decided to rent them out. She started Bendigo Rental in 2022, and when she was experiencing issues keeping track of bookings, she started using Booqable to manage her business.
Bendigo Rental
Matilda attends several events a year and buys a new dress for every event, so the number of dresses quickly accumulates. Rather than throwing them out or selling them, she has the idea of renting them out. She only wore them once and thought many other women would have this same experience. Most designer dresses are only worn once, so investing in a new one for each event doesn’t make sense.
She launched Bendigo Rentals in 2022 in Victoria, Australia, with over 100 items of clothing, ranging from maxi dresses to mini dresses, tops, and complete sets. She prices these designer items at a quarter of their purchase price, allowing customers to experience the clothing for a fraction of the purchase price. Matilda also gets to know her customers, which helps her form relationships and get repeat customers.
Keeping track of bookings
As you can imagine, keeping track of over 100 clothing items is no easy task. When you combine this with multiple bookings every day, this challenge quickly compounds over time. Matilda began having issues keeping track of her bookings, preventing overbooking, and missing pick-up times. So, she searched for a software solution to help her manage her inventory efficiently. Her search led her to Booqable, which helped solve all her problems.
Once she set up her account, she added all her clothing items with images and any relevant information. This was the first step to becoming more organized with her inventory. Then, she created a rental website based on the Vogue theme with Booqable’s website builder. This allowed her to showcase her items and share them with potential customers.
Booqable’s real-time inventory availability tracking allows her to accept online bookings and create manual orders without the fear of overbooking. It also saves her a lot of time when managing her inventory. In addition, the mobile app allows her to keep track of upcoming bookings to ensure she never misses one.
Bigger and better
While Matilda initially started Bendigo Rental to rent out her existing clothes, she has big ambitions for the future. She plans to expand her inventory to offer more styles and sizes so she can help more women look their best at events. This will help her to expand her customer base and become one of the go-to fashion rental businesses in her area.
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