In 2015, Mike Mayleben was searching for a lightweight beach cart. When he couldn’t find one that matched his needs, he built one himself. This became the beginning of Glampin Life, a beach gear retail business. Since then, he has added rentals to his operation. He attempted to do this with WooCommerce’s booking plugin, but when it didn’t work out, he switched to Booqable to accept online bookings and manage inventory.
Glampin’ Life
Mike started looking for a lightweight beach cart in 2015, and he had specific requirements. It needed to roll easily in soft sand, carry all his beach gear, and have an umbrella mounted to it. However, he found it challenging to find the right product on the market that met all his needs. So, he decided to build one himself. This would become The Original Beach Cart XL, which is the first product he started selling in his retail business Glampin’ Life.
He launched the business in his hometown of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Since starting with just one style of cart, he has expanded more carts, as well as umbrellas, beach chairs, and cart accessories. After operating his retail business for several years, he decided to expand into rentals as he recognized that people on vacation may not need to purchase equipment for the short time they were there.
Customers can rent the equipment individually or in bundles curated by Mike. He has also added more products to his rental inventory, like coolers, to offer customers all the gear they could need at the beach. He gets many compliments on his products, and customers comment about how they are perfect and something they haven’t been able to find elsewhere.
Accepting online bookings
When Mike decided to start offering rentals about a year ago, it made sense to use WooCommerce’s booking plugin. He was already using their software for the retail items and thought their booking product would be just as good. However, he quickly found that it was not fit for purpose, and he began looking for another solution. He looked at many different pieces of rental software but found that Booqable provided the best overall experience.
He integrated Booqable with his WordPress website using the rental plugin. This enabled him to add booking components to products so customers could enter their rental dates, check availability, and make a booking from his website. He believes this is much easier for customers to use than his previous setup, which was much more challenging to deal with.
In addition, with its capable backend, he is able to track bookings and inventory availability, something that was missing in the WooCommerce plugin he previously used. He also found Booqable much easier to get started with, as the guided setup ensured that everything was accounted for, with video tutorials and the help center aiding when he encountered something more challenging.
Get recognized
Over the last year, Mike has received positive feedback about all of his products. People are delighted by the products being exactly what they were looking for. The addition of rentals has also been well-received. He will be opening up rentals again in the first quarter of 2025, which will be the true test of his improvements. He hopes to have his beach gear featured in rental companies up and down the East Coast in the future.
