This Utah startup will help you rent out just about anything you own

Peer-to-peer apps have helped millions lend out their cars, their spare bedrooms, even their RVs. Now a Provo-based tech startup wants to help people rent out just about everything else.

Pull up the Yoodlize website and you will find Utahns with all kinds of items for rent — bike racks and picnic kits for $5 a day. There is a bounce house in Payson, folding chairs in Highland, and a chocolate fondue fountain in Orem, ready for an eclectic backyard soiree if you are willing to do a little driving. There are Nintendo Switches, food dehydrators, lawn edgers, Cinderella costumes — all listed at daily rates determined by their owners, some of whom might live right down the block.

“The core problem we’re looking to solve is addressing the fact that we all own a lot of things,” said Yoodlize CEO Jason Fairbourne, who co-founded the company with his wife Natalie. “Every home has a lawn mower, several homes have canoes, paddleboards, power drills. They’re items we use infrequently. Why do we have all this consumption of things and items that we don’t use?”

Instead of letting those seldom-used goods collect dust, Yoodlize helps owners lend them out and make spare cash.

For those leery about letting random strangers use their stuff, the company also offers some assurances. Users must verify their identity with a government-issued ID. And all items are insured up to $2,000.

“We’ve had over 3,000 transactions so far, and just last [month] had our first claim filed that we paid out,” Fairbourne said. “If you want renewed faith in humanity … we have more stories of people coming back and saying, ‘I noticed this thing was wrong on your item and I fixed it for you.’”

The most popular items rented out through Yoodlize seem to change with the seasons. Paddleboards and inflatable movie theaters were hot during the summer, Fairbourne said. Drones and virtual reality headsets saw a surge around Thanksgiving. Party items, like tables and chairs, are in demand all year.

Some want to borrow the latest video game console, camera equipment or kayak to give it a spin before making a bigger investment. But in many cases, customers simply want to own and store fewer things, Fairbourne said.

“People ... are becoming aware of the environmental impact of over-consumption and they’re willing to make a change,” Fairbourne said. “[But] they still want to have access to items to enjoy a wide variety of opportunities from retiling a bathroom to going paddleboarding for the first time.”

Peer-to-peer sharing and the pandemic

Back in 2019, there appeared to be a growing trend of consumers preferring experiences over stuff. One global study found 76% of people surveyed would rather spend money on experiences instead of products. PwC, a global accounting and consulting firm, projected the sharing economy would grow to a $335 billion industry by 2025. As with a lot of things, analysts blamed the seeming shift from stuff to an “experience economy” on millennials.

But then the coronavirus hit. U.S. residents spent more time stuck at home working, attending school and doomscrolling. And they bought a lot of stuff. So much stuff that Americans appear to have single-handedly brought the global supply chain to its knees.

As Amanda Mull wrote in The Atlantic, “A lot of people buy things for the sake of it, stuff they don’t need or even particularly want and in many cases won’t use, as a salve for boredom or anxiety or insecurity,” emotions and motivations exacerbated by the pandemic.

Fairbourne acknowledges an abundance of cheap junk from big-name retailers, all at impulsive consumers’ fingertips, with the ability to be boxed and shipped to their doorsteps almost instantly, presents one of the biggest hurdles to his sharing economy business plan.

“Amazon does make it easy” to impulse-buy more things, he said. “That’s what you’re competing with.”

But the entrepreneur is betting the craze over buying more products will fade when the coronavirus becomes less of a threat and life begins to feel somewhat normal. He pointed to the rise of electric vehicles and meatless burgers as a sign that Americans are becoming more environmentally conscious, and shifting their consumption habits in response.

“They share a vision of doing more with less,” Fairbourne said. “There’s a minimalism trend as well. It’s smaller, but it’s there supporting this thesis.”

Marjukka Ollilainen, a professor of sociology at Weber State University, said the repercussions of the pandemic might actually make consumers more receptive to sharing.

“Our jobs have just been very rigid up until the pandemic,” Ollilainen said.

But now more and more people are quitting their jobs and looking at side hustles and more flexible sources of income, reevaluating the role of work in their lives, she said.

“I know right now we’re buying a lot of stuff,” Ollilainen said, “but I think at the same time the pandemic brought many people back to the basics and evaluating how much stuff they really need.”

Tips for those exploring the sharing economy

Aaron Brough, an associate professor of marketing at Utah State University who studies the sharing economy, said that while there might be some holdouts, Americans are becoming increasingly comfortable with borrowing everything from clothing to ski gear.

“Social norms are making it more acceptable,” he said.

And recent research he has conducted could provide insights for people looking to both lend out their stuff and borrow things through apps like Yoodlize.

“We’ve found lenders tend to favor product protection policies over financial guarantees,” Brough said.

That’s not to say companies shouldn’t offer insurance, but often times owners simply don’t want to deal with a scenario where their items get damaged or stolen at all, because they have an emotional attachment to their stuff.

“One thing we tested is having each borrower sign a promise statement that they would take care of the item as if it belonged to them,” Brough said. “It may seem like, ‘how is that going to be enforced?’ But if owners were made aware borrowers had signed [the statement], they were more likely to list their product.”

Owners, in turn, need to be careful not to reveal to renters how much they value or cherish the stuff they are lending out. In other words, don’t list long, nostalgic descriptions that include fond memories about the bicycle, tent or guitar amp you are trying to get potential customers to rent.

“Renters want to avoid the responsibility for caring for such special items,” Brough said, “contrary to what owners think.”

Starting small

Fairbourne has tinkered with the idea of a peer-to-peer sharing app for about three years. After launching a pilot in 2019 and adding about 3,000 users in Utah County, Yoodlize went after its first round of funding this past spring — not from a deep-pocketed investor, but through the crowdfunding website Wefunder. The company has raised just over $223,000 from 171 people.

“We have about seven people working on Yoodlize right now. None of them get paid a salary, myself included,” Fairbourne said. “They’re essentially our investors.”

But starting small is the point. There are two other apps trying to facilitate peer-to-peer rentals of stuff, Fat Llama and Idle. While those apps launched to national and international markets, Fairbourne said Yoodlize is focusing on Utah first, to ensure the local market has the right saturation of items to borrow and people wanting to pay for them.

The last markets he will likely target are big, dense cities like Los Angeles or New York City. “It could take you an hour to get from Manhattan to Brooklyn, and people don’t have as much to rent each other,” he said.

“Our approach is building microcommunities, building up supply and demand to get that snowball rolling,” Fairbourne said.