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Lensrentals and BorrowLenses, two of the biggest players in the US rentals market, are to merge under the Lensrentals umbrella.
Last week, while everyone’s attention was slightly distracted by other merger stuff involving Nikon and RED, in the US rentals market Lensrentals announced the acquisition of select assets of the BorrowLenses business, one of its main rivals.
First things first, this will expand Lensrentals’ customer base at a stroke while also further boosting a stock inventory that already stands at 400,000 copies of over 6,000 different lenses, cameras, drones, lighting, audio and more. It’s also going to give a boost to Lensrentals’ used gear program Keeper which is now going to carry significant more items.
Lensrentals has attracted more than a million orders since its founding in 2006, while BorrowLenses has also hoovered up more than one million orders over sixteen years in business. Together that’s a lot of kit.
The BorrowLenses name will disappear as a result, and there are going to be a few other changes too. While local pickups will still be available for the current Lensrentals locations, they will no longer be available at old BorrowLenses sites (though Lensrentals says it is happy to offer free shipping to a nearby FedEx location for customers who pick up normally).
Effectively, that means that BorrowLenses’ Californian focus is a thing of the past as its stock gets subsumed into the national delivery business model. As to prices, it does remove a significant amount of competition from the market, and historically elsewhere we have seen that can have consequences.
Answering a question online about price rises, the company simply says: “Lensrentals will continue to be the most competitively-priced rental house in the industry. This will simply allow us to stock more copies of gear and offer better service to our customers.”
Lensrentals has a decent rep amongst its customers and its owned by its employees, so fingers crossed for good outcomes all round.
Tags: Production rental
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