Innovation

Rentle is a startup company with 3 founders: Tuomo Laine, Toomas Kallioja and Joel Mikkonen. The idea of founding Rentle came up among the founders, as they were struggling to find a good software or digital platform to rent out goods (T. Laine, interview 19 September 2022). Hence, Rentle digital platform was founded to make renting of products and goods as smooth as possible for their client companies (T. Laine, interview 19 September 2022).

Rentle’s digital platform helps companies to manage their orders, inventory, and payments. Order management has been imbedded in a single sales platform which includes functionalities such as organizing, accelerating, managing, and editing of the product orders. Moreover, it makes it easy to monitor stock levels and follow pick-ups and returns (Rentle 2022). The Rentle’s platform solves the complexity of rental inventory by helping to keep track of products or services rented out, usage of the products and services. Lastly, it also provides a flexible and secure payments partner for companies renting out their products(Rentle 2022).

Rentle’s digital platform adopts the circular economy model. As the platform promotes the rental of products, it attracts client companies with durable goods. This creates sustainable production and reduces the use of natural resources. Similarly, it promotes sustainable consumption and creates employment for the repair and maintenance of those products (T. Laine, interview 19 September 2022). Overall, when a Rentle's client company does business through this rental platform, it moves its business model from linear to a more circular and greener model (T. Laine, interview 19 September 2022).

Inspiration

The inspiration for this innovation came up through the challenges of the co-founders of Rentle while trying to build services around rentals. First, they wanted to build a service where end consumers could rent power banks (T. Laine, interview 19 September 2022). While doing that, they had to build everything themselves from customs point of sale system to an inventory system. After facing this challenge, they realized that the problem of unsustainable consumption was not only on the consumer side but also poor software/digital platforms for renting products. “If we want to transition the world quicker towards circular commerce, we need to provide the merchants with better software” (T. Laine, interview 19 September 2022)

Overall impact

Moving to a circular economy model influences how businesses need to manage their inventory and commercialize things (T. Laine, interview 19 September 2022). This is where Rentle has had an impact on different businesses. As businesses can partner with Rentle to enable this transition from more traditional processes, their road to a more sustainable business model is possible.

Rentle measures their platform’s sustainability impact through the number of sales done through the platform and the reduction in manufacturing and carbon footprint, and they consider every euro that Rentle makes a representation of the green transition in the world (T. Laine, interview 19 September 2022). So far Rentle has merchants in over 40 countries that have processed over 500,000 orders “worth tens of millions of dollars in sales worldwide” (Rentle.io 2022a).

Business benefit

The platform is Rentle's main product, which means that the success of the business is tied to the success of the innovation itself (T. Laine, interview 19 September 2022). The platform is used by merchants in over 40 countries, meaning that the business has gained a global reach (Rentle.io 2022a). The revenue of the business has continuously grown from 9000 euros in 2018, when the company was founded, to 305,000 euros in 2021, and the number of employees has grown from 10 in 2019 to 18 in 2021 (Kauppalehti s.a.).

In September 2022, Rentle announced a seed round of 3.8 million euros (Rentle.io 2022b) with the platform of course being a crucial part of the business as mentioned earlier. The money raised will help the business meet demand and serve the merchants using the Rentle platform even better (Rentle.io 2022b).

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Social and environmental benefit

Rentle enables companies to take part in the circular economy. By renting out durable goods, each article’s lifecycle gets extended and companies can manufacture less to serve the same need (T. Laine, interview 19 September 2022). This way Rentle helps companies work toward waste reduction through reuse of goods. This also helps individuals to reduce waste, as more companies can offer rental of different goods.

Rentle may also benefit society by creating opportunities for the workforce. The circular economy model creates a demand for refurbishment services as goods need to be maintained. Employment in refurbishment services doesn’t require a high level of education, meaning that an increase in the demand for these services can give employment opportunities to many different people in the workforce, contributing to the goal of creating decent work for all. (T. Laine, interview 19 September 2022)

Interview

Tuomo Laine, Co-Founder and CEO