Interview with Fat Lama

Interview with Fat Lama

This week we interviewed our friends over at Fat Lama the peer-to-peer rental marketplace for all of your stuff.

What is Fat Lama?

Fat Lama is a peer-to-peer rental marketplace for your stuff. No matter if you’re looking to rent out your bike whilst you’re not using it or borrow some speakers for a party, Fat Lama helps you borrow the stuff you need from people who have it to lend.

What sort of things can you borrow and lend on Fat Lama?

Music equipment, Cameras, drones, furniture, camera lenses, clothes, bikes — basically anything! And the best part? We insure all items listed on Fat Lama for the lender. We can’t insure items which are considered overly dangerous (chemicals, guns, chainsaws etc), vehicles, properties, pets, or your grandma. But if your item isn’t one of those things, then why not go ahead and list it!

Where did the idea for Fat Lama come from?

In Autumn 2015, the founders decided to create a co-working space in East London and leave their corporate jobs. With almost no budget, they managed to renovate a converted warehouse in Hoxton in eight weeks. They were left disbelieving at how hard it was to borrow the tools and goods that they needed, and more often than not ended up having to buy them. When they tried to borrow the vacuum cleaners, tools, and ladders they needed it turned out to be very expensive and incredibly difficult.

Finding the more obscure items at all was challenging enough, let alone finding them nearby. And getting anything after 5pm or on Sundays was almost impossible.

As Chaz explains, “We left the project realising how much faster and cheaper it could all have been, if only there’d been an easy way to hire the things we needed.” They went on to found Fat Lama to make borrowing easy, fun and advantageous.

Why should someone rent from Fat Lama rather than a traditional brick and mortar rental shop?

Price is a big reason that you’d opt for peer-to-peer renting rather than traditional hire avenues. Rental prices on Fat Lama are 30% cheaper than hire shops on average. Since we insure all the items listed on behalf of our lenders, we don’t require deposits from borrowers which speeds up the borrowing process.

Since we’re not a rental shop, we don’t have a closing time! In 2017 it doesn’t make sense that you can only hire things during working hours. If you spill a drink on your decks 2 hours before a DJ set then Fat Lama is the first place you should turn. There is likely to be a lender nearby who can help you out in no time. Around 1/2 of our rentals are booked and collected on the same day.

The range of items on offer is also a big draw for many people. In how many other places can you hire DJ decks, a popcorn maker, a high-end RED video camera, patio furniture, mountain bikes and a projector?

Finally, Fat Lama also works as a networking platform for many people. Musicians, photographers, and filmmakers are always telling us how they keep meeting tonnes of interesting like-minded industry names through peer-rental. Fat Lama helps you find people you share interests with, creates a sense of community and is great place to meet other creative professionals too!

How can people get involved?

It’s free to sign up to fatlama.com and list items. If they then put in the promo code HIYACAR when they make a make a rental request they’ll get £20 off their rental! To see what cool things Fat Lama users get up to whilst their renting, head on over to our blog or follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Charlotte Simmons

Charlotte Simmons

Community Growth Manager at Hiyacar

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