By As you can imagine, you travel a lot when you’re building a global business. And, when that business is umbrellas, you love rain. These are essentials of Freddy Marcos’ life as the co-founder with Nathan Janovich of their start-up RentBrella. Based in São Paulo, Brazil; their firm has about 70 employees.
Freddy said the business concept starts with an anecdote: Nathan was coming out of the Pinheiros underground station in São Paulo when he exited the station, he found himself in a deluge of rain. He couldn’t see anything because the rain was so intense. At that moment, he thought, why not make rental umbrellas available on Citibike’s popular pickup and drop-off model? Freddy and Nathan knew each other from their volunteer work in a social services program. In 2018, they were ready to throw their efforts into a startup that offered a community service fostering enjoyment of the environment and convenient mobility within urban environments – all this with a view toward promoting a recyclable plastic product whose elements could later be repurposed for other functions.
In Brazil once the rentbrellas are worn or torn, they are repurposed as bags used for distribution in low income communities to moms to carry baby food, diapers and other infant supplies. Another recycled item is changing tables made from the one-time umbrella materials.
Freddy explained some of the details of the RentBrella concept: once the umbrellas made of recycled PET fabrics are produced in China, they are encased in the machines and situated in accessible locations around the city. A partnering company is then secured, for example Unimed—the major insurance company in Brazil—takes on the responsibility of paying for operations relating to the umbrella rentals. This includes the design and imprinting of their logo on the umbrella, which serves as a moving advertisement. The insurance company is promoted wherever the umbrella holder goes. “We thought if people can just rent and return bikes,” said Freddy “why not umbrellas?”
They launched their operation in São Paulo with the idea that they would design and manufacture a machine to hold umbrellas – a large machine dispenser for 100 umbrellas and a smaller one to hold 20. The idea was to place the umbrellas in a container that looks like a vending machine, in a variety of heavily trafficked environments including apartment building lobbies, hospitals and schools. Once the machines were manufactured and filled with umbrellas, the business partners found convenient, very visible locations for them. “Rentals were and continue to be free of charge for 24 hours, secured by a credit card. Once “rented” they can be returned at any other site whose locations are visible on a phone app. The partners were enormously encouraged by the interest in the potential of this method of advertising and they now have 1200 locations worldwide-wide including 350 locations in São Paulo sponsored by Unimed insurance company.
The company color is green and the umbrellas they sponsored were created incorporating the design of banana and fern trees. More recently they’ve moved on to limes and other fruit. The company expanded with 150 RentBrella machines in London and in 2023, the partners expanded their business to Manhattan. There are now a total of 150 RentBrella machines in NYC and Brooklyn. Where can you check one out on the Upper West Side? A machine is conveniently located in the Ormonde apartment building at 154 West 70th Street (aka 2028-2032 Broadway). These umbrellas are purple with RentBrella branding but it will soon move to the same sponsorship and advertising model as in Brazil, expected to happen in the second semester of this year. Plans for the near future? Freddy said he and Nathan expect to expand through the U.S. and Europe; they aim to offer this solution to companies, factories, and logistics parks that want to protect their employees and visitors from the rain while promoting their brand on the umbrellas. Their strategy for growth includes both operating their own locations and expanding through franchising. Their focus in particular is identifying walkable cities with heavy rainfall and installing RentBrellas that appeal to people who live and work in these locations.