The Tool Shed

About the rental company

The Tool Shed (Verktøyskuret in Norwegian) is a tool rental business located in the Oslo area in Norway. Per Eirik Espeland, the founder of The Tool Shed, is a former cabinetmaker and had in addition to this a lot of prior experience renovating apartments and houses for several years. He experienced the need for renting equipment and tools rather than purchasing new ones for each project.

Before Espeland started The Tool Shed, he tested out some rental services but found it difficult to book certain special tools due to high demand. Additionally, he noticed that the businesses renting out tools lacked experience in using them. The tool rental prices were too high to justify renting instead of buying new ones. Additionally, the strict opening hours made it difficult to return the tools at a convenient time. This experience of renting tools professionally and for his use inspired him to start The Tool Shed.

Espeland launched his new tool rental business in 2021 and has since then experienced great growth and satisfied customers.

Challenge

The Tool Shed has experienced an increase in customer traffic and aims to offer them a seamless self-service rental experience. The company currently operates from four locations and intends to increase this number in the future. In addition, they desire to streamline rental service management by maximizing automation. This will minimize effort and enhance efficiency.

Implementation

With the help of Sharefox they launched a whole new self-service solution for their tool rental business.

They used Sharefox Tool Rental Software to set up a new rental site and robust booking system for customers to browse tools, check availability across locations, and make reservations easily. The software integrates a payment solution with secure ID verification, enabling quick and trusted transactions. Additionally, it enables efficient management of inventory and bookings for multiple branches, making operations simpler. The Tool Shed also developed automated emails to simplify customer communication and management while maintaining the same level of quality, all while reducing the time spent on each customer.

The Tool Shed can provide its customers with a smooth self-service experience by utilizing Sharefox’s integration with its partners, Inlet and igloohome. With the digital padlocks from igloohome they can have a secure service that lets their customers have access to their service 24/7. They also used Inlet’s technology for the integration and to deliver access codes to the padlocks through SMS.

Results

After The Tool Shed implemented the self-service solution from Sharefox they now can offer a 24/7, seamless and efficient tool rental experience for their customers. Through integration with Inlet and igloohome, Sharefox empowers The Tool Shed to provide a comprehensive and user-friendly tool rental experience with secure access control.

Since implementing Sharefox, The Tool Shed noticed that their customers find it much simpler to book tools and access their service on their own. Their customers can easily browse through The Tool Shed’s extensive inventory of tools and equipment, check availability across multiple locations, and make reservations with just a few clicks. SMS access codes provide convenient tool pickup on multiple locations, and a responsive and automated customer support system ensures assistance.

They can also make secure payments and use secure ID verification to verify the customers, and at the same time use digital padlocks for securing their equipment, which makes it a much more secure service both for the customers and for The Tool Shed. Sharefox has truly been a game-changer for The Tool Shed, allowing them to provide a more convenient and efficient rental experience for their customers. At the same time, it has automated many of their manual and time-consuming tasks.