Roger Cicala started LensRentals in a spare bedroom and after buying an expensive lens that he didn’t plan to use often.
Today, LensRentals is officially announcing that they’ve shipped their 1 millionth order. The company was started years ago by Roger Cicala and has grown since then. Roger credits their growth to the domain name in addition to his blogging efforts that have been part of their marketing. To celebrate, they’re thanking customers by giving away a drone, camera and lots of other items starting today on March 2nd. Since its founding in 2006 Lensrentals, headquartered in Cordova, has grown to 160 employees in three locations, and still serving the 48 contiguous states. As a fellow entrepreneur, I asked Roger a few questions about what it’s like to start a business and how he grew it.
Phoblographer: So, we know that LensRentals got started when you bought a lens that’s super expensive. Just what the heck made you buy a 500mm f4 lens, to begin with? Can we assume that you were trying a new exercise regimen and wanted to be as unique as possible? *sarcasm in the last part*
Roger: Well, this was fairly early on when I was big into “better gear makes better pictures”. I also knew we’d be seeing a lot of wildlife but at a distance. I had zero experience photographing Alaskan type wildlife so I wanted the range. I did get some great shots, I really did. But honestly, it was a PIA carrying it around, especially given the constant drizzles and my fear of water damage.
Phoblographer: I, like you, am an American entrepreneur that’s had to adjust the sails a lot in the past decade or so. For you, what are the four biggest challenges that you’ve faced in your career at LensRentals? And how did you overcome them? How do you keep yourself motivated when challenges seem daunting or overwhelming?
Roger: The first business challenge was, I guess you call it Entrepreneurism. EVERYONE told me I was wrong, that if it was such a great idea other people would be doing it, there was no way this could work. So the challenge of being bold (or stupid) enough to go “I know I’m right” when everyone said I was wrong.
The second challenge was the same one everyone had warned me about: there are taxes on top of taxes and if you miss paying taxes you don’t know about, bad things will happen.
The third was letting life sort of blow us where we needed to go. I had zero interest in expanding to video, for example, customers dragged us into renting video gear. Now that’s more than half our business.
Probably the hardest by far was letting go and getting out of the way. When we started it was all me; I was the gear expert, packing expert, customer service expert, business expert. Once we’d grown a while I still was in charge of a lot of stuff that I didn’t really have the skill set to handle. It was hard to let people who were really better at these things than me take them over and stay out of their way. I’ll admit there were some claw marks left as I let go and the process took probably a couple of years. But looking back, the era of rapid growth and expansion happened when I got out of the way.
“The second challenge was the same one everyone had warned me about: there are taxes on top of taxes and if you miss paying taxes you don’t know about, bad things will happen.”
Phoblographer: Letting go and getting out of the way is perhaps the most insanely scary part of a business owner’s own growth. How did you fight the feelings of “Ugh, I should just do this myself?”
Roger: âOMG, that feeling was constant. It’s quicker to do it myself than to train you. I want to know it’s done right, etc. etc.
Getting out of the way is insanely scary. It’s also painful and hurtful, I never wanted to hear I wasn’t doing a great job or that someone else could do it better. I’m proud that I did it, but I’m glad they weren’t giving style points or commenting on the lack of grace with which I let go.
I was really lucky, my son Drew, who’s a) really smart and b) not at all afraid of me, helped a lot. I remember him telling me one day “you have to stop helping the packers when they’re behind”. I was really pissed about him saying that until he showed me figures that when I helped, every packer’s productivity dropped because they were all upset and nervous with me back there. There are other examples like that; the day they showed that I was the worst, not the best person to be guiding purchasing (I bought the newest, coolest stuff. We needed the stuff that rented the most.) There are lots of examples.
It was an inch by inch thing that took 18 months or so. At the end, it turned out that there were things that really I was the only one who could do them; quality assurance, testing methods, stuff like that. But business management and day-to-day operations are way better handled by others.â
Phoblographer: What do you think has been most effective for you folks? Social media marketing, symbiotic relationships, or word of mouth marketing? Everyone knows what LensRentals is!
Roger: Honestly, the first part was probably the luck that the domain name, Lensrentals, was available. For the first few years, word of mouth was all there was, we didn’t have a marketing department. As I let go of other things, I started a blog, which was kind of natural; I’d been a scientific / nonfiction writer for most of my life both academically and as a ghostwriter. I had access to tons of gear, was running our repair department and developing testing methods for us to use in house, so I started blogging about that stuff. So for the next few years, most of our marketing was kind of education / information-based. It was largely marketing that said, “Look, we’re really trying hard to make sure our equipment is in excellent condition”. Both of those reached a small, core audience, but after we grew (and I got out of the way again) we started more generalized, ‘normal’ marketing with symbiotic relationships, social media, etc. So I think there were different strategies at different stages of our growth.
“Getting out of the way is insanely scary. It’s also painful and hurtful, I never wanted to hear I wasn’t doing a great job or that someone else could do it better.”
Phoblographer: How do you think shifts in the camera market are going to affect the rental business in the next three years?
Roger: It’s going to be interesting, and I wish I really knew. Growth is slowing for us, but we’re still growing some. We’re not really renting a lot of ‘prosumer’ level things these days, it tends to be more specialty and expensive items, the things people don’t want to buy unless they’re going to use it regularly. I can’t prove it, but I think we see a lot more ‘try it out for a week before I buy it’ business. Both those things I think reflect people are more careful with their money. We’ve seen an increase in our ‘keeper’ program business; people rent a lens and buy it from us, getting to apply the rental fee to the used lens price. I know from conversations that sometimes this is an ‘I like this one, I don’t want to take a chance on buying a lemon’. Sometimes it’s convenience. Sometimes it’s frustrations with the manufacturer’s warranty. I’ve had people tell me they’d rather have our 90-day warranty and buy an extended policy than deal with certain manufacturers.
Phoblographer: I have to ask this, what are the three items in your personal camera collection that you’re most proud of. Why?
Roger: SOooo glad you did. I have a 1905 era Zeiss Protar that we put into a bellows, then attached to a 5D III that I did MTF tests on and shot with. It was a blast to do that. Amazingly sharp lens considering the era.
Second, I bought a couple of very old (Circa 1870) Petzval type lenses made by Darlot, a famous French lensmaker of the day. When we disassembled them to clean, I found the edge of each lens element was signed in pencil by Darlot; apparently, that was how he identified when grinding and testing was finished.
The third has got to be the prototype C-4 Optics 4.9mm f/3.5 Hyperfisheye. It’s 12 pounds of massive, can see behind itself, and unless we put it in production, there are only 3 working ones in the world. Plus it was designed by my friend Brian Caldwell, financed by he and I, and assembled by my partner-in-doing-ridiculous things Aaron Closz.
All images in this article are used with permission from LensRentals. Some photos are Copyright of Roger Cicala.
