Today, Lensrentals is officially announcing their purchase of BorrowLenses — making them the biggest platform for rentals for photographers. BorrowLenses, which was bought by Shutter Fly around a decade ago, is now experiencing its second buyout. This time around, select assets and the brand are being absorbed into Lensrentals, meaning that their website and all will eventually just redirect over to them. If you don’t rent gear often, then that specific part of the news might not interest you. Instead, there’s a far more intriguing part.
If you’re like me, you don’t often bother with buying new gear. Instead, you don’t mind buying it used unless it’s something very special or unique. So, with Lensrentals getting a lot more inventory from BorrowLenses, that means that there’s a lot more gear lying around that could be potentially sold. “From a customer standpoint, the acquisition adds a significant amount of gear to our inventory so we can now maintain higher quantities of gear for rental,” says verified source Tyler Beckman, Lensrentals CEO to the Phoblographer. “This also means there will be more options in our Keeper program, with professionals inspected and cleaned lenses and cameras to buy from a reputable seller…instead of relying on more risky online transactions. ” Translation: the used product department for Lensrentals will most likely get a pretty big inventory.
For example, the Canon EOS R5 goes for a great price on the Lensrentals Keeper program. Typically, folks head to eBay, MPB, or KEH to get used gear. But those retailers typically purchase the gear and then market it up. With Lensrentals, they’re purchasing, renting, refurbishing, and then selling it once they feel they can. Considering that they’re such a reputable brand, there’s a lot of value there. Lensrentals has their own insurance for the camera gear they rent called Lenscap+, which even covers bear attacks. Together with the Phoblographer’s Photography Care Program, both amateurs and professionals can have their rented or purchased gear covered.
The acquisition will expand Lensrentals’ loyal customer base while augmenting its enormous
Press Release
inventory of more than 400,000 copies of over 6,000 different lenses, cameras, drones, lighting,
audio and other high quality production equipment and accessories, in every format, from every
major manufacturer available in the market. Additionally, the used gear program known as
Keeper will also receive a significant boost in inventory.
Of course, this is short of them not having brick-and-mortar locations in places like LA, NYC, Atlanta, Boston, Austin, and more. In fact, Philip doesn’t hint to us that there are any plans to do something like this anyway. However, I think it would be brilliant of them to do this. As it is, BorrowLenses has local pickup in California, and we understand that this will stick around.
Lensrentals was founded by Roger Cicala several years ago. He retired, and now Tyler is CEO. Things were tight for the company during the pandemic, but now they’re apparently growing. This is great news, and it also shows a healthy shift in the state of photographers and videographers.
Personally, I’m hoping that they found another camera store. Lensrentals has incredibly high credibility and there’s a big need for stores and rental houses that are open on weekends.