JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Companies in many major cities in the U.S. are offering bike sharing, car sharing, scooter sharing. Now a company has brought the concept of umbrella sharing to New York City. Reporter Jeff Lunden was curious to see how it worked.
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JEFF LUNDEN, BYLINE: Who hasn't lost or forgotten an umbrella? On a rainy Saturday afternoon, I made my way to the lobby of an apartment building in downtown Brooklyn which had an umbrella-sharing machine right by the double doors and met one of the residents, Josh Thompkins, who was picking up an umbrella.
JOSH THOMPKINS: It's in the building. I don't have an umbrella myself, and it's super-convenient.
LUNDEN: He showed me how to use the app.
THOMPKINS: Yeah. You scan the QR code, and it gives you the umbrella to pick. You pick it.
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THOMPKINS: Never had an issue with the umbrella. And you're good to go.
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LUNDEN: The machines and umbrellas come from a company called Rentbrella based in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Co-founder Freddy Marcos says his business partner got caught in the rain as he was exiting the subway and asked...
FREDDY MARCOS: So why not share your umbrellas the same way you share bikes, cars, houses? So then we started developing the whole concept of umbrella sharing. And we understood that everyone hates to carry an umbrella, especially when it's not raining.
LUNDEN: Although the app asks people to put in credit card information, Freddy Marcos says the service is free.
MARCOS: When it's rainy, you always have 24 hours free each time you get an umbrella. If you get an umbrella today, you return it tomorrow, it's free.
LUNDEN: The app has a map of locations, and you can return your umbrella anywhere. And if you don't return it in the allotted time, you get charged $2 a day until you hit $16, at which point you own the umbrella. So how does this little $8 million start-up company make its money? Two ways, says Freddy Marcos. The first is advertising. In Sao Paulo they carry the branding of a major health insurance company on their umbrellas. The second is getting companies to license the service in their buildings.
MARCOS: So they pay a fee to have the service for their visitors, for their tenants, for their users.
LUNDEN: In New York, you can pick up umbrellas in the lobbies of hotels, office and apartment buildings as well as entrances to garages. And on rainy days, the 100 umbrellas in the custom-made machines can disappear quickly, says Marcos. That's why he plans to add more machines in New York. He hopes to work out a deal to put them in the subway. And he wants to bring Rentbrella to other cities which have a lot of foot traffic, a lot of rain, like Seattle, and a lot of companies willing to sponsor the service.
MARCOS: We think it's a matter of time for us to conquer the whole world.
LUNDEN: But first, the company needs to conquer New York one customer at a time, like Josh Thompkins, who pulled out a big, purple umbrella and was ready to walk out in the rain.
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THOMPKINS: Boom. Easy enough.
LUNDEN: He says he'll be using it again. For NPR News, I'm Jeff Lunden in rainy Brooklyn.
(SOUNDBITE OF RIHANNA SONG, "UMBRELLA") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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