S3: Keep Up with the ‘Jones’s with Jonezie- Episode #74

Check out the creative solution to community renting of personal items with the  guys from Jonezie of Ferndale, Michigan Check out what these guys have come up with to help keep up with the ‘Jones’ by building a community rental program for all of our stuff!  What do you want to rent for the summer!!!     For the full transcript, click the button below: Read Full Transcript Romy: Welcome to the Bonfires of Social Enterprise with me! Romy. Yup, you have me again for another conversation with an innovative social enterprise. On this episode, we talk with Matt and Lenny from a new platform called Jonezie. They have moved back to Michigan from other experiences in social enterprise around the globe to create this great community rental program. Let's drop in now on the entire conversation.... Romy: Okay. So we've got Lenny and Matt here, guys, on the show with us. So let's talk about what's Jonezie? Matthew: Good question, take it away Len. Zachary: Well Jonezie is a platform that let's people list anything that they might have that they don't use all the time. They can list it on Jonezie, and someone in the area can rent it from them. You make a little extra money, and someone in your area doesn't have to go drain their savings account buying the item, they can just rent it for a couple of days or however long they need it and ... you know ... they both win. Romy: So for our listeners in some of the other countries, when we say platform that might be like a digital platform, an online platform, right? Zachary: Exactly. Romy: Okay. Great. So how did you guys come up with this idea? Zachary: Well I ... me and my wife, girlfriend at the time, just moved into our house. It was like the first nice day out here in Michigan, and everyone was out riding their bikes, or running, and I just really was craving a bike ride. We went to the store, and I realized a decent bike was like anywhere from six hundred to eight hundred dollars. I mean I could have bought them, but I knew I would have ended up with buyers remorse or we wouldn't end up using them and they would be in the basement and our house is kind of small, so it's like more things taking up more space. We were sitting on the porch ... we didn't end up buying the bikes, and I saw our neighbor, they came in, him and his wife, and they were on their bikes and it was like "How cool would it be if I could just give em like twenty dollars, I'd use their bikes, drop em off when we're done, he'd make a little side cash to go out to dinner with, and we got our bike ride.". So as the night went on, I kept on thinking about it. Next day I called Matt, and I was like, "Listen I think I have something here. I want to know your thoughts.". Matt was my entrepreneur friend, so I felt like it was appropriate to reach out to him and just play the idea off of him. We kept on talking about it and we ended up talking more about it, and we're like, "Should we do this?", and I was like "Yeah. How do we do this?". He was like, "Well, we are gonna build a landing page and let's gauge what our networks think. If they think it's a good idea maybe we discuss it more.". That's exactly what we did. Romy: The virtual world of pop-up. Those are the retail pop-up, it's the virtual pop-up that's the landing page isn't it? Matthew: Right, exactly. Romy: Oh good. Did you ever ask your neighbor for the bike or it was...