GABERCO-Global Association of Baby Equipment Rentals Companies

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Bebalino partnership with GABERCO

 

   GABERCO

 

GABERCO is very excited to announce our latest platform partnership with Bebalino; the only global market place for baby equipment rentals. This partnership, as with other platforms, is a great way to expand your business and find additional ways to reach existing and new customers.

GABERCO and Bebalino are both committed to raising standards throughout the world within the rental baby equipment industry. With the rise of peer to peer online market places it is becoming more and more important for GABERCO to help continue to raise standards and ethics of those providing gear via these platforms to help those who choose this rental route gain a better peace of mind.

Here are some additional details and interesting information about this platform and the partnership that members may find useful:

  1. Bebalino’s platform includes a “verified ID” feature in which individuals who upload their items onto the platform to rent equipment get top billing by sending in photo id, and proof of address to the site which is then shared with clients.
  2. Bebalino is encouraging its members to become GABERCO accredited; explaining the value in adhering to the current set of standards that all other accredited members have agreed to in order to be certified.  For those who currently do not meet GABERCO’s set of standards and ethics, both organizations will work together with each of their members who list gear to make changes to their inventory, cleaning processes, gear retirement, insurance and other related items to become compliant: thus increasing the level of safety and service within the industry.
  3. Bebalino members will have top search privileges when they have both GABERCO Accreditation and Verified ID; helping to increase the safety and security of parents and babies all over the world.
  4. Bebalino is offering an administration discount to GABERCO members, ensuring the continued growth of independent companies who would like to sign up with Bebalino as a secondary source of rental clients.
  5. This partnerships marks the continued expansion of GABERCO throughout Europe, India and Asia, as Bebalino currently and successfully operates within these regions.

Bebalino truly is a quality platform with the safety and standards at heart you would expect from any rental company. We encourage our members to check them out and consider them for their own expansion models.

About Bebalino and its founder Ivan Buljan

“I am a dedicated, but really busy dad of 2 kids, who spent 15 years in corporate sector working in sales. Also, in my free time I have built and managed several websites, worked in affiliate marketing, had my own brand on Amazon, but during the last year, my focus and passion lies in the baby equipment rental business. I live in Zagreb, Croatia and hold an MBA, and when I do catch some really free time, I spend it on family trips”

“Our current focus is to expand our offer of baby gear on all continents, especially on popular destinations and where such service is still not available, in order to provide travelling families a central place where they can easily search and book baby gear. Also, we are constantly improving our platform with new features and benefits, which will further help to ensure increased level of security, health and safety for our members”.

For more on Bebalino and Ivan, here’s a great article from Go Nomad.

 

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The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) How it effects your business.

GDPR Baby equipment Rental

Hello members, friends and vendors.

An important message around the The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) I hope that your service provider when it comes to credit card processing is keeping you well informed and up to date. If not you need to start asking questions based on the below information.

As you may or may not know The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) has a global reach even though it is a new law generated out of the European Union. Any customers or clients you process from the EU will fall under this new law. Even if you are operating outside of the EU you are subject to this law when processing and storing data from EU related credit cards, payments and correspondence.

The GDPR is a new set of regulations designed to give consumers more power over there personal data. This will allow them to review and update their data, restrict processing of there data, and sets out strict user-consent guidelines. The GDPR has a global impact, affecting all Europe-based merchants, plus every company that either sell or rents to customer in Europe or track activity of European residents. Meaning if you rent to a European client and process there payment you are subject to this law.

Actions to take:

  1. Revise your terms and conditions to include information on how you are going to store and use their personal information.
  2. Ensure you have a “by checking this box you agree to (your companies) terms and conditions at check out.
  3. Make checking that box mandatory to check out of your site.
  4. Provide clients with the right to access their data by request. Your service provider for taking orders and processing credit cards should have this available to you as the operator anyway. If they do not and will not by May 28th 2018 you should start looking at another provider.
  5. You must be able to edit their personal data after the rental period is over. If the client from the EU requests certain items to be removed, deleted or modified, you must be able to do this and provide the client with proof that this has been complied with.
  6. Start a data base of clients with name, date and email. If a data breach occurs with your processor or provider you are required to inform all of your clients within 72 hours.

Yes it sounds like more work than you are used to, however providers like Ecwid are ahead of the game and this is easily able to do within their system.

You can also look at a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software to track your clients and it will automatically track your emails into the system. Of course if you are using a 3rd party software program this needs to be stated in your Terms and Conditions.

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How to qualify bloggers asking for free rentals

Are Bloggers asking you for fee rentals? 

There’s been a few emails lately from members who have been approached by bloggers, online magazines, and online influencers who ask for free gear rental in exchange for reviews and posts.  One of our founding members in fact were recently (not for the first time) approached and wanted to share the experience directly:

We were approached by a mom blogger who has a baby travel site, asking for 2 toddler car seat rentals for free, for a whole month, during our busiest time of the year. Of course, my interest peaked as when ever you can get some great marketing for equipment it seems like a good deal. However as business people as you are we need to ensure if this is something we are thinking we are going to do it needs to be qualified. I asked how many followers she has on her blog, how many followers and what here Instagram followers number was. The investment for us was about $600USD that we would lose during our busiest season in rental revenue since we would not have enough inventory to get us through our season.

So of course I asked the logical questions. The response I got was shocking. She had 600 followers on Facebook (drop in the bucket) and about 1500 followers to her blog, and was also actively talking to our competitors in the area regarding free items.

I also talked about GABERCO and how we could work together and how GABERCO could help grow her followers and expand her expertise. I also asked for exclusivity on a blog, after all what kind of competitive advantage would it be to be featured in a blog along with all our competitors. One of our GABERCO members also relayed a story of how a blogger in her market demanded free items or she would write a negative blog on her company. We as GABERCO started asking questions regarding all of this activity and found out that it is very common in most markets and how it works from a bloggers point of view.

Ultimately, we opted out of this engagement, but wanted to explore more.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

So a blogger gets several thousand followers and feel they have influence over a travel market. There are just over 4000 active travel & Mom bloggers world wide that specialize in the family and baby marketplace, most of them have small children themselves. They then pick a travel destination, research baby equipment rental companies in the area and then reach out to every company there to leverage their blog into free items. Say they need 2 cribs, 2 car seats, toys, swings, bathtubs etc, they will tell you that they will write a blog featuring you if you supply for free x items for x amount of time. They will say this to every company until their needs are met.  If you push back, you will get “I am talking to your competitors also” thinking that will sway you into complying with their demands for product. If every company says yes, you have about a 50% chance of actually getting a blog about you written and it will feature all of your competitors also. Maybe you get a like on Facebook and a 5 star review. Maybe since it is free you send out your slightly older items and your competitor gets the edge over you on the blog and a more favorable write up. This means you spent valuable marketing dollars on taking a step backwards.

WHAT TO DO?

In a lot of ways, engaging with influential bloggers or social media pros could make sense, however it would almost certainly have to be an exclusive arrangement; at least for a period of time. You could leverage this by saying,  “I will give you all your needs for exclusivity which exclusive content on a blog.”  However, keep in mind that many of them are also now asking for fees on top of the gear rental for free.  In the case above, the marketing investment would go from $600 to $1500. Just be sure to qualify the person with regard to their followers AND their content. Aligned content that speaks to your market may be a  good fit. A random blog about discounts: not so much. Consider using equipment that isn’t your most requested as losing money isn’t what you’re in business to accomplish, right? And make sure that the quality of the post (and their other posts) align with  your target audience.

If you do not get exclusivity in your market place, the marketing investment is worth zero no matter how many followers they have, and it may even hurt your business to give them any items. 

There are many many great Mom and travel bloggers around the world who only want to make traveling with family’s a better and easier experience. If you get approached and need some help trying to figure out what a good engagement would be, tap into Amanda Vega, one of our founding members, and if you are a GABERCO member, she will review the blogger for you and give you the right path to forge!