Zilok: Rent stuff you don’t want to buy

May 19th, 2008, 3:20 am · Post a Comment · posted by Gadgetress

Zilok.com launches today, offering a place for people to lend or borrow stuff. The idea behind Zilok is if you ever needed, say, a drill, just to drill a few holes but didn’t want to go out and buy one, there’s someone out there who may lend you one for a few dollars a day.

That’s actually the origins of Zilok. Gary and Thibaud, two friends who weren’t too handy, bought a mirror one Sunday last year. But they had no drill to drill it into the wall. And they weren’t about to spend $100 on buying something they would only use a couple times of year. Thus, Zilok began.

The U.S. version of the site has been in tests since fall. Today is the official launch. The site has a long way to go considering that fewer than one dozen items were available for rent in the Los Angeles region, and only two in Orange County, as of Sunday. One was a mechanical bull in Lake Forest for $1,450 a day, which seems to be the opposite of what this site is about. Because who out there wants to own a mechanical bull?

Rent stuff you don’t want to buy

Some of the other items in the LA area included digital SLR cameras, a parking spot in downtown LA for $50 a day and a GameCube console for $7 a day plus $150 deposit (Is this person kidding? GameStop sells used GameCubes for $29).

And sadly, no drills were available.

Interesting idea but not unique, according to Bits in The New York Times. Bits mentions three other companies with similar concepts: iRent2u, based in Los Angeles, eRento in Germany and HireThings in New Zealand.

Zilok provides the introduction and rental agreement and that’s it. It’s up to the owner to collect the rent — and any deposit. This could be a useful site. But if I was loaning my stuff out, I’d worry that I’d never see the stuff again. I don’t know how many DVDs, gadgets and other stuff I’ve loaned out to my friends that have never made their way back home.

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