Ever needed a professional camera for a day? What about a projector for a movie night? Or maybe you just want to see what all of this hype around drones is. We chatted with the team from Fat Lama who makes it easy to rent or lend your extra stuff for a day. Maybe next weekend you can hit the park with a rented drone!

1.What is Fat Lama? What cities is it available in?

Fat Lama is the peer-to-peer rental marketplace for ‘stuff’. It’s the platform that lets you rent out your belongings to others nearby. Everyday, we connect people who need things, with others in their neighborhood that have them to lend.

As to where we are available, we’ve been focused on London as our initial launch area but the platform’s now available in all major UK cities!

2.How did Fat Lama get started?

In 2015, the founders of Fat Lama left their corporate jobs to create a co-working space in East London. They spent two months renovating a warehouse conversion on an extremely tight budget. They found it nearly impossible to borrow or rent the goods and tools the project required. By the end they realised how much they would have saved if they’d been able to borrow these items as opposed to buying things they were only using once.

As Chaz (one of the co-founders) explains, “We left the project realising how much faster and cheaper it could all have been, if only there’d been an easy way to hire the things we needed.” They went on to found Fat Lama to make borrowing feasible, advantageous and fun.

3.How could I post something to rent on Fat Lama?

Listing an item to rent on Fat Lama is very simple. Upload a few pictures of your item along with a description, how long you’d like to lend it for and your chosen daily rental rate. Your item will then be on the site and you’ll be notified as soon as someone requests to borrow it!

4. Will my belongings be protected?

All items on the platform are 100% insured! Secondly, all users have to go through a 2-step ID verification process to ensure every user and every item is fully protected.

5. What are the most popular items to rent on Fat Lama?

The range of popular rentals is pretty broad. Generally speaking, things which cost a fair amount and only get used from time to time will rent especially well. It’s also the niche things – precisely the right CDJ or power tool etc. Lots of our users borrow cameras, lenses, drones and bikes – but it can be anything from cordless drills and projectors to great sound systems.

6. What about the craziest item you have ever seen for rent on Fat Lama?

We’ve had a lot of very interesting rentals on the site! Some of my personal favourites are the old school arcade machines. There have been some pretty amusing stories too; we actually recently had a user borrow a drone from Fat Lama purely in order to help find his own drone which he had lost. Seems almost poetic.

7. How can I sign up to rent/borrow an item using Fat Lama?

You can sign up to Fat Lama through Google, Facebook or by creating a Fat Lama account. It takes 2 seconds and you’ll be free to browse! Once you’ve found something you’re interested in renting, just request the item for the dates you need it, then it’s down to you and the lender to you to arrange a convenient handover and return.