Heavy Equipment Rent & Sale Marketplace Built with Yo!Rent

FATbit-Technologies
FATbit Technologies
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GearFlow: a US-based heavy equipment rent & sale marketplace built with Yo!Rent, a leading product of FATbit.

About Gearflow

Gearflow is a marketplace for construction equipment connecting dealers, OEMS, contractors and part sellers from across America. It allows sellers to create their own storefront, list unlimited products and manages everything with a free dashboard reporting tool. Similarly, buyers can make bids, rate sellers and track their purchase through their own dashboard.

Defining the Problem

Contractors manually call/email multiple rental companies to find the best rental rate. Sites that list equipment for sale don’t offer an easy search. Listings either don’t quote a price or show images of equipment:

  1. Equipment Parts Sales: Millions of parts are on shelves collecting dust throughout the US.
  2. Equipment Sales: Again, there are millions of units that end up going to auctions because retail sellers cannot find ideal buyers locally. Ideal buyers are often located in a different market.
  3. Equipment Rentals: To avoid purchasing expensive heavy equipment that may become redundant after a short-term usage, companies now look for rental options. But the obscurity about the players and their practices in the rental segment remains a major obstacle.

Project Scope & The Business Model

The requirement for Gearflow was accomplished with some minor customization on Yo!Rent (FATbit Product) Go Quick Package. The client wanted to build a common platform for buyers and sellers for sale, purchase, and rental of heavy machinery and equipment.

Sellers could use the platform to list their products for rent or sale after specifying the rental price, selling price, security deports, shipping costs, etc. On the other end of the platform, the buyers could browse and view the products under various categories. They could purchase or rent any product after making the specified payment to the seller. The platform would further offer Pickup and Delivery options, however, the delivery will be managed by the seller either manually or through Shipstation API.

The buyers (wishing to rent a product) will be charged a refundable security amount while renting the product on the website. Once the product is returned to the seller, the seller will initiate the Security Refund in the system (Complete/Partial/No Refund) based on returned product condition. Deemly API will be integrated into the system for trust profiles verification of users.

How FATbit (Yo!Rent) Helped

FATbit delivered a dynamic solution to match the client’s business requirement right down to the last detail. To build this solution, FATbit added some extra features i.e better reporting to admin, customized subscription plans to accommodate different user types, provision to On/Off renting feature from the back end.  The application provides end-users with the facility to rent and sell heavy machinery to other vendors in the same industry.

The project went through the following key phases:

Phase 1 (Design)

Phase 2 (Development)

Phase 3 (Testing)

Phase 4 (SEO)

Phase 5 (Deployment)

Summary of the custom-work:

To encapsulate Gearflow’s identity, huge emphasis was laid on its website designing. The final design is a product of various iterations and a common theme can be observed throughout the website. A free flowing design casts highlight on all the major website features to enable a user-friendly & self-intuitive experience. Key highlights include:

  • Custom Designing of website pages
  • Applied a uniform color theme across the website
  • Enabled Offer Creation on products
  • Added Product Financing Option
  • Created Reports Section (Dashboard) for Admin
  • Added Rental Option with the ability to set On/Off

Technologies used:

Here, the project has been split into various tasks (designing, development, QC, etc.) meeting the overall objective of custom work.

  • FATbit Framework:
  • PHP
  • MySQL
  • HTML5
  • CSS3
  • Ajax
  • JavaScript
  • JQuery
  • IonCube Loader

Third-party APIs integration:

  • Deemly for Profile Verification
  • TaxJar API
  • Google Location Services
  • Nexmo SMS API
  • ShipStation API
  • Social Logins – Facebook and Google

Gearflow in News:

  • Gearflow.com Raises $1.1M Seed Funding to Elevate Construction Equipment Rental
  • Alert partners with Gearflow for rental business e-commerce solution

News Sources:

http://www.rentalpulse.com/Articles/tabid/246/ArticleId/32118/Alert-partners-with-Gearflow-for-ecommerce-solution-for-rental-businesses.aspx

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/gearflowcom-raises-1-1m-seed-funding-to-elevate-construction-equipment-rental-300938054.html

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gearflow-com-raises-1-1m-110000568.html