BabyQuip: Make $$ Renting Baby Gear From Home

What is BabyQuip?

BabyQuip connects traveling parents, who don’t want to shlep around cribs and high-chairs, with independent business owners, who have baby gear to rent.

How it works

If you want to become a provider of baby goods to rent, you sign up with the site and pay a $200 set-up fee. This fee pays for BabyQuip to set up a website advertising your baby gear for rent.

You determine your market area — i.e. how far you’re willing to travel to deliver baby goods — and what you charge for rentals and deliveries.

The site says you don’t even need to own baby gear to set up here. In many cases, you can order what you need on demand.

BabyQuip review

BabyQuip operates on the idea that traveling with your baby shouldn’t require schlepping around 100 pounds of gear. Thus, the site connects traveling parents, who need car seats, cribs, strollers and toys while on vacation, with local entrepreneurs  who are willing to rent out gear.

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In addition to renting out cribs and toys, many BabyQuip contractors also offer to deliver other “consumables,” such as diapers, formula, and wipes.

Cleaning too

The site now also offers a baby-equipment cleaning option that pays well for stuff you’re doing as a BabyQuip provider anyway — cleaning and sanitizing car seats, cribs, high chairs and other gear. This service requires training, but can be well worth the time you’ll spend watching cleaning tutorials and learning about baby-safe products. The site charges premium prices for cleaning, which can help you earn as much as $50 per hour.

Cost break-down

It’s worth mentioning that we don’t normally like sites that require freelancers to pay money up-front before they’ve had a chance to earn a dime. However, the redeeming quality with BabyQuip is that the site sets up and manages the freelancer’s website. That’s likely to save you $100-$200 annually, not to mention a litany of headaches with site and “theme” updates.

That said, the site’s fees are relatively high, ranging from 33% for cleaning services to 20% on deliveries. The site sets the cleaning fees. But you set your prices for everything else, including deliveries, so you can account for the commission in your pricing.

Entrepreneurial

Notably, BabyQuip operates more like a franchise than a side hustle opportunity. The owner/operator of a BabyQuip location sets their own prices and determines the equipment they have to rent. They also determine their own availability and whether they’ll offer other services, like cleaning, groceries or delivery,

But like a franchise, BabyQuip has a series of rules that allow customers to get a standardized experience from city to city and that help the service/equipment providers deal with problems like damages and cleaning. And, unlike franchises, the upfront costs of becoming a BabyQuip representative are modest.

Recommendations

For parents who already have a lot of baby equipment, this is a nice way to get repaid for your “investment” in junior. But, if you have to buy everything, your profit margins may be slim at first. A standard crib generally costs $100 to $200, for instance, and rents out for about $15 – $20 a night. So, you’d presumably need to rent the crib at least 10 nights before breaking even.

That said, people who have used the platform maintain they can make good money with rentals during high seasons. That’s mainly the summer and holidays.

The cleaning business works well year-round and pays even better, with some side hustlers saying they earn $75 to $100 an hour once they’ve gotten into the swing of scouring.

Want to sign up for BabyQuip?

Click here for baby gear rentals

Or…

Click here for baby gear cleaning

What their users say: (From Glassdoor)

Great community to share tips and ideas. Trusted Partners are not employees, so they have the independence of running their own business. But with the platform, they get training and support of corporate. Nice side gig. The company is growing quickly. Generally it’s not going to be a full-time income.

*Updated 1/19/2023