RentySurfy
Marketplace | BUILT | by Roberto Salodini
https://robertosalodini.com/work/rentysurfy

A surfboard rental marketplace for travelling surfers and local surf schools in Portugal. 200 boards from 4 schools, across 3 locations.

Role: Co-founder and designer. I had the idea and designed the product
Live: rentysurfy.com (https://rentysurfy.com)

THE PROBLEM
Surfers flying to Portugal pay bag fees or end up with whatever board is left at a rental shop. Meanwhile local surf schools own good quivers and have no easy way to rent them out online. Both sides lose, and neither can see the other.

CALL 1: WIN THE SCHOOLS FIRST
A marketplace is empty until the boards are on it. Instead of building outreach tooling, I went to the first schools in person, showed them the product and got them listed. Once the first school was live, onboarding got easier, because new schools could see boards and a working partner login instead of a pitch.

CALL 2: SHOW REAL AVAILABILITY
The search starts with dates and a place, and shows only boards that are free for those days. Travellers then filter by shape and volume, not by a list of leftovers. It is the opposite of arriving at a shop and being handed a mystery board.

CALL 3: PAY AT PICKUP
Boards are reserved online and paid for at pickup, at the school. That keeps schools in control of their own handover and removes payment friction for a first booking.

CALL 4: A PAGE PER LOCATION
Each location has its own rental page, with the boards available and a local surf event, so the site can be found by place.

CALL 5: ANSWER THE QUESTIONS
A set of guides answers what travellers search before booking: how rental works, daily versus weekly, flying with a board. The site is being pushed through social media, SEO, GEO and Google Ads, which is the current stage of the project.

RESULT
- 200 boards from 4 local surf schools
- 3 locations live: Peniche, Ericeira and Areia Branca
- Live availability, a partner login, location pages and traveller guides

WHAT I LEARNED
A two-sided product has to solve the harder side first. Getting schools to list was a trust problem, not a design problem, and the first two schools did more for onboarding than any feature.