MVS Zeppelin plans 100 DIY 'in-store' locations

Rentas currently has around 33 rental locations - mainly in Hellweg-Baumarkt and Toom BauMarkt building and homeowner DIY stores - and plans to treble the network through organic growth and by appointing additional franchise partners.

"With the acquisition of Rentas we were reacting to developments in the DIY sector," said Armin Rappen, managing director for finance and administration with MVS Zeppelin, who was responsible for the acquisition, "With its successful franchise concept Rentas offers a very promising starting point to further enlarge our portfolio and to open up new segments - a strategy we have been pursuing since the foundation of our company."

The managing director of Rentas is Stefan Trippler who, before joining Rentas in January 2007, ran MIETPROFI Systemzentrale, the rental division of German DIY store giant OBI.

"For us this step means a significant strengthening of our position in the highly competitive market of tool hire within the construction industry", said Mr Trippler, "Our existing franchise partners now have access to a considerable larger rental fleet and therefore are able to offer their customers an even broader range of products, or respectively to supply customers together with the MVS Zeppelin rental stores they couldn't serve in the past. Furthermore we have a very good backing in regard of the extension of the franchise concept and the search for new franchise partners."

MVS Zeppelin said Rentas offered DIY stores the opportunity to provide its customers additional services without increasing their own manpower.

MVS Zeppelin is the latest example of rental companies and DIY stores attempting to get into the rental business. In Europe, the best example is Boels Verhuur in the Netherlands, which now has more than 500 in-store rental branches. In the US, Home Depot has established over 1000 in-store rental desks and some Caterpillar dealers are testing in-store rental desks at Home Depot stores.