Original: Can young people’s pursuit of stars and demand for film production support this business?

Zhou Ang observed that many girls who come to rent equipment do not pursue top-end camera hardware parameters or “extreme picture quality.” They value the photos’ own online feel and retro atmosphere, which are suitable for posting on Moments and TikTok. “High-pixel, extremely professional photos may not necessarily gain attention on social platforms, but retro CCD photos have a sense of atmosphere, which is equivalent to a social password in the social field and will appear very tasteful.”

As a result, the old CCD card machine born in the 1990s has become a dark horse in the rental market.

The price of this kind of second-hand old machine is not high, with a three-day rental of only 50-70 yuan. However, the machine is very old. Zhou Ang said that the failure rate of some models can reach 10%-20%, and the cost of one or two hundred yuan to repair and process parts. This brings a lot of operation and maintenance pressure to merchants, but it cannot stop the continuous rental demand in tourism scenarios.

The concert scene creates another unique set of equipment requirements.. Most traditional venues restrict the entry of large professional cameras, while telephoto flagship phone rentals have suddenly emerged.

Panda has been in the rental business in the Pearl River Delta for many years, with a particular focus on mobile phone rentals for concerts. Business records show that flagship models like the vivo X300 Ultra with an external telephoto lens are worth more than 6,000 yuan, and the daily rent is about 200 yuan. A high-end camera package such as the Canon R5 paired with a 200-800 mm telephoto lens is worth nearly 30,000 yuan. The single-day rent can reach up to 400 yuan. When it comes to idol concerts, tenants are willing to accept higher prices.

The star-chasing scene also shows strong clique characteristics. Zhou Ang noticed that most of the concerts held by artists under certain brokerage companies were young women around the age of 18, with very prominent spending power. “People around me have rented the equipment to record the wonderful moments of the concert, and I will be inspired by this atmosphere, which will generate more rental demand.”

The strong demand has even spawned a new business format: many practitioners drag a large amount of equipment and follow the national tour cities to conduct on-site interviews around the concert venues, eliminating the trouble of express delivery back and forth.

From the demand side, this is indeed an attractive business.

Because for many users, purchasing equipment with low usage rate and risk of depreciation is not as cost-effective as leasing. Consumers only pay for a few days of use, and merchants convert the equipment into an ongoing rental asset.

但“Good rent” does not mean “good money”.Rental payback cycles vary widely among different categories. Popular equipment for concerts can pay for itself in as little as half a year when there are enough performances. But once the supply of performances shrinks, the payback cycle will be lengthened. Although the demand for travel-oriented equipment such as the DJI Pocket series is stable during the holidays, the number of merchants entering the market is large, the prices have been severely affected, and the rents have been continuously depressed. The payback cycle generally takes two years.

More importantly, equipment depreciation, damage, loss, rental fraud and logistics costs will all eat up profits in addition to book turnover.

2. The data looks good, but profits are hard to make.

In terms of external business turnover data, many leasing merchants can achieve monthly turnover of hundreds of thousands, but turnover is not equal to profit. Multiple factors are continuing to squeeze actual income.

The rapid depreciation of equipment is the biggest pressure hanging over leasing merchants.

In the entire second-hand equipment market, there is a paradoxical “diseconomies of scale” phenomenon: the larger the inventory plate, the higher the surface orders and rental income, but the higher the risk of equipment depreciation eating up profits.

Zhou Ang said that it is a common phenomenon in the current second-hand camera market to depreciate by 30% in one year. “The price of equipment has dropped in the past six months, which can be said to be extremely low.”

Based on this reality, many businesses choose to control their own equipment inventory to 3 million to 4 million yuan and refuse chain expansion. Zhou Ang believes that if a single store continues to expand, it will increase personnel and operating costs, and it will also cost money to attract customers. In summary, the gains outweigh the losses.

The popularity of the deposit-free model brings another risk。

The equipment is refused to be returned by the tenant and is sold directly, which is what the industry calls “running orders”. In today’s rental market, consumers are generally used to being free of deposits. If merchants insist on charging high deposits, it is easy to directly lose customers. However, being free of deposits means that assets are exposed to risks. Failure to return equipment when due is mostly considered a civil economic dispute rather than criminal fraud.

According to Zhou Ang’s feedback, even if the lawsuit is won, if the other party has no enforceable property in his name, the money will still not be recovered. At most, the other party will be listed as a breach of trust person subject to execution, but the equipment and economic losses will still be irreparable. To characterize criminal fraud requires extremely high evidence collection threshold, which is difficult to implement.

In this competitive situation, individual retail investors will “die the worst”. Seeing that the rental business is booming, I put a few high-priced cameras on the online platform and followed the trend to do so without deposit. Once I encounter malicious orders and the entire set of equipment is lost, it will be enough to severely damage or even end my small business.

In addition, for various types of 3C digital equipment, especially old products such as CCDs, scratches, aging, and hidden defects are difficult to quantify, and there is no unified standard for damage compensation, which all relies on negotiation between the merchant and the tenant. A few merchants will use minor scratches to demand high compensation, and there are a large number of rental lightning protection posts on social platforms such as Xiaohongshu.

In response to the risk of equipment loss and damage, equipment insurance products for leasing merchants have appeared in overseas markets. However, this domestic segment is still in its infancy, and practitioners are not aware of the existence of related products. In addition, although some large-scale leasing platforms have been equipped with corresponding risk protection plans, it is difficult for small and medium-sized independent merchants to obtain insurance services suitable for them. Most of the risks of equipment loss and damage can only be borne by themselves.

In addition, platform commissions and logistics costs further compress profits.

In such a complex risk environment, the surviving small and medium-sized businesses have developed their own risk hedging methods. Risk control is placed at the forefront of all work. Practitioners generally do not hope to litigate for compensation after an accident.Focus on intercepting risks before they happen.

Panda will refer to the tenant’s social security and salary flow to determine the tenant’s ability to pay compensation and build an internal fraud information ledger. A large number of their new customers come from referrals from old customers and endorsements from acquaintances, which is equivalent to an indirect guarantee and reduces the probability of being cheated. Zhou Ang also relies on third-party tools for user screening, and concert orders will also require tenants to provide performance tickets as auxiliary vouchers.

In addition, video recording of the entire process is a basic operation that both practitioners will use. Evidence of the equipment status of each circulation node is retained, and any subsequent damage disputes will have an objective basis.

There are also corresponding strategies for inventory scheduling. Panda will allocate equipment across warehouses before the peak season to cope with the demand for concerts and holidays; during the off-season, equipment will be dispersed to different tourist cities to avoid all inventory being concentrated in one place, resulting in low occupancy rates.

3. Can new categories and new models support the next good business?

The involution of the mass market category has entered a fever pitch. There are many merchants entering the market for ordinary cameras and DJI action cameras, and price wars are constantly compressing profits. It is already difficult to achieve excess growth here. From a practitioner’s perspective, opportunities come more from two directions:AI peripheral hardware, as well as niche subcategories focusing on emotional value。

As an emerging piece of hardware that has emerged in recent years, AI glasses have been put on rental shelves. However, the market is still in the early adopter stage, and there are limited scenarios for immediate demand.

Compared with cameras and mobile phones, its customer base is highly concentrated in the 18-25 years old. Most users have an experience mentality and can also meet the commercial needs of corporate exhibitions. The hardware structure of AI glasses is simple. There are no precision and consumable parts such as shutters and CMOS photosensitive elements. They are low-loss products and have relatively simple maintenance. The daily rent is only about 40 yuan.

The reality Zhou Ang sees is that the demand for mass tourism is not strong. The current pixel quality of AI glasses is still difficult to match that of mobile phones, and the shooting capabilities are not strong. Therefore, some of its orders come from niche scenarios such as speech prompting, and there are even gray needs from students for cheating in exams. The rigid demand for daily travel by the public has not yet truly formed.

Along with the development of large AI models, various AI supporting peripheral hardware are regarded as directions worth observing in the future.

The rental business often sells not only the hardware itself, but also the emotional value: chasing stars at concerts and taking photos while traveling are essentially paying for the emotional experience. Following this logic, some niche differentiated categories began to emerge.

Panda has become the agent for wedding video recorders in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao, and its business scope covers the sales and rental of video recorders across the country. Wedding video recorders were first introduced to the mainland from Singapore and Hong Kong. Guests picked up the phone to record blessing videos for the newlyweds, and they have already opened up rental sales in the Pearl River Delta wedding planning market. There are also niche modified shooting equipment for specific scenes of Japanese tour concerts. The demand is not large, but there is real market demand.

At the model level, there are also many localized innovative attempts. Some merchants adopt a multi-warehouse model that supports cross-city, cross-province, and even cross-border returns between Hong Kong and Macao. Tenants rent in place A and can return it in another city without having to send it back the same way. This is suitable for cross-city travel itineraries and also reduces the loss of equipment caused by the round-trip express delivery.

Many practitioners are still evaluating the equipment hosting model: many consumers buy cameras themselves, but the actual frequency of use is very low. If they are left idle at home for a long time and depreciate, they can be hosted in a rental store and rented out, with both parties sharing a share, thus revitalizing a large amount of idle digital hardware.

However, the new model also has to face realistic constraints. The audience of niche categories is limited. The time for the large-scale popularization of AI hardware is still unknown. The hosting model must also solve a series of problems such as determining the quality of equipment and dividing liability for losses.

The demand for 3C digital rental is indeed growing, but industry rules have not yet caught up. Currently, there is a lack of unified standards for equipment quality, damage assessment and compensation standards, and it is difficult for small and medium-sized businesses to obtain commercial insurance suitable for leasing scenarios. The risk therefore remains mainly in the hands of the lessor, while consumers may encounter temporary price increases, disputes over damage assessment and hidden charges.

To make “rent not buy” a more mature consumer choice, the industry needs not just the next hot-selling device, but also more reliable infrastructure: platforms improve contract performance and dispute resolution rules, insurance institutions provide protection products against equipment loss and damage, and relatively transparent machine inspection, loss determination, and compensation standards are formed between merchants and consumers.

Risk control beforehand, evidence during the incident, and guarantee afterward are the prerequisites for digital leasing to move from holiday excitement to long-term business.

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