Erento Gmbh

Find. Rent. Enjoy. erento is the largest online rental marketplace in Europe. The company considers itself at the forefront of the collaborative consumption movement. The customers of erento are rental “landlords” that offer their rental items to erento’s more than 20,000 daily website visitors. These rental items include physical wares (sports cars, tools or mobile homes) as well as services. The company was founded in 2003 by Chris Mueller and Uwe Kampschulte as an online marketplace for rental items within Germany. erento quickly grew to Europe’s largest rental marketplace, with locations in Germany, the UK, Austria and Switzerland. In 2006, erento offered approximately 200,000 items for rental. That number tripled to over 640,000 rental items offered on erento in 2007. In 2007 Holzbrink Ventures one of Germany’s largest, most successful venture funds raised its holding in erento to 13 percent. Later in 2009, founder Uwe Kampschulte left the company and was replaced by Oliver Weyergraf. In 2010, the business model was transformed from a commission model to a contract based model. With this contract model, each rental “landlord” can upload a certain number of articles online each month. The items are then advertised via erento’s vast marketing networks. When a user searches for an item, the contact details of erento’s “landlords”, such as website and phone number, are shared directly with the public. On July 1, 2011, the Austrian publishing house Russmedia (previously Vorarlberger Medienhaus) took over erento, purchasing 100 percent of its shares. Shortly thereafter, management of erento changed again, with Rainer Kroesing and Helmar Hipp taking over leadership in February 2012 and Patrick Guenter taking over management in May 2012. In February 2013, an English management expert, Robert Paterson, took over the second chair leadership role at the firm. Paterson was responsible for management of both the Berlin and UK offices of erento. In November 2013, erento grew again by acquiring Finnish online rental platform iRent.fi. Established by the Laakeri Group, iRent.fi has a significant peer-to-peer rental community. With this purchase, erento took a significant step in the direction of peer-to-peer rental and collaborative consumption models, an ongoing goal of the company. As a result of this merger, erento now operates actively in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the UK and Finland. Since January 2014, erento has been led by Eugen B. Russ as joint CEO in conjunction with Patrick Guenter. At the core of the company are erento's values; they believe in open communication, trying new things, teamwork and commitment.

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