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Virtual reality equipment rentals

Virtual reality equipment rental business plan

Dec 29, 2024

Arena Systems Inc.

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Opportunity overview�Opportunity cost�Minimal viable product�Minimal viable marketing plan

Tracking & KPIs

Bonus resources

01

02030405�06

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Opportunity overview

01

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Opportunity overview�Setting the stage

What we do

Provide cutting-edge VR headsets to bring immersive experiences to business events.

How we do it

By purchasing equipment at below market value, packaging VR experiences and offering it to commercial event planners.

Why we’re doing it

Enterprises have a massive appetite for bringing virtual reality to their next event. We've identified a notable opportunity when it comes to offering easily bookable virtual reality experiences.

Virtual reality equipment rental business plan

What

Why

How

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Bringing virtual reality to a business event is an easy way to "wow” attendees & employees. That said, for most businesses, renting VR equipment on an as-needed basis for events is always a more logical decision than purchasing outright.

Without the right tools or experience, it can be next to impossible for a businesses to host it’s own VR experience. Paying a small premium to hire professional junk haulers is worth any possible cost savings that could come from doing it yourself. Especially for affluent customers.

Opportunity overview

Running a virtual reality equipment rental business

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VR selling opportunities

Some of the potential services available for cross-selling.

  • Walk the plank
  • Race simulator
  • Flight simulator
  • Home run derby
  • Golf simulator
  • Beat saber
  • Guided meditations
  • VR arcade
  • Team building
  • And more

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Opportunity cost

02

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Opportunity cost: The value of one alternative relative to the value of the next best alternative.

This cost is not always financial. It makes consideration of market competition, penetrability, startup costs, time to validate the idea, and more.

At Arena, we don’t explore high opportunity cost ventures; virtual reality equipment rentals aren’t one of them.

Opportunity cost

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Opportunity cost�Arena opportunity Venn

Virtual reality

rental company

Low startup cost

Negligible operating costs

Unconventional

Virtual reality equipment rental business plan

The virtual reality equipment rental business is unconventional and it’s high ticket customer base make it an opportunity worth considering. Renting VR equipment to clients involves negligible labor & operating costs, since the equipment costs are fixed, and labor costs are negligible relative to the average expected transaction size.

VR equipment is sometimes costly, but it’s high profitability justifies the required acquisition costs. VR equipment repair expertise is not required, since maintenance can be outsourced to a third party.

Despite it’s “boring” B2B nature, our mouths water at the thought of exploring this idea.

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Minimal viable product plan

03

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Minimal viable product plan

Plan

Do

Act

Check

Virtual reality equipment rental business plan

Disclaimer: None of these blueprints are complete. Rather, they are intended to reduce friction as you start your business. Meaningful refinement can only happen through continuous effort & ideation.

Plan, Do, Check, Act: Also known as the PDCA cycle, this project management framework helps businesses drive continuous improvement across their products & services.

We strongly recommend that you pair our product plan with the PDCA framework in your workstreams to help identify efficiencies in the opportunity as they arise.

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Deckover trailer

Meta Quest or Virtuix

Minimal viable product plan: Equipment

Curated selection of VR games

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Curated selection of VR games

Meta Quest or Virtuix

Minimal viable product plan: Equipment

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Good artist copy,�great artists steal.��Don’t reinvent the wheel.��Copy your competition’s homework (see bonus section) by listing the exact VR equipment & activities they have available on their website.

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Sell before you build.���Low on capital? Pre-sell.��List VR rental services first; only purchasing equipment once you see what services & experiences would rent most frequently.

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Sourcing equipment

Keep it simple. Use Facebook Marketplace & Craigslist to source headsets that you’ll need. To start your business, you don’t need brand new equipment.

The cheaper you can acquire VR headsets, the better return you can yield during it’s rental history (more on this later).

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Startup costs: $1,100

It’s in our estimation that startup costs are in the $1,100 range.

This includes both your initial VR headset purchases, VR game & experience purchases, and marketing costs slated to be discussed shortly.

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Instructions are self-explanatory for VR equipment rentals.��01. Source quality headsets at bargain prices.�02. Find potential customers.�03. Rent at the highest reasonable price.���You can measure “reasonable” by looking at your booking rates. Healthy booking rates = reasonable pricing.

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Occupancy rate

Industry standard occupancy rate targets are usually in the ~70% range. Since you will be starting from nothing, it’s okay to aim below this target.

Given our low operating & labor costs, it's appropriate to aim for 50% or above.

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Dollar utilization rate

Target a 60-70% dollar utilization rate for your fleet of headsets. Meaning that after a year, each headset should earn you 60-70% of it's total acquisition cost. You should price VR games into the cost of your headsets.

Dollar utilization rate = annual rental revenue divided by the original cost of the rental purchase.

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Minimal viable marketing plan

04

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Minimal viable marketing plan

In the spirit of retaining modularity, we’ll host most in-depth marketing plans outside of this deck. This plan only contains the essentials to get started.

More marketing resources available @ arena.xyz

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Phases�Going from 0 to 1

Minimal viable marketing plan

Follow this blueprint to build the marketing & sales plan you’ll need to acquire your first customer.

01 Create front door

Look like someone worth doing business with. Take a day to build a website (with basic pages) and a logo, fast. Done beats perfect.

02 Craft your offer

Use our available marketing & sales resources to craft an offer that your leads can’t refuse.

03 Source your leads

Use our marketing resources to create a list of places you can use to source high-propensity leads

04 Close your leads

Use your offer to close prospects that your lead generation provides. Repeat the process. While looking for ways to drive efficiencies in the business.

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01 Create front door��This step is self explanatory. Register your domain, create your website, get custom email, etc.

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02 Craft your offer��Copy your competition’s homework by calling or emailing as a cost-conscious prospect interested in becoming a customer.���Take any meaningful learnings, and use them to your benefit within your sales process.

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03 Source leads

To begin prospecting, simply search for event planners in your local area. Look for their contact information, and send a personalized email socializing your unique VR experience offering.

Understand their needs, present your portfolio, and communicate your flexibility & adaptability to win an opportunity to be on their vendor list.

When doing outreach, be sure to communicate yourself as a trustworthy and reliable vendor. For event planners, reputation is paramount.

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03 Source leads

Use Facebook Groups, Craigslist, and localized marketplace sites (i.e. Bark.com) to promote your services.

For post inspiration, look at the content that competitors & similar businesses are posting.

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04 Closing leads��As previously stated; Good artists copy, great artists steal. F*ck political correctness, don’t reinvent the wheel. ��Copy your competition’s homework (see bonus section) by calling as a prospect and repurposing their sales pitch.

Use their sales pitches as your own personal money printer until you have resources to experiment.

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No process is perfect on day 1. Remember to refine your workflows each week.��Improve your offer�Improve your prospect sourcing�Improve your close rates

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For a step-by-step marketing plan, follow this four week calendar. →

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Marketing plan

First four weeks

Use this four week marketing plan to kickstart your business & get your first ticket customer. Apply the PDCA framework along the way to drive efficiencies along the way.

Week 1

  • Build website & brand basics. Only essential pages (home, about, contact, etc.)

Note: Recommended website builders, themes, business names & domains available in bonus resources.

Week 4

  • Look for opportunities to enhance your workstreams, and repeat the process.

Week 2

  • Purchase trailers based on competitive research findings.
  • Craft an undeniable offer using our sales resources.

Minimal viable business plan

Week 3

  • Source high propensity leads using our recommended methods. In this case, joining & posting in communities, marketplaces, and sourcing partnerships with established affiliates in the event planning industry.
  • Close qualifying leads (those that reach out showing interest in renting VR equipment for their event).

NOTE: Additional resources @ arena.xyz

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Disclaimer

Plan

Do

Act

Check

VR equipment rental business plan

Remember: As previously stated. None of these blueprints are a one-size-fits-all solution, and neither are they complete. Meaningful refinement can only happen through continuous effort & ideation.

As you develop your business, remember to apply the PDCA framework:

  • Plan: Set goals and determine what changes are needed to achieve them
  • Do: Implement the changes
  • Check: Evaluate the results to determine performance
  • Act: Standardize the change or start the cycle again based on the results

TDLR: Continuously look for leaks in the business, and fix them.

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Tracking & KPIs

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You’ll struggle to identify opportunities & track growth if you don’t measure what matters.

Use Arena’s free dashboard to:

  • Set KPIs
  • Set targets
  • Set actuals
  • Measure performance

Tracking & KPIs

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Setting KPIs

The following set of instructions require our dashboard, available @ arena.xyz

You can complete this process using other business dashboards following similar steps.

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Identify KPIs

Identify the KPIs that are most suitable for the opportunity (provided on the following slide).

Set Targets

Set recurring growth targets that you would like to achieve based on your personal level of commitment.

Set Actuals

As you progress, make sure you update your “actuals” table to reflect your performance.

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Trailer rental KPIs

Revenue per rental

Average rental duration

Maintenance costs

Dollar utilization

Operating costs

Monetary?

Y

Y

Y

N

Y

Description

Income generated from each transaction, helping you identify the most profitable equipment.

How long your rental equipment is rented for, on average.

How much it costs you to maintain the equipment.

The annual rental revenue relative to the total acquisition cost of the equipment you’re renting.

Expenses that you incur to run day-to-day operations.

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KPIs

Measure your performance

Use the Dashboard, Tracker, and Summary tabs to track your performance over time.

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Bonus resources

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Bonus resources

Recommended digital tools

Tools & resources

Domain names

Website builder

Website themes

Stock photos

Email newsletter software

Meetings

Business phone number

Email accounts

We’ve extensively researched the best digital marketing resources & tools. These are our recommended resources.

For the ultimate toolkit: https://arena.xyz/the-toolkit

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Bonus resources

Business names & available domain names

Available business & domain names

Ready Player Rentals

Unwrap Reality

Mind Blown VR

Altered State VR

Reality for Rent

Let me VR

Seeing VR

VRenture

Immersive Republic

readyplayerrentals.com ✅

unwrapreality.com ✅

mindblownvr.com ✅

alteredstatevr.com ✅

realityforrent.com ✅

letmevr.com ✅

seeingvr.com ✅

vrenture.com ✅

immersiverepublic.com ✅

Note: These domain names are available at a first come, first serve basis.

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Nationwide

Nationwide

Nationwide

Los Angeles, CA

Current VR equipment rental companies

Competitive research

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Questions?

Contact

hello@arena.xyz

arena.xyz