Pickle is headed South.
The peer-to-peer rental company, which recently closed a Series A valued at $12 million, told Sourcing Journal exclusively it is launching a coordinated expansion into the Miami market.
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Pickle has listings for items across the country, so renters in Miami have already had access to peers’ rentals shipped via USPS, as well as same-day local deliveries via courier services like Uber, DoorDash and Relay.
Prior to this announcement, New York and Los Angeles were the company’s two focus areas. Brian McMahon, co-founder and CEO of the startup, said launching in Miami means the Pickle team will make a concerted effort to onboard more inventory there, enabling a higher volume of same-day rental.
“When we say we’re launching a market, it means we’re really dedicating resources to build and grow the supply in that market,” McMahon told Sourcing Journal. “Once the supply starts to hit certain levels, we’ll start to see more and more of the local door-to-door courier transactions, or just local handoffs…and that’s when we know that it’s time to start to invest time, money, resources into growing a market.”
Julia O’Mara, co-founder and chief operating officer of Pickle, said the company saw a high volume of rentals late last year, particularly around the time of Art Basel, a prestigious art fair hosted annually in Miami Beach.
The area also has a slew of other events, like Miami Music Week and the Miami Grand Prix—which is a Formula 1 (F1) race—to spark rental demand, she said. Pickle completed a few activations in Miami for Music Week, and has plans to do the same for F1, Miami Swim Week and more.
“There’s a lot of evergreen use cases that we’re seeing all the time in Miami right now, like weddings and weekend trips, and people are often traveling right outside of Miami to another beautiful, tropical place,” she said. “That’s been already happening, but being able to tie it into some of these other demand spikes is helpful. Music Week was great, and now we’re eyeing…F1.”
O’Mara said the activations that coincide with those hyperlocal events often help build inventory for Pickle, by encouraging greater community.
“It’s really through a lot of these community events and activations, and it’s through injecting liquidity into the market,” she said. “As more people are renting, more people are understanding, ‘Oh, I can keep uploading stuff to my closet and earn more and more money,’ and that leads to more rentals and more supply. It’s a flywheel effect that kicks off from there.”