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Together with Tilroy, A.S.Adventure set up its rental operation again a few years ago, as part of the broader Tilroy omnichannel platform. The result is an operation that runs all year round, rewards repeat visits and grows effortlessly with the range.
Twenty years of rental, reinvented
A.S.Adventure has been doing winter sports rental for twenty years. What once started with carbon copy slips and large paper ledgers grew over the years into a fixed pillar of the store experience. Customers come back every year, already know their size, and the employee only needs to ask a few confirming questions.
A few years ago a new ambition was on the table: structurally building summer rental as a category. Tents, backpacks, child carriers, sleeping mats, bike carriers: products people don't need often, but for which they like to visit a specialist. That required more than an extension of the existing system. It required a fundamentally different inventory model and a rental operation that lived in the same digital space as all other customer processes.
"For winter sports our equipment was really spread across the different stores," Nicky explains. "But for summer rental we couldn't make the business case work if we had to build it with scattered stock. We needed central inventory."
Rental and sales in one system
A.S.Adventure was already using Tilroy as its POS system. Bringing rental into the same environment was the obvious step. The Rental module was developed within the Tilroy omnichannel platform, with A.S.Adventure as launch customer. Business analyst Laura Goossens helped shape the requirements, carried out the tests and fed back the feedback from the pilot stores.
"It was really a collaboration. Tilroy built, I coordinated and tested, and we had pilot stores where we often went to check things. That way we helped each other and delivered a rental module that works in practice"
For A.S.Adventure this means that rental today lives in the same system as sales. The same POS, the same loyalty card, the same look and feel.
Central warehouse, local flexibility
The inventory model is deliberately hybrid. Each store has its own inventory, tailored to its location and size. In addition there is a central warehouse all stores can draw from. Handy for products that are too expensive to duplicate in every store, essential for summer rental, which has to be shifted quickly in peak months.
"Tilroy's module is actually set up even more flexibly than how we use it today," says Nicky. "In principle every store could reserve from each other's inventory, a true omnichannel model."
That room for the future is no detail. The range of rental products is still growing, and the module scales along without new development being needed every time.
"We don't yet rent out our full potential of products today, but Tilroy is ready for it. Adding new categories is something we do ourselves, it doesn't need any development."
One platform, widely supported by the team
The biggest practical gain for the store is that the Rental module has the same look and feel as the POS everyone already knows. Previous rental slips can be looked up and copied. It sounds simple and that is exactly the point. For the customer coming to rent skis for the sixth time, it feels like a conversation with someone who already knows them. For the employee it saves minutes on a busy day.
"We used to do the same dance year after year. Look up the previous slip, and if you even found it, copy everything onto a second screen or print it" says Nicky.
Maintenance periods are now built into the process too; that used to be tracked manually. Preparation lists can be printed straight from the system, so on a busy Saturday in January stores are ready with the right sets per customer. Checks at pickup and return follow fixed checklists. In case of damage or missing parts, the system automatically calculates how much of the deposit is withheld. An optional protection plan for customers is also managed in the same environment.
Jan De Koninck, store manager of one of the stores that runs both summer and winter rental, also sees how it makes collaboration between departments easier.
"Our colleagues upstairs in the rental department can park a file in the Tilroy POS, and the colleagues downstairs open that file directly. Those are all possibilities that didn't exist before."
The same familiar environment also makes rental accessible to the whole team, not just the dedicated rental specialist.
"We didn't always have people who wanted to step in at the rental department. By the time they had the old software open, they were already done. Today in Tilroy it has the same look and feel as the POS. Anyone who knows the POS can just sit down at it."
The integration into the POS system also has a commercial advantage: the rental ritual flows smoothly into the rest of the store experience, and naturally leads to conversations about additional purchases.
For those who want to try before they buy, A.S.Adventure also offers a try like buy formula: rent first, and if you later buy a product from the same category, you get a discount. 10 percent for summer rental, 15 percent for ski rental. An accessible way for customers to experience a more expensive product first.
What rental means for the store
For the store, rental is not an extra service on top of sales, it is part of what A.S.Adventure is.
"We would start missing a very large part of our revenue if rental were gone tomorrow. It is part of who we are. It is an opportunity we offer our customers. Circular, and customers also expect that from us a bit."
It gives people access to quality outdoor gear they otherwise wouldn't use. "We sometimes have Fjällräven tents that cost 700 euros each new," says Jan. "That is an opportunity to rent one from us and try it out." Child carriers, one of the most popular summer rental products, are a typical example of what young families rent for one season, and sometimes buy afterwards after all.
Summer rental also attracts a new audience: young people who want to discover quality outdoor gear, but are flooded with cheap online alternatives. Rental lowers the threshold and lets people feel for themselves why quality makes the difference. Whether that leads to a purchase or a second rental, both are fine.
So at A.S.Adventure rental is not a separate business. It is woven into the advisory role the stores already play: someone comes in for information, hesitates between buying and trying, and can continue that conversation with a rental that runs smoothly through the same system as the purchase.
Looking ahead
The Rental module keeps evolving, at Tilroy and at A.S.Adventure. New categories are being added, the central warehouse is expanding with it, and internally they are looking at ways to digitalise certain steps further.
That potential now also reaches across the border. Bever, the Dutch outdoor retailer within the same Yonderland group, also works with Tilroy's Rental module. Without winter rental, but with its own summer rental operation that grows with the range in the same way.
"The fact that we can keep expanding in products and range only means there is demand and that it works. You don't increase the volume if the process isn't right. That shows Tilroy is a super handy tool and that it is also easy to scale."
For Nicky the real value lies in how customers experience it: "If you have a quality product, in whatever segment, rental is a good way to let the customer feel what quality is. Whether that leads to a purchase or not. Sometimes someone just comes to rent a second or third time. That's fine too."
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