Client
Skipti
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Services
Digital
Brand Identity
Brand Strategy
Product Design
App Design
—
Photography
Skipti
Unsplash
Lift Foils
Cake
—
Industry
Technology
Retail

Challenge

Skipti is a two-sided marketplace where users can rent personal goods. A mix of Airbnb and Amazon. Like Airbnb, owners list the availability of their belongings. Like Amazon, renters select items to be delivered overnight to their door. All items are insured, rated, reviewed—and as a result, trusted. The idea came about when the co-founder Rich Engstrom realized he had a lot of unused stuff just sitting there, gathering dust in the basement of his house. Rich looked into it and found out that at any given moment in America, there are $1.6 trillion dollars of goods that are owned, but not used.

Skipti leverages this unrealized potential without needing to own, store or maintain a single item. A super lean and efficient business with no inventory, no storage, and no maintenance. Want to experience the great outdoors but don't have access or means to good gear? Rent a full camping kit and be an outdoorswoman today. Got a basement full of dusty kayaks? Give them a second life and make a significant monthly income doing it. Renters can experience more with less while living clutter-free and doing good for the planet by not buying ‘more.’ Sellers can make a significant monthly income turning their belongings into cash, even when not using them.

Skipti's founders enthusiastically approached Studio Piko to help them design and build the Skipti experience and platform for all the above. The founders had one goal in mind: to give people more freedom.


Solution

Working closely with Skipti's executive team, Studio Piko began with an informal two-week discovery session in which we positioned the product offerings, created user flows, and wireframed key product structure. Discovery also outlined the scope and allowed Studio Piko to provide an accurate time and budget estimate.

Following discovery, Studio Piko positioned the brand to focus equally on individual items and curated item collections to enable rich experiences. The existing brand identity was tuned to work more effectively in a digital landscape. A simplified logo was created to make it more readable at small sizes. Typography was fine-tuned to be easily readable on mobile devices by introducing a slightly thicker version of Helvetica Neue Regular and Medium weights. Finally, the memorable Optimo Cargo typeface was mixed in to give Skipti's headlines a bold flair.

Digitally, a frictionless brand experience was created, including a safe and dynamic marketplace, a weekly magazine-style blog spotlighting users and Skipti experiences, rich media profiles pages, app design, social media integration, P&L section, and income calculators. On the product side, Studio Piko helped Skipti build a simple, reliable, and efficient platform that lets users schedule and order products on-demand, roundtrip in under 24 hours.

To list an item, owners can snap a picture of the item, which is then run through Google's image recognition software to categorize it. Amazon's API fills in descriptions, specs, photos, and more. Owners have a full suite of tools at their disposal, capable of everything from generating P&L statements to setting blackout dates and providing quick inventory overviews.

In turn, renters can select an item or curated bundles that owners create to enable experiences like camping, photography, or learning a musical instrument. Ratings, reviews, and FAQs provide trust and quality assurance. Same-day delivery is often available for those booking in the morning. A professional courier will hand-deliver rental items door-to-door and pick them up when you’re done. No more meeting strangers in public places and tedious shipping labels.

On the back end, interchangeable modules allow site admins to create unlimited pages and keep the website updated easily. User and owner profile pages allow inventory, support, and review maintenance. Dashboards provide quick overviews of important stats for both sellers and renters.

Launched as a pilot in Boston in the spring of 2019, Skipti has since expanded to every major US city and has begun offering its quick and efficient platform as a featured enterprise product.


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