Imagine buying a €1,000 camera with every intention of becoming the sort of person who takes it everywhere. A few holidays later, it spends most of its time in a cupboard, while your phone does the photography. Renting it out sounds like a sensible way to recover some of the money. Then someone you have never met asks to borrow it for the weekend, and the calculation suddenly becomes less straightforward.

That hesitation is central to the business of Hygglo, a rental marketplace founded in Stockholm in 2016. The company connects people who own things with people who need them temporarily, from cameras and tools to outdoor equipment. It acquired British competitor Fat Llama in 2022, expanding a business built around a fairly reasonable observation: owning something does not mean using it very often. Persuading its owner to hand it over is another matter.

For the borrower, the appeal is easy to understand. Someone who needs a camera for one weekend can avoid paying for years of ownership. The owner, meanwhile, can earn something from an item that would otherwise sit unused. In economic terms, the arrangement makes better use of an existing asset. However, both people still have to find each other, agree on a time and decide whether the exchange feels worth the trouble. These transaction costs help explain why a cupboard full of unused equipment does not automatically become a cupboard full of business opportunities.

Location makes a considerable difference. An affordable lens on the other side of Stockholm may be less useful than a slightly more expensive one a few streets away. It also needs to be available on the right dates, with an owner who can meet before the borrower leaves for their trip. Hygglo’s booking process involves a request that the lender approves, followed by payment and any required verification; the two parties arrange collection and return directly. A listing is therefore only the beginning of a successful rental.

This gives the company a very local growth problem. Adding more lenders should make the service more useful, but only if they offer things people nearby actually want to borrow. A hundred extra cameras in another city will not solve a shortage in your neighbourhood. For Hygglo, building a useful marketplace means getting enough suitable items and willing borrowers into the same areas. Expanding to another country brings a new opportunity, although it also means building those local relationships again.

Even a convenient match leaves the owner with a difficult decision. The rental income is modest compared with the value of the camera, and a friendly profile picture tells you little about how someone handles a lens. Hygglo uses verification checks that can vary by booking and market. Such checks can reduce uncertainty about who is renting, but the owner also needs to understand what happens if their equipment comes back damaged.

Hygglo’s published photography protection covers qualifying damage, theft and loss through Omocom insurance in the Nordic markets or its own Lender Guarantee in the UK, US and Canada. The conditions matter. Compensation is based on the equipment’s market value immediately before the damage, and exclusions include ordinary wear and cosmetic marks that do not affect how it works. A camera bought for €1,000 is therefore not a promise of a €1,000 payout. Nor should its owner expect rental protection to keep it looking permanently new.

The practical test comes when the two sides disagree about what happened. Under Hygglo’s claims process, a lender contacts support and completes a separate claim form, potentially supplying photographs, proof of value and a repair assessment. Information sent to support is not automatically passed to the claims handler. There are understandable reasons to ask for evidence, particularly when a scratch may have existed before collection. Still, the time spent documenting a problem belongs in the owner’s calculation. A payout can replace financial value without making the experience feel worthwhile.

Keeping that experience worthwhile also means leaving both sides with an attractive price. Hygglo’s published fee guide sets out a 20% commission on the lender’s rental fee, alongside a borrower fee that varies by category. On a hypothetical €40 rental at that commission rate, the owner would receive €32 and Hygglo would collect €8 from the lender’s side, plus the borrower fee. The owner still has to decide whether €32 compensates for the handovers, the extra wear and the possibility of dealing with a problem.

For Hygglo, those fees have to fund the service that makes the arrangement possible. Payments must be processed, protection provided and customers helped when plans change. A straightforward booking may require little attention. A disputed repair could involve repeated messages and someone reviewing the evidence. The commercial question is whether the income from rentals covers those costs on average, while leaving enough to pay for the wider business. Counting the value of items rented tells us very little about that.

The mix of rentals matters too. A longer booking or a more expensive bundle can generate more commission from a single handover, although valuable equipment can also create greater exposure when something goes wrong. A cheap item might be simpler to replace, yet leave very little income to cover a support conversation. This makes the categories Hygglo develops, and the customers it attracts within them, important to its economics. More transactions are helpful only when serving them remains affordable.

Repeat customers could improve this calculation. A borrower who has already found a reliable lender may spend less time searching next time, while the owner has a better idea of what to expect. For the platform, another booking from an existing customer can spread the cost of attracting that person over more rentals. However, frequency depends on what people need. A freelance photographer might regularly rent equipment for different jobs; someone hiring a roof box for a summer holiday may have little reason to return until the following year.

Familiarity also creates an awkward incentive. Once the owner and borrower know each other, they may start questioning the fee for bringing them together. Keeping the next rental on Hygglo means paying again, even though the introduction has already happened. The platform therefore has to keep providing something they value. Protection against damage and help with a disagreement can remain useful between people who have dealt with each other before. Trusting someone to bring back a camera does not necessarily mean wanting to negotiate a repair bill with them.

Hygglo addressed this directly in a June 2026 product update, which urged users to keep rentals on the platform and explained that its protection and payment support do not follow transactions elsewhere. The company also described work on extending paid bookings, changing dates and handling partial refunds. These are ordinary problems, but solving them could make a second booking easier and reduce the need to contact support. They also give customers a practical reason to keep using the service after the initial introduction.

Whether that is enough requires more than a reassuring guarantee and a published commission rate. A convincing assessment would examine how often requests become completed rentals, how many borrowers return and what remains from the fees after payment, protection and support costs. Claims would need to be assessed by how fairly and quickly they are resolved, as well as by how much they cost. The published policies explain the process; they do not establish how consistently it works for customers or what Hygglo earns from an average booking.

Hygglo has a plausible opportunity in the gap between what people own and what they actually use. Making that gap profitable depends on the details of an ordinary weekend: finding the right item nearby, collecting it without rearranging your day and knowing there is a workable process if it comes back damaged. For the person with the camera in the cupboard, those details determine whether lending it once becomes something they are willing to do again. Hygglo needs that second rental to feel worth the fee, even after the stranger has become familiar.