Any successful business owner will tell you that being passionate is key to starting a business. Morgan Babington is someone whose passion bordered on obsession when he started East Coast Camera in 2018. He has since grown and scaled his business with Booqable and now offers high-end camera gear for sale alongside rentals.
Throughout the summer of 2020 and beyond, Australia became a haven for filmmakers, like Netflix’s production studios, as it offered creators a place to film without COVID-19 issues hindering them. This has led to increased camera rental and purchasing, and for a store like East Coast Camera, the only one in their area, it has been quite a fruitful period for growth.
East Coast Camera
Morgan Babington founded Queensland-based East Coast Camera in 2018 after a lifetime of loving video production. In his own words, “The company all started with my passion (some would say obsession) for equipment and gear in the video industry.” He worked professionally as a camera operator for many years, collecting more and more equipment along the way.
Eventually, his role grew and changed over the years, and he soon had more equipment than he could store at his house. In 2018, he decided to start a camera rental business in his hometown of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. No other companies specialized in video production equipment in his area, so it was the perfect opportunity.
His store now offers everything from DSLRs to cinema lenses, audio, lighting, and gripping solutions. All of which come from the top names in the industry and are desirable to professionals. He can also offer a rare service for camera rentals because everyone in his team is currently active in the industry and keeps up with standards and trends. It is with this unique insight that they hope to foster and promote inclusivity in the industry.
Monumental management
Growing a rental business is a complex and overwhelming task when you don’t have the knowledge or help you need. Managing orders and inventory can become monumental tasks. Morgan experienced this as his business grew from just a few cameras and lenses to over 250 products with variations. What started as something small and manageable quickly grew into an overwhelming experience.
Inventory management on its own was quite the headache as keeping track of where items were, what was in stock, and what needed to be prepared required a lot of effort. Alongside this task, which already took up a considerable amount of time, was the process of accepting bookings, generate orders, and requesting payments.
Integral to growth
Combined, inventory management and taking bookings took up an enormous part of the week, and something had to change. So Morgan sought out rental software that could accomplish both tasks in one interface. He found Booqable and says that “We honestly don’t think we could have achieved the growth we have had without the inventory and booking management processes that Booqable offers.”
Now, Booqable is integral to the back-end processes of East Coast Camera and has allowed them to streamline tasks. This has saved them valuable time with reduced admin work and enabled them to offer additional services like an all-in-one electrical and grip production van that is available for hire that includes an experienced operator for larger-scale productions.
Scaling beyond the scope of rentals
Since starting in 2018, East Coast Camera has grown significantly, and in September 2020, they were able to expand into the retail sector. A bold move during the middle of a pandemic and one that has allowed them to offer rentals and purchases within their store. Morgan credits this ability to scale beyond rentals to Booqable as it has saved them enough time to pursue it.
They now host their e-commerce store with Shopify and use the read-made hosted store for their rentals with Booqable. This means they can accept orders from their website for purchases and manage the back-end and in-store side of things from within Booqable. Morgan would like to continue to broaden the inventory of Booqable and continue to grow the community they have developed in and around Queensland.
