Premise
studio.chat is, primarily, an audiovisual production company. Rentals are a secondary offering: a way to monetize gear that the studio already owns and lightly extend its presence in the Medellín AV community. We are not positioning as a rental house competing with Camerimage-tier dry-hire operations.
One-line positioning (EN): "We rent select gear from our production kit — when it's not on set."
(ES): "Alquilamos parte de nuestro equipo de producción — cuando no está en set."
What this means in practice
- Catalog stays small and curated. Not a B&H-style mega-catalog; a hand-picked list of items we own and trust ourselves on.
- We rent to producers, not to the general public. The rental gate is a 100% replacement-value deposit + ID + a verified contact phone and email — no vetting tiers, no insurance, no COI.
- Quote-first, not direct-checkout. Reservation requests come through a form. We confirm availability, send a contract + invoice, take a deposit, then it's confirmed. (We can graduate to instant checkout later if volume justifies it.)
- Tied to production calendar. When the studio is shooting and needs the gear, it isn't available. The system must respect blackout dates.
- Bilingual. Same EN/ES treatment as the rest of the site.
What we are NOT doing in v1
- Public real-time availability calendar with hour-level slots.
- Direct online checkout / instant booking with charge-on-confirm.
- Delivery / courier service.
- Self-serve "create my own kit" beyond pre-defined bundles.
- A separate domain or brand.
These are deferred to v2 once we learn volume, conflict frequency, and what clients actually ask for.
Success criteria for v1
- Operationally: zero double-bookings against production shoots; every rental tracked from quote → return → settlement in one system.
- Commercially: cover insurance + depreciation + handling per rental; target ≥4 paid rentals/month within 3 months of launch (revise once we have the financial model's actual targets in hand).
- For the brand: rentals page exists and converts, but doesn't dilute
the production-studio positioning. Producers visiting
/still get the AV-production message first.
How this fits the existing studio.chat site
As shipped: rentals lives under /services/rentals (a peer of podcasts
and stills on the services hub), with the home page giving production the
hero and rentals a secondary mention. See processes.md for the rental
gate and operations, and ../architecture/rentals.md for the system.