A friend sent me some info about a company in Sweden that rents out battery powered lawn equipment from a locker you unlock with your phone. Instead of having to own, maintain, and fuel a weed wacker, chain saw, leaf blower, etc you pick the stuff up, use it at some hourly rate and drop it off. It looks like payment would work like an Uber or any other payment for service app. You put in your info then get charged after. Both of us have what we would consider as urban houses - houses in fairly large cities but in small lot neighborhoods. Our lawns are probably 600 SF and garage space is tight.
My problem has been that I needed all this STUFF to take care of the yard. It seems like a waste to hire someone since it's not that much work to do. I've ended up buying cheap things that work ok but I'm thinking if I could rent high quality stuff I'd put my cheap stuff back on craigslist. For example, I bought a $30 electric leaf blower on Amazon. It works but it's a little weak. I use it probably 5 times a year so I'd give it up in favor for a higher quality rental if it was easy enough. Same thing for weed wacker and I have one of those man powered old school lawn mowers. I'd rather use a battery powered lawn mower. I liked this rental idea because everything is battery powered so you don't smell like fumes after use and have to go shower if you did some quick lawn work before heading to meet with someone or something.
Anyways, it got me thinking on where the sharing economy is going. There seems to be so many things I use infrequently where it would be nice to have access to something better and not have to store it. I was in 7-eleven the other day and saw that they were selling a foam 6pack cooler for $7. What a waste! Why can't I rent a nice Yeti cooler somewhere for $7 and save the foam and it would work better? Same thing with folding tables and chairs. I have two destroyed pockets in some jeans. I got a quote to fix it for $60... the jeans cost $60. I would fix it myself but I don't know a single person who owns a sewing machine and I don't really want to hand sew it. Maybe I can do this, and I need to look into it, but I'd like to rent a sewing machine because I don't want to own one.
I don't know how this comes to be but it seems like the sharing economy has a lot of room to grow. The question seems to be logistics of how these items come to be available. Maybe the future of retail is an Amazon style store where you walk in, scan your items, and walk out... but you are renting instead of owning. Who knows. We talk about reducing stuff but what about actually increasing access to stuff but without expending money for the stuff that isn't used?
Submitted October 30, 2018 at 11:56AM by FrostySound https://ift.tt/2Rpha9f
