Disrupting Fashion - Will Sharing Economy Work For Fashion? Fashion AirBnb
Hello World! Happy Monday!
This morning I was delighted to read a very interesting article 'Will the 'Sharing Economy' Work For Fashion?' on The Business of Fashion website by Helena Pike. I was recommended to read it by my dear friend and old classmate from London College of Fashion. She sent me the link with a message 'Read that!! It's like your idea!!'.
In my earlier post Unlimited Fashion for a Monthly Subscription I'm talking about my interested in the 'End of Ownership' concept and how it could be applied into fashion.
In the BOF article Pike talks about Fashion Rental Services such as Rent The Runway and peer-to-peer lending. I've been doing research on Crowdsourcing for long time and it's a topic that I find very interesting. Another idea I presented in the Start Me up Competition was 'Fashion Meets Airbnb' which is an idea of a mobile app where people could borrow clothes from each other more efficiently by sharing their digital closets with each other.
I was even more delighted to find out that there already is a company doing this! Hallelujah! Or a very similar variation of it (Gaps in my research tut tut). StyleLend allows people to rent designer clothing (womenswear) that are owned by other people.
Designer fashion owners can become 'Lenders' and start renting their pieces on the platform. You can borrow an item for 7 days and it will be delivered to you in 2-3 days or within hours in New York. Oh and the dry cleaning is on StyleLend! You only pay the rental fee if the garment fits. In case it doesn't you can return it for free and it will even be picked up from you.
This service is equally amazing from the garment owners perspective. You get free storage for your clothes and extra cash without selling anything. All the items are insured by StyleLend so you can have a piece of mind.
This is absolutely brilliant! The sad news is...
.... the service is currently only available in the US
BUT hopefully they will expand to Europe and the rest of the world some day. Fingers crossed!
Then a quick update on the competition! I'm currently on the second place on the Start Me Up idea competition with my Fashion Netflix idea. The competition is running till the 11th of May so there's still time to vote! Any support is much appreciated! :) You can vote by LIKING the pitch on the competition Face Book page on this link: https://www.facebook.com/startmeup2016/videos/190753197982680/
Hope you all have a great week!
P.S please excuse typos
Best, Crista x