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Before finally moving to California, the grandson of one of interior designer Phyllis Harbinger’s wealthy clients, a recent college graduate, chose to rent the furniture instead of buying it for an apartment he and girlfriend found in the New York area.
“They say, ‘We don’t know what we want to do. We don’t want to get married to anything and we want to be sustainable,'” says Harbinger, assistant chair of the Department of Interior Design at Fashion for know. Institute of Technology. “This generation loves the reuse, buy-back mentality to save the planet for them and their children.”
Office furniture leasing has a long history, but the demand for rental home furniture is growing – especially among younger consumers, who prefer a more mobile lifestyle compared to other generations. old system.
Online furniture startups like Feather and Fernish offer customers the ability to rent furniture for as little as three months, with the option to exchange items during or at the end of the contract period if They want something different.
Attract young customers, mobile devices
Feather and Fernish is “meeting the needs of people who have a lot of money but don’t have the time to shop for furniture and probably don’t want to commit to large, bulky pieces of furniture because they want to be able to afford it. moving back home – and it’s people younger than Susan Inglis, executive director of the Sustainable Furniture Council.
The rent-to-buy option these startups offer also appeals to people who can’t afford to buy right away but want good-quality items they can start living with, she said.
Feather’s customers are usually in their 20s and 30s, living and working in cities. Ilyse Kaplan, the company’s president and chief executive officer, wrote in an email.
It’s also more affordable for people moving to a new state, which can cost $4,300 to $4,800, or even moving down the street in most cities, which average $1,250, Kaplan said. Feather customers “can be booked into a basic studio apartment for as little as $105 a month or a basic one-bedroom apartment for $150 a month.”
Feather cited “significant growth” in new housing leases since the beginning of Covid-19 and the onset of remote and hybrid work, greater financial uncertainty and impending demand. arrange your life more flexibly. “As living conditions have changed in response to the pandemic, we’ve seen items in the dining room drop off in exchange for more functional home office equipment,” says Kaplan. .
Rent furniture to be more sustainable
Brick and mortar furniture brands like IKEA are also exploring rental models. For the Swedish retailer, the rental trial is part of a larger plan to transition to a circular business model by 2030, with the ultimate aim of using only renewable or recycled raw materials. , improving design principles to allow less wear and tear as products assemble and disassemble, refurbishing and replacing used goods or their components.
IKEA began testing a circular furniture subscription model in 2019, but its progress has been somewhat delayed due to pandemic-related restrictions, said Kicki Murbeck, circular business designer at IKEA Ingka Group’s circular innovation team, wrote in an email. The Ingka Group is the main franchisee of the IKEA brand with retail operations in 32 markets, representing approximately 90% of IKEA’s total retail sales.
Based on previous tests in several European countries, the company has introduced a limited B2B version called IKEA Rental in six markets in 2021: Finland, Sweden, Demark, Norway, Spain and Poland. After testing several contract options, including contract lengths and banking partners, IKEA is evaluating the results before deciding on next steps, says Murbeck.
Inglis sees the preference for renting higher-quality furniture as a backlash against the growing popularity of “quick furniture” in recent decades, which relies on cheaper materials to service. for a more nomadic lifestyle and often ends up in landfills.
“People get tired of throwaway stuff, and the furniture industry in general became a disruptor years ago by really trying to move towards pieces of furniture that don’t exist,” she says. people will throw away.
Feather, which currently serves ten major markets across the United States including New York, Washington, DC, San Francisco and Los Angeles, allows customers to convert furniture items even during the rental period if the space, Their aesthetic needs or preferences change, offering one swap per resident and additional alterations for a fee. About 14% of their customers are currently using the swap option.
“We are actively working to get rid of all types of furniture by refurbishing and reusing things over and over again, noting that furniture currently accounts for about 7% of all waste,” says Kaplan. at the landfill.
While Feather’s furniture is designed with durable materials and component systems to aid in that process, “when products are deemed no longer viable for the next customer, the first step of we are working with our like-minded partners at FloorFound to find new home furniture.If we cannot resell an item, we will donate it through a partnership with Habitat for Humanity,” said Kaplan.
Inglis said she expects the trend of retailers offering refurbishment services to flourish in the coming years.
There are customer perception challenges that need to be addressed before furniture rental becomes more popular. IKEA has heard from customers looking for long-term rentals expressing concerns about product care and what the terms and conditions are if something breaks or isn’t handled well. That needs to be clear to both sides.
IKEA finds that the mindset shift needed to fully understand a subscription model is easier to implement for younger consumers than it is for older consumers. Generation X and older consumers tend to associate subscriptions with a hire-purchase model, which previously costs them more than when buying upfront but also doesn’t include the full range of repair, maintenance, and service services. maintenance and returns that retailers currently offer.
IKEA franchisees will also need to develop digital product tracking systems to be able to move away from a linear sales model and move products from customer to customer, while expanding. subscription service scale.
IKEA already sells refurbished and replacement products in certain markets and plans to expand this product as a key element of its business transformation. It also opened a used pop-up store in November 2020 at a shopping center in Eskilstuna, Sweden, exclusively for retailers selling reused, organic or sustainably produced. More than 30,000 IKEA products were seconded at the pop-up store during the first year of the pilot, and in December 2021, IKEA extended the program for another year.
“The circular furniture subscription service we are testing is not only about such products, although they are of course important, but also about understanding what customers need and want and to be able to meet those needs that may change over time,” says Murbeck.
–By David Bogoslaw, special for CNBC.com
