Netflix For Stuff

The article I just read was a little dated (Oct 2006) but it highlighted a very interesting service that I think is pretty cool, it’s essentially a rental service for accessories - jewelry, purses, etc. It’s a slightly different take on fractional ownership, most common in planes and yachts where you buy the right to fly a plane or sail a yacht for a specified number of days a year, and is more like Netflix, except for high end accessories.

Bag, Borrow or Steal was started by a couple guys who saw how much time, money, and energy their wives were spending on finding purses and handbags that matched their wardrobe. You pay $10 a month and then a per-item weekly fee but you get to borrow all sorts of stuff. A quick look on their site saw four levels of membership, based on the quality of the goods (Couture, Diva, Princess, Trendsetter) with membership fees ranging from $20/mo to $175/mo.

While my fiancée doesn’t buy a lot of handbags or accessories, I can see how these types of services can be very useful. The thing with shoes, handbags, and accessories is that after a little while the novelty of the thing wears off and they just don’t get worn anymore. They aren’t like cars, where you only have one and you use it until you need a new one, they’re constantly being swapped in and out of the rotation until they’re forgotten in the corner of the closet. While I don’t foresee anyone I know signing up for this (unless they have a Faux category with fake LV and Gucci purses for $5 a month), it certainly fills a need.

Source: MSNBC