From luggage to toys, cameras to watches, baby gear to hiking gear, you name it, you can probably rent it. For many, ownership isn\u2019t as appealing \u2013 or attainable \u2013 as it once was. What\u2019s behind the growing trend?<\/p>\n
Luxury used to be tied to permanence. You bought the designer bag, financed the car, signed the mortgage. Wealth sat in your driveway and hung in your wardrobe.<\/p>\n
But somewhere along the line, these luxuries started to feel out of reach.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
This shift isn\u2019t totally new. We already stream our entertainment, subscribe to meal kits and lease our phones. Ownership just isn\u2019t as appealing \u2013\u00a0or attainable \u2013\u00a0as it once was.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Hamilton man Clayton Edge and his 14-year-old son Liam, this looks like a rotating garage of sports cars. The family had been in the market for one when they stumbled across MotorShare, what Clayton describes as a \u201ccar timeshare\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Liam and Clayton Edge enjoying one of their ever-rotating array of sports cars (Photo: Supplied)<\/p>\n
Like some kind of luxury Netflix subscription, they get access to nearly a dozen high-end cars, choosing which one they want to drive every other weekend. Twenty-four hours in heaven, then the keys go back.\u00a0<\/p>\n
No insurance, no commitment, just a weekend behind a million-dollar wheel. All for a yearly sum of roughly $4,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re paying for access rather than insurance and maintenance, so you kind of get the upsides without the downsides,\u201d Liam says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What appeals to Clayton is \u201cthe fact that there is no buying and selling process. You just choose the car that you want, and if you\u2019re sick of that one, you go for a different one.\u201d<\/p>\n
The MotorShare website<\/p>\n
Around the world, rental culture is growing across all manner of categories. From luggage to toys, cameras to watches, baby gear to hiking gear, you name it, you can probably rent it. While for some the appeal is the affordability, for others it\u2019s the sustainability and anti-consumerist nature of it, and for many a combination of the three.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the anchor of consumer rental culture is clothes. Googling \u201cfashion rental NZ\u201d brings page after page of results, everything from small, local operations and more niche offerings (vintage jewellery, hats, plus size) to nationwide companies stocking every fit you could dream of.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe world of renting has just grown massively over the past eight years,\u201d says Stormi Benson. \u201cI think you could probably find a new rental company around every corner.\u201d Hamilton-based Benson started Renting with SB eight years ago as a university side hustle, hiring out clothes to her peers who, as she puts it, wouldn\u2019t be \u201ccaught dead wearing the same thing twice\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The business has had a storefront in Hamilton for nearly three years, catering to people going to black tie events and race days, university balls and 21sts. The customer base stretches from teenagers to retirees.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Storm Benson outside her Hamilton shop, Renting with SB (Photo: Supplied)<\/p>\n
Benson says the rising cost of living is driving the popularity of businesses like hers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause we rent out designer dresses that can be upwards of $500, I think a lot of people are now choosing to rent a dress like that for an eighth of the price \u2013 it seems like a much more financially responsible thing to do when you\u2019ve got other living costs that need to be paid.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Beyond affordability, many of her customers enjoy the temporary nature of renting.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes away the stress of picking something, knowing that you\u2019ve made a commitment, you\u2019ve purchased it and you hope that you\u2019ll get the wear out of it,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Like the Edge family cycling through sports cars, it also acts as a way for customers to trial dresses before committing to buying them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She\u2019s noticed a change in who\u2019s walking through her door as the cost of living bites, says Benson. People who traditionally rented can no longer afford to, and are returning instead to their own wardrobes. Those who once bought high-end dresses outright, meanwhile, are now moving towards rentals, a more financially responsible option when living costs are what they are.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Both conversations circled back to the same idea. People want access, the appetite is there, and it stretches well beyond cars and dresses.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard not to think the cost of living is behind that shift. That it may be driving all of this more than we realise.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Maybe we haven\u2019t fallen out of love with nice things. Maybe we just stopped pretending we need to own them to enjoy them.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From luggage to toys, cameras to watches, baby gear to hiking gear, you name it, you can probably…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":652074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[177],"tags":[79,4585,2190,18,19,17,234,235,797,2990],"class_list":["post-652073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-consumer","tag-cost-of-living","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-shopping","tag-society"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117144433910110230","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}