Renting, not owning

Andrew Curry writes:

Our Executive Chairman Crawford Hollingworth popped up in the pages of the Sunday Express – in an article about the Japanese trend for renting out pets (journalists, eh?). It’s not online, it seems, but the trend is big in Japan but not so big in the UK, where a company that tried to launch a dog-leasing service has been criticised by animal organisations and MPs; and has been put on hold.

Crawford’s not known as an expert on pet trends, but he saw the phenomenon as part of a wider trend moving away from full ownership to part- or “fractional ownership”, in which we can get access to something when we need it.

“We grew up with the belief that we needed to own and accumulate, and maybe the concepts of ownership and accumulation will fundamentally change. We will perhaps be happier renting something instead.”

The trend seems to be strongest right now in the transport sector, with outfits such as Streetcar and Zipcar developing pay-per-use cars, and a range of city bike-use schemes being launched. Members get access to the vehicle for a few hours, with transactions smoothed out by a combination of mobile phones and smartcards. Although it seems like a ‘recession trend’, it was moving quite quickly before that, because of concerns about consumption, resources, and a desire to ‘declutter’.

Tools seem likely to follow suit – community ownership schemes for irregularly used tools, such as drills and lawn mowers already exist. They make sense when times are tight, and digital sensors makes tracking and monitoring use far easier.

The image at the top of this post is from Timeless Tools.