在最终搬到加利福尼亚之前，室内设计师 Phyllis Harbinger 的一位富有客户的孙子刚从大学毕业，他选择租家具，而不是为他和女友在纽约地区找到的公寓买家具。
“他们说，‘我们不知道我们想做什么。我们不想嫁给任何东西，我们想要可持续发展，'”时装技术学院室内设计系助理主任 Harbinger 说。 “这一代人非常喜欢重复使用、回购的心态，为他们和他们的孩子拯救地球。”
租用办公家具有着悠久的历史，但对租用家具的需求一直在增长——尤其是在年轻消费者中，他们喜欢比老一代人更常见的移动生活方式。
Feather 和 Fernish 等在线家具初创公司为客户提供了一次租用家具三个月的能力，如果他们愿意，可以选择在合同期期间或合同期结束时更换家具有些不同。
吸引年轻的移动客户
Feather 和 Fernish 正在“满足那些有钱但没有时间去购买家具的人们的需求，他们可能也不想承诺拥有大型笨重的家具，因为他们希望再次搬家——这是一个更年轻的人口统计，”可持续家具委员会执行董事 Susan Inglis 说。
她说，这些初创公司提供的先租后买选项也吸引了那些没有足够钱立即购买但想要可以立即开始生活的优质作品的人。
Feather 的客户多为 20 多岁和 30 多岁，在城市生活和工作。该公司总裁兼首席运营官 Ilyse Kaplan 在一封电子邮件中写道，这项服务非常适合刚搬家或即将搬家、与室友住在一起并且每六个月到一年搬家的人。
卡普兰说，对于搬到新州的人来说，这也更实惠，费用在 4,300 美元到 4,800 美元之间，甚至在大多数城市搬到街上，平均费用为 1,250 美元。 Feather 客户“可以以每月 105 美元的价格入住基本的单间公寓，或以每月 150 美元的价格入住基本的一居室公寓。”
Feather 指出，自 Covid-19 开始以及远程和混合工作的开始、更大的财务不确定性以及对更灵活的生活安排的需求以来，新住宅租赁的“显着增长”。 “随着生活条件因大流行而发生变化，我们看到餐厅用品减少，以换取功能更强大的家庭办公用品，”卡普兰说。
租用家具更可持续
宜家等实体家具品牌也在探索租赁模式。对于这家瑞典零售商来说，租赁试验是到 2030 年过渡到循环商业模式的宏伟计划的一部分，其目标是最终只使用可再生或回收的原材料，改进设计原则，以减少产品在使用时的磨损。组装和拆卸，以及翻新和重新利用二手商品或其组件。
Ingka Group 循环创新团队的循环业务设计师 Kicki Murbeck 在一封电子邮件中写道，宜家在 2019 年开始测试循环家具订阅模式，但由于大流行相关的限制，其进展有所延迟。 Ingka 集团是宜家品牌的主要特许经营商，在 32 个市场开展零售业务，约占宜家总零售额的 90%。
在之前在几个欧洲国家进行的测试的基础上，该公司于 2021 年在芬兰、瑞典、丹麦、挪威、西班牙和波兰这六个市场推出了名为 IKEA Rental 的 B2B 版本。 Murbeck 说，在测试了几个合同选项，包括合同期限和银行合作伙伴后，宜家正在评估结果，然后再决定下一步。
Inglis 认为租用高质量家具的兴趣是对近几十年来日益流行的“快速家具”的强烈反对，这种家具依靠更便宜的材料来迎合更加游牧的生活方式，而且往往最终被填埋。
“人们已经厌倦了扔掉的垃圾，而整个家具行业在几年前就对自己造成了伤害，因为他们非常努力地转向人们会扔掉的家具，”她说。
Feather 目前服务于美国的十个主要市场，包括纽约、华盛顿特区、旧金山和洛杉矶，即使在租赁期间，如果他们的空间、需求或审美偏好发生变化，客户也可以更换家具，免费提供一件交换给每个住宅客户，并收取额外费用。目前约有 14% 的客户使用掉期期权。
Why you might be leasing not buying your next couch
Before eventually moving to California, the grandson of one of interior designer Phyllis Harbinger's wealthy clients who had just graduated from college opted to rent furniture rather than buy it for an apartment he and his girlfriend had found in the New York area.
“They said, ‘We don't know what we want to do. We don't want to be married to anything and we want to be sustainable,'” said Harbinger, who is the assistant chairperson of the Interior Design Department at Fashion Institute of Technology. “This generation is very much into that reuse, repurchase mentality to save the planet for them and their kids.”
Renting office furniture has a long history, but demand for renting home furnishings has been growing — particularly among younger consumers who favor a more mobile lifestyle than was common for older generations.
Online furniture start-ups such as Feather and Fernish offer customers the ability to rent furniture for as little as three months at a time, with the option to swap pieces during or at the end of a contract period if they're in the mood for something different.
Appealing to a young, mobile customer
Feather and Fernish are “responding to the need of people who have plenty of money but no time to go shop for furniture and perhaps also no desire to commit to ownership of large, bulky furniture because they expect to be moving again — and that's a younger demographic,” says Susan Inglis, executive director of the Sustainable Furniture Council.
The rent-to-buy option that these start-ups offer also appeals to people who don't have enough money to buy immediately but would like good quality pieces that they can start living with immediately, she said.
Feather's customers tend to be in their 20s and 30s, living and working in cities. The service is well-suited to people who have just moved or are about to move, live with roommates and move every six months to a year, Ilyse Kaplan, the company's president and chief operating officer, wrote in an email.
It's also more affordable for people moving to a new state, which can cost between $4,300 and $4,800, or even moving down the street in most cities, which averages $1,250, Kaplan said. Feather customers “can get set up in a basic studio apartment for as little as $105 a month, or a basic 1-bedroom apartment for $150 a month.”
Feather cited “significant growth” in new residential leases since the start of Covid-19 and the onset of remote and hybrid work, greater financial uncertainty and the need for more flexible living arrangements. “As living conditions have changed in response to the pandemic, we have seen dining room items decrease in exchange for more functional home-office pieces,” Kaplan said.
Renting furniture to be more sustainable
Brick-and-mortar furniture brands like IKEA are also exploring leasing models. For the Swedish retailer, experimenting with renting is part of a grander plan to transition to a circular business model by 2030, with the aim of eventually using only renewable or recycled raw materials, improving design principles to allow for less wear and tear when products are assembled and disassembled, and refurbishing and repurposing used goods or their components.
IKEA began testing a circular furniture subscription model in 2019, but its progress has been somewhat delayed by pandemic-related restrictions, Kicki Murbeck, circular business designer on Ingka Group's circular innovation team, wrote in an email. Ingka Group is the main franchisee of the IKEA brand with retail operations in 32 markets that represent about 90% of IKEA's total retail sales.
Building on previous tests in several European countries, the company introduced a limited roll out of a B2B edition called IKEA Rental in six markets during 2021: Finland, Sweden, Demark, Norway, Spain and Poland. Having tested several contract options, including contract lengths, and banking partners, IKEA is evaluating the results before deciding on the next steps, Murbeck said.
Inglis sees the interest in renting higher-quality furniture as a backlash against the growing popularity in recent decades of “fast furniture,” which relies on cheaper materials to cater to a more nomadic lifestyle and often ends up in landfills.
“People are tired of throwaway junk, and the furniture industry as a whole did itself a disservice years ago by trying really hard to move towards furniture that one would throw away,” she said.
Feather, which currently serves ten major markets across the U.S. including New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Los Angeles, lets customers switch furniture items even during a lease period if their space, needs, or aesthetic preferences change, offering one free swap to each residential customer, and additional changes with a fee. Roughly 14% of its customers currently use the swap option.
