In June 2008, when Punsri Abeywickrema was working on his backyard in San Mateo, Calif., he found himself in need of a wheelbarrow. He didn’t own one, but his neighbor did, and he had borrowed it the previous weekend; due to space constraints, he preferred not to buy one himself. Yet he hesitated to impose on the neighbor again.
He ended up renting a wheelbarrow from a store. But then he wondered, what if he had instead offered to pay his neighbor a small fee to borrow the wheelbarrow? Abeywickrema would have fulfilled his need without acquiring a cumbersome object or feeling like a freeloader. The neighbor, meanwhile, could have reaped a modest windfall. This thought led to an inspiration – wouldn’t it be great if a whole network of residents in his area could conduct similar transactions, with locals they didn’t even know yet?
Thus was born Rentalic.com. Like so many other websites, it connects mutual beneficiaries – in this case, people who own things they don’t use much with people who want to use things without owning them. Members can post either belongings they have to offer or goods they are hoping to find. Items recently listed include a body fat scale ($5 a week), a bread maker ($1.75 a day), and a cupcake transporter ($3 a week). The site was launched last October with limited membership, and opened to the public earlier this month.
Our economy has already shifted dramatically over the past few decades toward the service sector. This happened mostly thanks to forces in the global economy – specifically the availability of cheap manufacturing labor abroad. But once the change was well underway, Oliva says, business and academia began to observe the advantages of offering services. Increased “servicization??? could represent the next logical step in this direction.
“If we can get people and companies more focused on usership rather than ownership, we’d be able to extend the life of a lot of products,??? says Stephen W. Brown, executive director of the Center for Services Leadership at Arizona State University. “More and more consumers are going to realize that that’s what’s really important.???
