Beliani lets customers rent furniture

Swiss online furniture retailer Beliani not only wants to sell its entire range of around 3,000 pieces of furniture, the company also wants to rent them out. With this initiative, Beliani is responding to the upcoming subscription culture, in which more and more people rent stuff instead of buying it.

Rental and subscriptions models can be found more and more in the ecommerce industry: it has become normal to stream music, rent apartments for a few days, share a car and get new underwear delivered to your house very month.

Targeting expats, students and young couples

CEO and co-founder Stephan Widmer sees expats, students who move out of the family home and young couples who are planning to have children in the foreseeable future as the target group for this new business model. But it could also be interesting for fashion-conscious consumers who want to keep their furniture, just like their clothes, trendy and changeable.

The idea is the rental period lasts 12 or 24 months, similar to a smartphone contract. “We want to lean the furniture subscription on a principle that customers already know”, he tells Handelszeitung. “The furniture subscription is like a flat rental, you just rent everything that’s in the apartment.”

Ikea also wants to start with furniture rental

The launch is planned for the first half of 2019. That’s also the period in which another player wants to launch its furniture rental program. Ikea is busy with attempts at furniture rental in Switzerland, but also in Belgium, India, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. These furniture rental pilot projects have been in progress since the beginning of the year, and are expected to start in Switzerland during the first quarter of 2019.