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Launch HN: Feather (YC S17), painless furniture rental for people who move a lot

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Re: Launch HN: Feather (YC S17), painless furniture rental for people who move a lot

#91

Post by SippinLean »

>What other expenses are there?

>...but if you’re outfitting a whole apartment on a 4th-floor walkup, pickup is likely to be a bit more.

Uh, how much more?

>What if I damage my furniture during my lease?

>In general, a little wear and tear shouldn’t be a problem...As long as your furniture is in respectable shape when we come to pick it up, there’s nothing to worry about.

Never answers the question...what if it's damage beyond wear and tear? I'm charged the full price of the item? Minus rental fees I've already paid on it?

Re: Launch HN: Feather (YC S17), painless furniture rental for people who move a lot

#92

Post by mixmastamyk »

jayreno wrote: post #29
mixmastamyk wrote: post #20

I like to move as well. What I've found: The problem with every rental place I've seen is how expensive they are. You could just buy the furniture outright for the cost of three months rental. Doesn't exactly match the year lease does it? :-/ There is a used market for IKEA furniture, and they're swapped regularly on Craigslist for half price assembled. Sometimes you can even rent for "free" by buying used and sellin…

Thanks for the thoughts! Curious to hear what type of furniture you would be purchasing that would break even to our furniture at 3 months? The breakeven price for our customers is always longer than the total price of the rental. Wonder if we should be explicitly stating this on our site?

Your prices may be lower than I've seen, though there are a lot of variables of course, not sure. But whether breaking even at 3 or 6 months is not much different.

I think the larger point (I'm now realizing) is that rental shops focus on monthly prices when it often doesn't make sense. Usually only already-furnished apartments can be had for a month or three. Unfurnished usually requires a full year lease, with only a fraction available for six months, say in downtown or a university town.

So, I might try lower monthly prices for a 6 and 12 month commitments. I think that would get me "over the hump" as a potential customer.

Re: Launch HN: Feather (YC S17), painless furniture rental for people who move a lot

#93

Post by [deleted] »

jayreno wrote: post #55
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #22

This makes me feel really out of touch. I can't imagine scrapping my furniture just because I'm moving. I've moved every year for the past 4 years. I just pay some movers and they get everything in and out just fine. Some services will even handle packing and unpacking everything for you. If someone's going to be living somewhere for only 2 or 3 months, I can understand renting. But I don't think renting makes econom…

Agreed - scrapping furniture just because you're moving is not a great idea. This will, however, occur often when we buy IKEA furniture (or items of that quality level) that we often have to trash items, or are actually trashed accidentally during a move (think one of their flimsy dressers or wardrobes). It's a wasteful practice, and an important part of our mission is to keep furniture out of the landfills. That sta…

[deleted]

Re: Launch HN: Feather (YC S17), painless furniture rental for people who move a lot

#94

Post by austenallred »

sidlls wrote: post #89
austenallred wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with granting loans to people who have bad credit? What are they supposed to do if there's a shortfall or a car breaks down, pawn a wedding ring? I used to work for LendUp. They're the most caring and altruistic people I've ever met. I mean that literally. LendUp uses machine learning & data science to decision people with more granularity than a credit score, and can therefore approve much deeper than b…

What's wrong is the absurd fees they charge. The only difference I can see between them and payday lenders is the shabby facade of credibility they think they have by being a "tech" company. Nobody who has to scrabble for $250 for an emergency is in a position to drop a 25% vig on top of it in repayment.

What would you charge?

Re: Launch HN: Feather (YC S17), painless furniture rental for people who move a lot

#95

Post by beager »

Inexpensive, mass-market furniture is going to be hard to build a business around in this regard. A lot of rightful squawking about prices compared to Overstock/Wayfair.

What if you're targeting too downmarket with this?

What if instead you marketed heirloom-quality furniture at the same price point, but gave the option at the end of "leases" to purchase or relinquish that furniture. You get margin on the lease, get paid out for the rest of the asset if they buy, but if they don't, you have great inventory that you can mark down.

That would give frequent movers access to something better than wayfair/overstock/ikea without having to commit to a $3500 armoire if it doesn't match the aesthetic or lifestyle that they have after moving or growing.

Good luck and all!

Re: Launch HN: Feather (YC S17), painless furniture rental for people who move a lot

#96

Post by jayreno »

SippinLean wrote: post #91

>What other expenses are there? >...but if you’re outfitting a whole apartment on a 4th-floor walkup, pickup is likely to be a bit more. Uh, how much more? >What if I damage my furniture during my lease? >In general, a little wear and tear shouldn’t be a problem...As long as your furniture is in respectable shape when we come to pick it up, there’s nothing to worry about. Never answers the question...what if it's dam…

Not much more. If the apartment is way up a walkup and we're carrying 4 dressers, 4 tables, 4 armoires, etc, we'll generally change the $99 delivery fee to $149.

Re damage: if you break something, we charge the cost of fixing the item. Since it's different for each item (ie. a small cut in the sofa vs reupholstering an entire sofa that had a bottle of wine spilled on it), it's difficult for us to explicitly state how much it would cost us for each type of damage. But we could certainly try.

Re: Launch HN: Feather (YC S17), painless furniture rental for people who move a lot

#97

Post by mixmastamyk »

sidlls wrote: post #89
austenallred wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with granting loans to people who have bad credit? What are they supposed to do if there's a shortfall or a car breaks down, pawn a wedding ring? I used to work for LendUp. They're the most caring and altruistic people I've ever met. I mean that literally. LendUp uses machine learning & data science to decision people with more granularity than a credit score, and can therefore approve much deeper than b…

What's wrong is the absurd fees they charge. The only difference I can see between them and payday lenders is the shabby facade of credibility they think they have by being a "tech" company. Nobody who has to scrabble for $250 for an emergency is in a position to drop a 25% vig on top of it in repayment.

(Don't know their expenses, however if they don't pay rent downtown they should be saving some money.)

High fees go hand in hand with the high risk they are taking of not being paid back. Everyone has to chip-in or the model doesn't work.

Re: Launch HN: Feather (YC S17), painless furniture rental for people who move a lot

#98

Post by mixmastamyk »

jayreno wrote: post #96
SippinLean wrote: post #91

>What other expenses are there? >...but if you’re outfitting a whole apartment on a 4th-floor walkup, pickup is likely to be a bit more. Uh, how much more? >What if I damage my furniture during my lease? >In general, a little wear and tear shouldn’t be a problem...As long as your furniture is in respectable shape when we come to pick it up, there’s nothing to worry about. Never answers the question...what if it's dam…

Not much more. If the apartment is way up a walkup and we're carrying 4 dressers, 4 tables, 4 armoires, etc, we'll generally change the $99 delivery fee to $149. Re damage: if you break something, we charge the cost of fixing the item. Since it's different for each item (ie. a small cut in the sofa vs reupholstering an entire sofa that had a bottle of wine spilled on it), it's difficult for us to explicitly state how…

Sounds reasonable, add it to the FAQ. ;)

Re: Launch HN: Feather (YC S17), painless furniture rental for people who move a lot

#99

Post by mixmastamyk »

giobox wrote: post #87
nathan_f77 wrote: post #37

When I moved to San Francisco a couple of years ago, I was really surprised by how difficult it was to find a fully furnished apartment. I really did not enjoy those trips to IKEA and putting everything together. In contrast, it seems that most apartments in Chiang Mai are fully furnished. We've moved 3 times so far, and it's always just one car ride with a small collection of personal stuff. It's really nice to neve…

Similar experience moving to bay area from the UK, where furnished apartments are _far_ more common. I remember expressing surprise at a temporary budget for furniture rental in the moving expenses work covered. Given I didn't want to continue paying Cort a ton of money forever for tables and chairs I chose to buy all my own not particularly great furniture straight off the bat. I always get horrible flashbacks to my…

Craigslist often has most of what you'll need every weekend, often in the same neighborhood.

Re: Launch HN: Feather (YC S17), painless furniture rental for people who move a lot

#100

Post by jayreno »

beager wrote: post #95

Inexpensive, mass-market furniture is going to be hard to build a business around in this regard. A lot of rightful squawking about prices compared to Overstock/Wayfair. What if you're targeting too downmarket with this? What if instead you marketed heirloom-quality furniture at the same price point, but gave the option at the end of "leases" to purchase or relinquish that furniture. You get margin on the lease, get…

Good idea. Possible we are looking too mass market at the moment. Will keep this in mind.
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