Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–137 of 137 posts

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

#131

Post by untog »

_sentient wrote: post #49
jbob2000 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this pricing makes 0 sense. I can furnish an apartment from Ikea and pay a contractor to assemble it all for a tad more than what it would cost to rent it all.

I'm not really in the furniture rental demo, but I don't think it's exactly fair to compare the price points of high-quality furniture with what you'd pay for some particleboard abomination from IKEA. There is definitely a market for a service like this, but I think it's more a question of whether they can compete against the likes of Cort et al. I agree that furniture rental is a slightly weird value prop though. Pe…

I agree, but how long does it remain high quality furniture if it's being used, abused and returned every few months? Repair costs could get out of control quickly.

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

#132

Post by gabesullice »

First reaction: premade but customized "kits" would be nice

Second reaction: renting feels wasteful as the consumer and I struggle to see how it's profitable to refurbish/re-rent used furniture.

What would be really enticing: premade, customizable kits with 6-12 month financing and "trade-ups." Where I could sell back a piece for a newer/nicer piece. This might happen during the context of a move.

Providing a moving service too then seems a little tangential to the core business model, however it may still be advantageous since it could fill up slack time between deliveries. You would also have a perfect inventory of furniture and could provide an instant estimate and a one click purchase.

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

#133

Post by Top19 »

Very much love this idea.

I think a great example of where this could be useful (sorry if someone already said this) is that it makes it incredibly easy to do the initial moving.

A lot of times after moving you just don't have the stamina to go out and buy, have shipped, and then assemble furniture. Especially for 1 bedroom and 2 bedroom places, it would be nice to have the furniture ready to go, while you steadily buy your own stuff within 6 months.

This does assumes you will throw half or more of your furniture when you move, but considering the success of Ikea and also the fragility of their furniture, this seems like something many would do.

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

#134

Post by wodenokoto »

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?

Yes you should. I was looking at some kind of case study on your site to get an idea about which situations renting would be a good idea.

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

#136

Post by toomuchtodo »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #52
jayreno wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All great points re Feather vs Cort. To add to the conversation, we see ourselves as different from Cort in 2 key areas: 1) Price: compare our prices and, across the board, you'll find we beat them in every category, for every rental length. True, it's not a long-term strategy of ours. But the reason neither you or I are renting our furniture from CORT today is that their prices are above what we'd be willing to pay…

> Cort's main business is going after government and corporate relocation budgets. We are focused more heavily on the larger market, servicing consumers who are moving frequently (i.e. every year or so). This might be the crux though; gov and corp relos are not cost sensitive, as they're coming out of a large org's budget. Individual consumers (your target market) are. An average relo package given to someone is ~$20…

I just had the thought that perhaps your target market should be companies that hire people who move frequently, not the workers themselves. You get some of the relo dollars, companies can manage their costs more optimally (monthly over 12 months for the employee benefit versus upfront relo/lower relo outlay if a worker opts into your service), and a relationship with an org is going to be more valuable than with a single person.
Post reply on HN