Roast my idea
Dear Hackers,
I am very interested to hear your opinion on the idea I am working on right now.
Imagine there was a service. A subscription-based "library of things".
Just like in a real library, you can select a few items and use them for a limited time. Add to that the comfort of Amazon-like doorstep delivery and pickup within hours.
The items available could best be described as "nice to have, but not essential". Items you would occasionally want to use, but not buy at full price and neither have them take up space in your cabinets for 363 of 365 days a year. (Looking at you: Hotdog maker, fondue set, dinosaur icecube form, pastry brush, Nicer dicer and all your friends...).
The problems I am trying to solve here are:
- Terrible price/usage-ratio on these products. Spending $30 on an ice-cream maker which gets used 3 times in total is ridiculous.
- More space in your cabinets. Especially interesting for students and young adults who just moved to their first own place, low-income families or even minimalists who live in their van.
- Eco-friendly. Overall less waste and increased utilization of consumer products.
Would you be interested to use, or at least try this out? What weak points can you spot with my idea?
Some problems which I have figured out myself already:
- This is a hyper-local business idea. If this should scale to another country, or even another city, it would be much more difficult than "adding more RAM"
- High up-front costs, all this stuff needs to be bought early on to attract customers
- Logistic difficulties. Every item which comes back home needs to be checked for damages and perhaps cleaned again (if the customer did not do it properly). Some items might never return to begin with.
But still I could not let go of that idea for about 3 years now.
Dear Hackers, your expertise and input will be much appreciated.
Thank you in advance
I think that it's a great idea, and I'm curious how you might evaluate demand with paying customers.
Can you start your library with just one or two items? My first thought is that you probably have a few items at home that might be ideal additions to the library, and you might be able to use these in order to evaluate demand. I'd try to rig the game for success--so, what are some "awesome" items you think would get rented quickly?
I'm curious how you might find your first renters, too. Can you rely upon communities that already exist? You make a great point that this idea will likely thrive if it's hyper-local. So, do you have communities where you could share your rental items? Perhaps even in a library community? Would Craigslist be suitable?
What do you think?
Hi @nprimsa , thank you very much for your feedback!! :)
The demand/stock struggle is real. I have a plan for validation and testing though, in a few weeks time I will offer my service to exactly 2 big houses of the student dormitories in my street (~250 students max). The marketing here will be minimal, I think about putting a flyer into each and every of their mail boxes and announce the project in our WhatsApp groups. Later on I was also thinking about hyper-local apps such as craigslist and Jodel but also put advertisements on these bikes for rent which are very popular among students and a local service as well.
For the items I was thinking:
Most of the stuff will be basic household things, but many people would be surprised how many students do not have basic things like an iron or wok-pan. Apart from that I want to offer a few popular items from German TV shows, e.g. the iceblock form which can cool down a whole crate of beer at once.
Thanks again for your input :)
You're most welcome, Lyb!
Love that you're so focused on evaluating demand without scale yet.
Happy to share feedback once you get going. Let me know how it goes 🤞🤞