Listened to a podcast with the Rent the Runway CEO. One thing stood out – she pointed out that it was a jump for many people to consider renting clothes instead of buying them, but in reality you are “renting” clothes every time you buy – when you go to H&M and buy a blouse and estimate that you will likely wear it 5 times, you are calculating in your head the rental costs . . .
I do the same with my most expensive purchases. I bought a bunch of expensive jeans for the first time in 3 years. But I rationalized it by thinking of the daily rental cost, how much was I really paying per day to rent them, and it made a lot more sense. I’ve thought of the same thing about the expensive wallet I purchased 8 years ago that I still have.
I thought it was an interesting insight for new business ideas – how different is what you are proposing from a default behavior, if you just view it from a slightly different angle? Are you really asking people to behave THAT differently than how they already do? I feel like there are lot of good ideas that just SEEM more ridiculous than they actually are, and it’s why no one has done them . . .
David Litwak 