Rentership and Usership

I have a huge collection of board games. No, not like Monopoly. If you have ever played Settlers of Catan, you know the type of boardgames I own and like to play. Strategy games. Games that reduce or completely remove luck elements, like dice rolls from the game.

I have always kept the number of games I own below 250. This seems like a lot, but many of the games are card games which don’t take up a lot of shelf space.

The problem with owning this amount of games is the frequency at which they are played. One game may sit, untouched, on the shelf for two years before it is ever played. The game is pulled out, played, and then put back, waiting another play two years in the future. Is this game worth owning? It takes up space in my home. Wouldn’t it be cheaper or easier to buy or rent (if that’s possible) the game when I want to play it and not own it the rest of the time?

This is the concept of rentership. The word originally applied to the opposite of home ownership, but the idea of renting rather than owning is emerging in other areas as well. The best example being vehicles.

Car rentership was disconnected from car ownership before because renting a car was expensive, short-lived, and burdensome. Zipcar disrupted these concepts. Zipcar brought the idea of membership-based clubs to car rental. Membership brought rental prices down substantially enough that if you live in a major city, car ownership can be argued. Zipcar’s idea was so good, larger rental companies copied the idea.

Other startups have come along to challenge the idea of rentership with usership. Why rent something when you can share only when you need. Lyft and Sidecar have productized ride-sharing. Let the service know where you want to go and they let their drivers, other people driving around, know about you. If the driver is going the same way you are, they will pick you up and you can share a ride.

These ideas, rentership and usership, gather followings during negative economic times. Rentership was a buzzword as soon as the housing market took a downturn in 2008.

Usership is a new idea, but one that is catching on with other verticals and industries.

• AirBnB is home usership.
• Netflix is DVD usership.
• GameFly is Video game usership.
• FlexPetz was Dog and Cat usership.

Owning doesn’t seem to be the American dream anymore. Younger generations continually challenge the idea of ownership. Amassing large amounts of stuff is considered wasteful.

Borrowing rather than owning seem to align with youth. If you don’t use it much, why own it? The only time it makes sense to me is when it’s an item that is rare or hard to find.