From luggage to toys, cameras to watches, baby gear to hiking gear, you name it, you can probably rent it. For many, ownership isn’t as appealing – or attainable – as it once was. What’s behind the growing trend?
Luxury used to be tied to permanence. You bought the designer bag, financed the car, signed the mortgage. Wealth sat in your driveway and hung in your wardrobe.
But somewhere along the line, these luxuries started to feel out of reach.
This shift isn’t totally new. We already stream our entertainment, subscribe to meal kits and lease our phones. Ownership just isn’t as appealing – or attainable – as it once was.
For Hamilton man Clayton Edge and his 14-year-old son Liam, this looks like a rotating garage of sports cars. The family had been in the market for one when they stumbled across MotorShare, what Clayton describes as a “car timeshare”.
Like some kind of luxury Netflix subscription, they get access to nearly a dozen high-end cars, choosing which one they want to drive every other weekend. Twenty-four hours in heaven, then the keys go back.
No insurance, no commitment, just a weekend behind a million-dollar wheel. All for a yearly sum of roughly $4,000.
“You’re paying for access rather than insurance and maintenance, so you kind of get the upsides without the downsides,” Liam says.
What appeals to Clayton is “the fact that there is no buying and selling process. You just choose the car that you want, and if you’re sick of that one, you go for a different one.”
Around the world, rental culture is growing across all manner of categories. From luggage to toys, cameras to watches, baby gear to hiking gear, you name it, you can probably rent it. While for some the appeal is the affordability, for others it’s the sustainability and anti-consumerist nature of it, and for many a combination of the three.
But the anchor of consumer rental culture is clothes. Googling “fashion rental NZ” brings page after page of results, everything from small, local operations and more niche offerings (vintage jewellery, hats, plus size) to nationwide companies stocking every fit you could dream of.
“The world of renting has just grown massively over the past eight years,” says Stormi Benson. “I think you could probably find a new rental company around every corner.” Hamilton-based Benson started Renting with SB eight years ago as a university side hustle, hiring out clothes to her peers who, as she puts it, wouldn’t be “caught dead wearing the same thing twice”.
The business has had a storefront in Hamilton for nearly three years, catering to people going to black tie events and race days, university balls and 21sts. The customer base stretches from teenagers to retirees.
Benson says the rising cost of living is driving the popularity of businesses like hers.
“Because we rent out designer dresses that can be upwards of $500, I think a lot of people are now choosing to rent a dress like that for an eighth of the price – it seems like a much more financially responsible thing to do when you’ve got other living costs that need to be paid.”
Beyond affordability, many of her customers enjoy the temporary nature of renting.
“It takes away the stress of picking something, knowing that you’ve made a commitment, you’ve purchased it and you hope that you’ll get the wear out of it,” she says.
Like the Edge family cycling through sports cars, it also acts as a way for customers to trial dresses before committing to buying them.
She’s noticed a change in who’s walking through her door as the cost of living bites, says Benson. People who traditionally rented can no longer afford to, and are returning instead to their own wardrobes. Those who once bought high-end dresses outright, meanwhile, are now moving towards rentals, a more financially responsible option when living costs are what they are.
Both conversations circled back to the same idea. People want access, the appetite is there, and it stretches well beyond cars and dresses.
It’s hard not to think the cost of living is behind that shift. That it may be driving all of this more than we realise.
Maybe we haven’t fallen out of love with nice things. Maybe we just stopped pretending we need to own them to enjoy them.
