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Comment by ashark | Hacker News Reader

> Wait a minute, you want me to rent furniture?

> We get it. This is kind of new, right? We’re excited about that.

But it's... not remotely new, right?

[EDIT] seriously, "tiny houses" = mobile homes for well-off millennials, Feather = Rent-a-Center for well-off millennials, Soylent = Ensure for well-off millennials. I guess I should start a payday loans company marketed in such a way that using it doesn't offend the class sensibilities and self-image of well-off millennials and say I'm doing something "new".

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Well, you're right - it's not "new". Rent-a-Center has been around since the 70s, but are completely predatory, offering lease to own options that gauge customers (ie. a $700 sofa will cost the customer $2100 after 2 years of payments, and will repo if they miss a payment)

We consider Feather "kind of new" because renting furniture it's not a habit that most people are used to. In fact, 97% of the US owns and deals with their furniture. So we think of ourselves as new in that sense :)

I have this great idea for printing out the top news stories for reading offline. You could print them off early morning and have them waiting for people at train stations, coffee shops, hotels, etc. If it really takes off, people might even be willing to pay for them to be delivered each week or even each morning. And of course you could sell advertising to subsidize the cost!

We're totally going to disrupt the online news business!

Edit: I should mention I love the idea of renting and returning furniture. I very much identify with the pain points mentioned and would prefer to rent high-quality furniture instead of buying and disposing of particle board crap every year or two.

I have this great idea for this new service called real time voice messaging, instead of typing out your message you simply say it into a microphone and it is delivered to the other person in real time audio. It also works in real time in the other direction.

Actually, the idea of online furniture rental is not bad really, we are just having fun with it. I recently sold my house and I rented furniture for staging, that could be another aspect of their business model, those staging people charge a ton, I get it some of it is for the "design" but really there could be a few canned designed on a web page and done far cheaper I think.

Exactly, I'm reminded of Berkshire Hathaway's Cort Furniture. It's been a couple years, but when I walked into a nearby retail presence they had the prices were fairly reasonable. They also do delivery and complete setup. What does this offer that Cort and other companies don't? An online presence?

https://furniture.cort.com/storefront/

Just browsing through here suggest they offer more flexible renting periods, (starting at 1 month vs Feather's 3 month requirement), and a website ui and design that looks fairly modern and easy to navigate.

Cort seems to have higher prices for similar goods (only looked at sofa's), but competing against a much larger corporation on price seems to be a bit of a bad business strategy. In the long run I would guess that if feather seemed like a threat, Cort would simply undercut their pricing in the competing market. I don't see what feather has to offer other than the YC branding and a younger target market.

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 for a 12 months lease. 2) Style: the overwhelming majority of their furniture is bland, and as one of our customers put it, "my parent's furniture". Our style is strictly mid-century modern and slightly modern, and designed to appeal to a younger demo.

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).

> 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 ~$20k.

I'm definitely going to follow your org to see if the experiment is a success; best of luck!

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.

If you just now discovered market segmentation,you should probably start with a business class before jumping into payday loans.

> Feather = Rent-a-Center for well-off millennials,

RAC is focussed on rent to own rather than (planned) term-and-return rentals. (Which is why they don't advertise convenient pickup, though they do advertise most of the other feature Feather highlights.)

There are plenty of existing traditional furniture rental firms, though, that do target rentals with expected returns and do highlight easy pickup as a selling point.

I know of at least one company (https://www.rentacenter.com/) that does furniture and appliances too. Same basic pitch: we deliver and set up, you can upgrade or stop renting at any time.

Edit: Beaten by your edit.

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