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Comment by itronitron | Hacker News Reader

An alternative approach might be to let subscribers browse a warehouse of inventory and select items for you to move into their apartment. That might broaden the appeal of what you are offering to a larger audience, especially families.

I really like the idea of having a company take away all of my furniture when moving out, and if even one third of it didn't get trashed that would be a win.

Finally, a lot of people only buy new furniture because they are afraid of pests hitching a ride. At some point you will need to address that from a quality assurance and liability perspective.

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> An alternative approach might be to let subscribers browse a warehouse of inventory

This is closer to Feather (YC S17) which is ecommerce + rental furniture. For us, the interior design aspect is a large part of our offering because you don't have to imagine what your apartment will look like with all of these items. Plus, we can offer better prices and spend more on acquisition since we have a large ticket (an apartment or at least a room worth of furniture rather than renting a single chair).

> Finally, a lot of people only buy new furniture because they are afraid of pests hitching a ride

You're right, this is food for thought. We already fully insure all items in the customer's apartment, so day-to-day wear-and-tear and some pest control can be fixed for free. But yes, we'll definitely need to think about this more when we refurbish furniture and put it in another apartment.

In the long term you could develop some best practices around killing pests.

I always thought something like Pabio for used mattresses would be great, so people could easily try lots of mattresses and find one which really helps them sleep.

To do that you'd need a nontoxic process for ensuring the mattress is free of bedbugs (e.g. put it in an airtight bag, then fill the bag with an oxygen-free mix of nitrogen+CO2 for long enough that any bugs will suffocate)

This is all really interesting! We’ll definitely think about this as we come close to refurbishing items (could be a few years away, hopefully!).

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