New App Lets People Rent Items Instead of Buying

Every household has at least one item — whether it be a pasta machine, an electric drill, or a popcorn maker —  that gets used once or twice a year, but mostly just hangs around taking up space. Now, the French app, Poppins, is conveniently clearing out kitchen and storage space, and preventing people from buying things they will use only infrequently by facilitating a rental and borrowing economy between peers.

Tons of Objects
The modern world is full of things: electronics, cooking devices, furniture,clothing, and more. Those things eventually add up. The Guardian reports, the average French individual owns 2.5 tons of objects, and nearly a third of those things never get used.

This factoid was the impetus for French entrepreneur Luci Basch to co-found a new app called Poppins. The app makes it possible for people to rent or borrow items from other people in their area. Want to make ice cream but don’t own an ice cream maker? Get on Poppins and rent one from your neighbor. Poppins attracted more than 40,000 users in its first weeks alone and is continually growing.

According to Gigadgets, the rental prices are set by the owners and the app includes features such as in-app payments, optional insurance (just in case the item being lent or rented out is very valuable), user verification, and in-app payments. This makes for a very smooth and trustworthy user experience.

The app has seen rapid growth in urban areas like Paris, Bordeaux, and Marseille where space is limited so renting is preferred to owning.

From Raclette Machines to Baby Beds
As the Guardian notes, and perhaps typical of the French, so far the number one item that has been borrowed or rented is the raclette machine, but people also look for things such as baby items, tents, grills, and outdoor equipment. And why not? Renting a tent for a once-a-year camping trip via Poppins is vastly cheaper than owning one, and the tent is returned once it’s been used.

But the more important element of Poppins is the fact that it takes the human impulse to own things and turns it into a sharing, social, circular economy. Not only are people buying fewer things, they are also meeting their neighbors and creating communities.

Basch told The Guardian, “the beauty of sharing is it combines ecological, economic and social incentives. If we make sharing normal, less is produced, which is ecological, we will spend less because it’s cheaper to rent or buy and we will be more social as we are talking to each other again.”