Our thinking

The borrowers

7 July, 2023

Keeping up with the Joneses is hard work. With increasingly sophisticated tech and equipment proliferating across all areas of life, ‘having it all’ is a costly pursuit, and one that comes with a hefty environmental cost.

The answer can come in a mindset shift – from owning to sharing. After all, many of these things are a joy to use occasionally and painful to buy – perfect candidates for a different approach. At Good Business, we’ve long been big enthusiasts of the sharing economy, and therefore disappointed that the actual uptake has been small and many of the platforms that introduced us to the sharing economy have folded. This has in part been attributed to the convenience of having new stuff delivered to your door, but also by limited trust, particularly for peer-to-peer platforms – a tough pill to swallow for a concept based on a sense of community.

However, there’s a new frontier of the sharing economy: having shared goods in serviced apartment blocks. This is growing in the US and although it’s delivered more as an additional service for landlords to offer tenants than a grassroots community activity, having furniture and bikes ready to use in the foyer still reduces the need to buy, and they’re shared with your direct neighbours. These facilities focus on high-quality and durable goods is an added selling point for landlords but it is also a good way to make the sharing model a desirable one.

It’s only one of many ways to deliver shared resources but we’re excited to see the creation and refinement of sharing economy methods make the great concept work in practice.

By pa