Y'earn
Rent furniture from your community. Or make $. Like Airbnb.
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Rent furniture from your community. Or make $. Like Airbnb.
0 followers
Y'earn is a marketplace to rent full rooms of furniture from local people & biz. If it's filling your 1st home or a bigger one, upgrading your space, short or long term, or you have items you want to make some $, we're there. We handle packing, cleaning & ins
Launch tags:Tech
Maker
Hi there!
I'm the founder of Y'earn and want to say thanks for taking the time to read about our marketplace. I had the spark of an idea while I was packing up my home (again!) and a friend who had just moved to SF was complaining how hard and expensive it was to furnish her place, especially as she was only there a year. I joked that I could have given her a full house of stuff and that it would have saved me $500pm on storage. I realized that life had become more transient and people move more often (12 times for millennials before they settle) but how we create homes hasn't changed much. I was sick of the cost, headache and damage to the environment (I've shipped from London to NY, NY to SF). The more focus groups I ran, the more use cases I found for a marketplace and a simple way to connect people back to their community.
Fast forward to March 2020 and we were just ready to launch and Covid19 hit, but I've decided to push on. People will be even more interested in making their money work harder. Whether that's saving on their purchases or making money from the assets they have. So, let me intro you properly:
We’re called Y’earn and our community consists of two parts that make it whole:
-- Y'earners (want furniture) can get right to creating important memories in homes they love without spending endless hours on shopping, decorating, and logistics. Whether they rent short-term or long-term they can save cash and feel good about giving back to their community and Mother Nature.
-- Earners (make money from their furniture) can rent items for as long as they like, and then decide to sell, donate to charity, or have them returned. They are people or businesses that have amazing home pieces, but may not be using them at the moment for any reason ie people with items in storage, Home stagers, Furniture makers, restorers and Antique stores.
-- Y'earners pay a delivery fee and the rental price to the Earners. We collect 50% of Earners rev to cover pickup, cleaning and insurance. The more Earners make, the lower the fees become. At the end of the term the customers decide whether to renew, sell, return to the Earner or donate to a charity.
We’re the only marketplace that offers full rooms of furnishings and our goal is to help people live in a space they love and otherwise couldn’t afford, or to make money from their assets. We’re a female founded SF business that has sustainability, charity and community at its core.
Social responsibility and environmental-friendliness has become something that we (rightly) expect of brands. This is where a marketplace like ours really shines. It’s not just a transaction with a large retailer and making corps richer. It’s about sharing, getting and giving from local people and businesses, thereby becoming part of a bigger story. It’s about donating time and money to local charities that we hold dear. It’s helping to reduce the 12m tonnes of furniture and furnishings that end up in landfills each year and lowering carbon emissions by keeping deliveries local.
If you've gotten this far I hope you are open to giving some feedback please. Brand, experience, model. You name it! You can create listings and really play around on our beta https://beta.yearn.club/
Thank you!
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This is a great idea, especially for people like me that move and travel a lot. I hate having to buy new furniture to fit in the new space each time I move.
Are there min and maximum terms? What if I don't want to rent all the items in a listing? How are prices set?
Thank you! :)
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Maker
Thanks @lucie_edwards. After moving 5 times in 3 cities (in only 5yrs!) I also hated having to buy new things to make each place feel like home. It was expensive and time consuming, but it was the only option at that time.
- We currently support rentals for 3-12mths, the intent is to expand to 1-24mths, although it's up to the Earners to set the parameters and the Y'earners to pick their preferred dates.
- One of the benefits of Y'earn is that you don't have search and find items to create a space that looks like it's been touched by an Interior Designer. You simply filter by room and style, then pick your fav and make a reservation. That said, we do know that some items in a listing may not fit, so we've tried to create a happy medium: When a listing is created we automatically group items into The Essentials (these are the big items that you never want to carry up a flight of stairs again!) and The Extras which are smaller pieces that round out your aesthetic (art, lamps, soft furnishings, candles, decorations, coffee table books etc). The Earner tells us if they are willing to rent just The Essentials or if The Extras always have to be included (if there are any Extras). If a Y'earner wants to reserve a listing that has Extras, they can pick some or all of the items.
- Y'earn recommends a price based on the information given when the listing is created. This factors the number of items, how new they are and how long the term is for. In the future this will become more sophisticated and include the brands, demand in the area etc. A bit like how Airbnb suggests pricing for hosts. The Earner makes the final decision and sets the price.
I hope that helps, feel free to ask more or take a look at our FAQs https://www.yearn.club/faqs.
Thanks for taking the time to ask questions, I hope you signed up to our newsletter we can keep you updated with what cities we are operating in.
Carley
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Love this idea. I'm looking to spend time significant time in another country and would like to rent out some of my furniture to supplement my rent.
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Maker
TY @joyce_stack! I was in a similar situation when I had the idea for Y'earn. Since then I've talked to lots of people, including friends who are Travel Nurses, who have said that the cost of moving/furniture replacement/storage has stopped them from taking extended breaks or short term jobs in new cities. Who knew that our purchases could later restrict us from doing things that would make us happy?
We're starting in San Francisco and then expanding into transient cities and internationally (that's the plan!). The dream is to have customers that are Earners and Y'earners in 2 places!
If you're in SF then you can create listings now, otherwise select the location icon icon in the header and let us know your email and city so we can let you know when we are coming.
Thanks again for commenting and voting, much appreciated.
Carley
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I like that you're not just renting from large retailers - What happens at the end of the rental?
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Maker
@sarah_cairns Thanks. I'm not sure if it's because I'm getting older or we're all becoming more conscious about our impact on the environment, but changing my purchase habits to become more sustainable makes me feel like I'm helping (or at least not doing damage!). Marketplaces are great as they allow people to reuse items and Y'earn keeps delivery impact low by renting from local people. It also means you will find unique items that people have bought from all types of places all over the world.
Customers have the option to renew the rental, purchase, return to the owner or the items can be donated to one of our charity partners. If items are returned we handle the pick up, cleaning and drop off to the owner.
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Great idea! Figuring out furniture and decor can be so time consuming, and I'd love to shop what others have put together!
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Maker
@kate_walling Thank you! We played with the idea of creating a platform where you can select individual pieces but remembered that feeling of being in someone else's home and thinking 'I want this, all of it'. Our research and focus group reinforced that full rooms was the best approach. It's also a better model.
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Hi, finally somebody with some common sense who understands that if you’re moving around frequently it’s not always practical to go out and buy furniture for a few months. Do you have a minimum time period that the products have to be rented for? Also, I’m in the Middle East at the moment working on a short term project. Any plans to expand?
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Maker
Thanks @michael_harris3. We're not the first furniture rental business but we are the first marketplace, which means money is going directly into people's pockets, not large retailers.
We currently support rentals for 3-12mths, the intent is to expand to 1-24mths, although it's up to the Earners to set the parameters and the Y'earners to pick their preferred dates.
We're starting in San Francisco, expanding to the most transient cities in the US and then we'll assess whether we look at other other US markets or start on our International plans. There are lots of great things about marketplaces, including how quickly they can scale once they get traction. We won't need retail partners for supply to launch in new markets. We won't be in the Middle East for this project, but hopefully for your next one!
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Fantastic idea Carley! I actually did this when I bought my first house. I asked the previous owner if they'd be willing to part with the furniture in the home since it had taken them years to create the right experience and sync with all the different pieces. They agreed and I was able to beautifully furnish my entire new home in a jiffy!
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