Would you rent your bed linens?

I read yesterday that Rent The Runway, which rents out clothes, is starting to collaborate with West Elm, the furniture retailer. Such a fascinating move, can’t wait to start renting furniture and sofa cushions. And bed linens.

Wouldn’t you rent bed linens? Of course you would. Just think about ridding your conscience of the tons of material that goes to waste when you say goodbye to your bed linens every few years. Perhaps you slowly phase the old ones out, to the back of some closet, or shove them down some questionable recycling bin.

It’s not only the cleaning-them-for-you that makes the renting companies promising, it’s also the fact that they will have a pure-business incentive to find brilliant ways to use these commodities at their end-of-life. When it becomes a bottom-line question for these companies, I think we’ll be amazed at the recycling technology that will thrive there. That’s a sustainable model.

Grossed out by the thought of renting bed linens? You probably do it all the time already, if you ever go to hotels.

It’s just a matter of adjusting the way you look at things :-)

I believe in companies that lifecycle more than in those that recycle. Recycling is a siloed action that only represents one stage in a big process. Only if you see the bigger process you can actually connect to business needs.

When a company takes over the whole lifecycle of a commodity and turns it into a subscription service, it is possible to really recycle. at scale.

Until not that long ago some of our customers had a big challenge with end-users that insisted it’s impossible to automate infrastructure if it’s not their server sitting on their desk with all their configurations on it. Only a few years later, it’s an incredibly rare discussion.

People get used to sharing very fast, as soon as it’s convenient enough.