What if all you had to do was go to the bottom of your building to borrow a home appliance that you don’t necessarily want to buy? This is the idea of the Lyon startup Les Biens en Commun, founded in 2020 by Yann Lemoine. The start-up offers a rental service for household appliances thanks to connected lockers in the common areas of the buildings. While the service is only available in Lyon, this growing company is considering expanding its offering to other cities.
Can you tell me how many times you have used this drill since you bought it? And how many electronic devices or household appliances do you generally keep at home without ever using them, even though they are in perfect condition? Probably a lot.
According to a study published in 2020 by the Rebuy platform, 72.8 million phones in France are still functional, but they sleep at the bottom of our cupboards. From this premise, Yann Lemoine started, who launched the company Les Biens en Commun in 2020. Since then, he has been joined by Thomas Koell, Managing Director of the company since the end of 2021 and previously Director of Offer and Purchases at Aramisauto.
The concept of this start-up? Rent a device that you don’t have at home (for about 1.50 euros per hour), the time to do some specific jobs around the house or organize a raclette evening with friends. To take advantage of this service, all you have to do is go to the user area of the website and find out what items are available for rent: vacuum cleaner, toolbox, kitchenware, video projector… anything, including a mölkky game! The devices in question are placed in connected and secured boxes installed in the common areas of buildings.
“Users can access a range of equipment in complete autonomy from just downstairs from their home, which is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week”, the company promises. Thanks to partnerships with major household appliances and DIY brands, such as SEB and Leroy Merlin, Yann Lemoine has been able to obtain free appliances, which he can therefore make available to his customers. The maintenance of the devices and the remote management of the shared lockers is fully provided by Les Biens and Commun.
Reduced environmental impact and quality equipment
For now, the service is only available in four student residences in Lyon. But the offer should expand in the coming months: by the end of 2022, a dozen sites should be deployed in the city of Lyon and perhaps in Grenoble or Paris. Yann Lemoine also plans to extend the Common Goods concept to areas other than student housing: retail, offices, “why not even stations or post offices”he says.
In addition to reducing the ecological impact and promoting the social and solidarity-based economy, the offer of Les Biens en Commun also represents a significant economic importance, especially in this period when purchasing power is central to the concerns of the French.
“Our ambition is to reduce the environmental impact of the production of household appliances while democratizing access to high-quality equipment for all”explains Yann Lemoine, who hopes his concept will have the same success as self-service bikes.
According to a recent survey conducted by the online store Hubside.store, 32% of French people say they are willing to rent multimedia devices instead of buying them. Of them, 58% believe that the rental of this type of property makes it possible to: “reasoning the consumption of new devices”while 46% see it as an opportunity to save money.
(ETX Daily Up)