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Re:Launch HN: Feather (YC S17), painless furniture rental fo... by anilshanbhag on Thursday June 29, 2017 @02:00PM (#14665435)
A lot of students end up moving places due to 1) lease change 2) internships. Might be useful to them.

However, the pricing is insanely expensive. 3 month rental for a dresser is $210; same for a AC unit. You can buy new ones for the same price.

Re:Launch HN: Feather (YC S17), painless furniture rental fo... by dragonwriter on Thursday June 29, 2017 @02:26PM (#14665680)
> A lot of students end up moving places due to 1) lease change 2) internships. Might be useful to them.

True, then again, established furniture rental firms [0] target them; what's Feather's distinct advantage here?

[0] e.g., https://www.cort.com/student

Re:Launch HN: Feather (YC S17), painless furniture rental fo... by jayreno on Thursday June 29, 2017 @03:08PM (#14666025)
We plan to differentiate ourselves by offering better quality items, a more modern storefront/interface, a superior customer experience with top notch support, and most importantly, better pricing (we know it's not perfect for every item yet, but our prices are getting better as we grow).
Re:Launch HN: Feather (YC S17), painless furniture rental fo... by dragonwriter on Thursday June 29, 2017 @03:34PM (#14666203)
Better pricing than CORTs student packages of $119/mo for three room package for 12+ months?
Re:Launch HN: Feather (YC S17), painless furniture rental fo... by jbob2000 on Thursday June 29, 2017 @02:02PM (#14665453)
Yeah this pricing makes 0 sense. I can furnish an apartment from Ikea and pay a contractor to assemble it all for a tad more than what it would cost to rent it all.
Re:Launch HN: Feather (YC S17), painless furniture rental fo... by _sentient on Thursday June 29, 2017 @02:55PM (#14665936)
I'm not really in the furniture rental demo, but I don't think it's exactly fair to compare the price points of high-quality furniture with what you'd pay for some particleboard abomination from IKEA. There is definitely a market for a service like this, but I think it's more a question of whether they can compete against the likes of Cort et al.

I agree that furniture rental is a slightly weird value prop though. People lease cars because most folks don't want to outlay $35-100k for a depreciating asset, or they want to change models so frequently that buying becomes unwieldy. Furniture is not nearly as expensive, however, and the rent-to-buy ratios are far less favorable.

Re:Launch HN: Feather (YC S17), painless furniture rental fo... by mixmastamyk on Thursday June 29, 2017 @04:53PM (#14666776)
Ikea has cheap up to quality offerings. The choice of flimsy particle board or fancy wood is up to you.

Next, the type of people that move often are younger and poorer, and the extra schlepping and assembling are not as big of a problem to them.

Re:Launch HN: Feather (YC S17), painless furniture rental fo... by untog on Friday June 30, 2017 @01:13AM (#14668764)
I agree, but how long does it remain high quality furniture if it's being used, abused and returned every few months? Repair costs could get out of control quickly.