The rise in art hire now lets everyone have great art on their walls, without the lifetime commitment and a large cash outlay.
This is great for peolpe like me who worry about tiring of a particular art piece and like to change things around regularly. If you want to refresh you room – change the paintings – it’s inexpensive decoration. Offices and boardrooms can be kept fresh and modern by regularly updating the art
If you can’t afford to buy the art your interested in you can hire it in the meantime. Some artists, like Lucy, have schemes where once the rental time has expired, there is then a chance to purchase the artwork if you wish at retail price minus the rental amount already paid.
Art hire is not just a great way for consumers to enter the art world but for artists to have their work prominently displayed in a variety of locations – and be paid for it! A fantastic way to reach a wider audience.
Holidays are something that we work hard for throughout the year but sometime the money just doesn’t stretch far enough.
With the current economy we have to think smarter but it’s not always about working harder. How do you get more value from the things you already own?
You have sold off some things on Trade Me, but what about the other things that you only use occasionally? The tent you use once a year, surfing you might take up again, baby gear…just in case! You really aren’t ready to sell them for a fraction of their value so how can they make you money and not just take up space?
There’s an astoundingly simple solution. Share them with people who need them. There are things we use occasionally and there are people with things they need occasionally.
People aren’t always comfortable borrowing regularly so hiring/renting from each other and sharing resources is a very practical way for you both to save and make money. We don’t need to own everything we need.
Hire Things provides online platform for communities to rent and share easily and safely. Called person to person renting or peer to peer rental this is a relatively new trend that is seeing significant growth as people look to monetize their assets.
Here are just a few examples of how this could work for you.
Peter has hired out his family tent regularly and has made more money than he paid for it! Better still he’s going to keep hiring it out and keep making money from it. The people hiring it could take their family camping without spending heaps of money on getting all the gear. Buy for $900 or hire for $160? Not a difficult choice.
Rhonda has set up her own toy and party hire business online which has enabled her to stay at home with her children and not return to work.
Sam hires out his photography equipment to fund buying more gear – which he then hires out when he’s not using it! This has given him a regular income.
So have a look around – what can you hire out? List them online and start looking through some holiday brochures…
Become a Hire Things Facebook fantoday and go into a prize package draw for…
Movie Tickets for two, a bottle of wine and a big box of chocolates!
Winner drawn and published 1st March 2010
We use Face book to publish interesting updates and articles on relevant topics such as sharing resources, connecting communities, hiring, saving and making money, environmental impact, building online businesses as well as competitions and lots of fun stuff!
This week I hired out my tent for a night to a guy going with a group of friends to Castlepoint.
I made $10 but more importantly he got a tent for the night for just $10. He didn’t have to buy one ( $169) or not go with his friends. He was happy he got good value and I was happy I made $10 from something that would otherwise just be sitting in my garage.
This is Hire Things at its best- people sharing resources making and saving money while doing something positive for the environment.
Kermit had it right – it really isn’t. We’re surrounded by consumerism and our busy lifestyles want us to make quick but not necessarily the best choices and does one person really have any effect?
Well – yes! There are thing’s even busy everyday people can do to make a difference
January is just the perfect time to de-clutter the house – the latest buzzword for sorting out your stuff!
You can start small – drawer by drawer and progress to room by room. My husband has started sorting through 20yrs of accumulated stuff and the kids are getting into it too. Despite moving countries several times he has still managed to move things we don’t use with him!
There’s the throw out pile, the donate pile but then there’s that “I might need it one day and I’m not ready to part with it” pile… and we all have one of those.
Do you ruthlessly chuck it out? Sell it on Trade Me for a fraction of its value?
This is where Hire Things comes in. List your things for hire then you get to keep them and continue to get value from them by hiring them out to others in your community and making some extra cash. It makes good economic and environmental sense.
Do you still have the kids stuff they out grew but your still not ready to part with?
Do you have lots of tools but not the one you need right now?
A garage full of things you might use again one day?
Today is the day you get to put them to use. Dust them off, check they works and list them on Hire Things for people in your neighbourhood to hire. You don’t need to sell it and your neighbour doesn’t need to buy one.
You make money, he saves money and you both do positive things for the environment!
The next time you plan a project, think about your wallet and the environment, check out what you can hire before rushing off to buy and add to that already very full garage….
I recently did an interview with the fabulous Charlotte Squires editor of Happyzine.
It was great fun and I hope gives some insights into Hire Things as well as the opportunity to meet me as a person!
There are questions such as where our inspiration came from, challenges we face, our grand vision for Hire Things as well as how I juggle life as a mother of three as well as being CEO of a high growth company!
A recent report put out on climate change has called for a fifth of all household spending to be converted to hiring and renting. The report along with current trends of consumers questioning their spending is great news for New Zealand’s Hire Things who are ideally placed to take advantage of this new consciousness.
Commissioned by the British government the Waste & ResourcesAction Programme (Wrap) says that overcoming our obsession with owning goods could be a “secret weapon” in meeting climate change targets.
“This is the first piece of research which shows the significant impact to the economy and the environment resource efficiency has”said Liz Goodwin, WRAP CEO.
The report identifies £143 billion of annual expenditure on goods that could have been used for longerinstead of throwing them away early and buying new products.Using items for their full lifespan could save British consumers £47 billion a year.
By Sharing seldom used products with a number of people, the productivity of the product will be increased and the consumption of natural resources in the production stage reduced
Hiring instead of buying would cut emissions by about 2 per cent, of CO2 a year, through a fall in manufacturing and lower consumption of raw materials.
The research has important messages on the reduction of ownership of goods and getting lifetime optimization from our purchases.
“Why would anyone want to own that many things anyway? We need to have the confidence that we can get things when we need them but we don’t need to have them sitting beside us every day.”Said Liz Goodwin, WRAP CEO
What’s exciting for New Zealand is that we can take immediate action. Hire Things, alreadywell established in the online hiring space is growing rapidly in consumer to consumer hiring. Hiring to and from each other within a community makes it easy to hire products you need with out having to buy them. Not everyone in the street needs to own a lawnmower, trailer or a tent. By sharing resources in this way you get much higher value from the things you own and purchases can be better quality,getting their lifetime use before becoming landfill.
Hire Things already has 8000+ members making a difference not just to their own wallets but to the environment and the economy too.
We have just launched our Connecting Communities Programme. The programme allows schools, clubs, community groups and charities to raise funds with Hire Things. As mother with 3 kids at 3 different schools, I know the difficulties faced by many groups continually having to fundraise. Personally I’m all sausage sizzled out and dread the chocolates coming home to be eaten mainly by me…
We wanted to come up with something that worked for everyone, that wasn’t continually dipping into members pockets; we all have lots of expenses. When I took over recently as CEO it was one of my goals to find a way we could work with community groups to help this problem.
So we are now donating 1.5% of hire fees to community groups. Anyone listing things for hire with us will be able to select the school/group they support and that’s where our donation will go. The more supporters a group gets the greater the potential income for them.
ChurtonParkSchool will be running our pilot for schools and we are very excited to be working with them
We feel the Connecting Communities Programme fits well with our overall strategy to build the concept of hiring and sharing resources within communities. That by hiring in what they need and hiring out what they have, people can make and save money as well as doing something positive for the environment and their community.
We are very pleased to welcome Enviroschoolsto our programme. As a group teaching our children how to care for our planet we felt they were very aligned with our company values.
We are also working with Plunket to list their car seats nationwide through Hire Things completely free of charge.
Anyone interested in this programme can contact me directly iona@hirethings.co.nz
We plan to make a difference, one community at a time.
