Luxury handbag rentals with StillChic (7)
StillChic has opened, and it allows women rent luxury handbags for a night. Members reserve a handbag on the website or by calling a toll-free number, and they will get then the item in 24 hours with Canada Post. When they are finished with the item, they send it back free of charge. The business model is very similar to Netflix’s, and is aimed at consumers who want to try and use, but not own items.
StillChic is to be taken very seriously. First, they have been launching the service in France for the past year with sacdunjour, and it prooved to be wildly successful and viral. It was an untapped market and the website became profitable within the first two months.
Second, I know and met the StudioCodency guys who did it. StudioCodency is the “operational&armed” division of Codency, which invests in Internet Ventures. In their website, they state they have the best programmers, designers, and marketing specialists in Montréal. This is quite arrogant, but it might not be far from reality. They are very fast-paced, productive and obsessed on results and skills, which reminded me a lot of the atmosphere I found in interactive agencies in Paris (well, it turns out they come from France)
Even if most readers of this blog wouldn’t be interested in becoming member of stillchic, it’s still worth a visit. When adapting the concept to North America, StudioCodency also integrated the mechanism found on vente-privee.com, which is one of the most popular ecommerce website in France, as it highly encourages compulsive buying.
[...] Montreal Tech Watch has a surprising article about a new luxury handbag rental service. [...]
bagborrow might have had more press because they are in the US, with a bigger market. bagborrow seems to be a better design too, but we cant really judge, you will have to get the opinion of a girl.
But that’s just me :)
I’m really not worry about stillchic, this market have few competitors. let’s see. ;)
[...] of the founding members. The business model has certainly been masterfully fine-tuned and applied. Other Montreal startups tried the vente privee model, but BeyondTheRack leaves all of them in the [...]
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