Masstige

I've been a happy customer of Netflix for some time now and have been very pleased with their rental model. It didn't really occur to me that the same idea could be applied to other products (which is why I'm not a millionaire, I suppose). Others haven't been quite so slow to see the possibilities, however.

One of the most interesting varients of this idea comes from a company called Bag Borrow or Steal. What they do is rent luxury purses out to (I would presume mostly) women with such popular high-end labels as Prada, Chanel and Burberry. The idea is essentially the same as Nexflix: you pay a monthly membership fee, you can keep your purse as long as you like, and exchange them as often as you like for new ones. Apparently the idea has been successful enough to spawn a competitor company called Bags to Riches using a similar methodology.

NPR reports that the idea of renting out luxury goods, including such items as antique jewellry, has proven to have popular appeal. They said that this was part of an overall idea with the truly awful name of masstige, meaning prestige items for the masses, which nearly seems an oxymoron since the very thing that used to make something a luxury was its relative unaffordability.