While monthly subscription services have arrived for beauty products, shavers, wine and other narrow categories, ByeBuy has much bigger ambitions in creating unlimited rentals for a wide range of tech devices.
ByeBuy members pick or request the items they want from a selection of iPhones, Playstation games, watches, cameras, quadcopters and other tech gear. Members pay a flexible fee to rent the devices for as much as 95 percent less than the purchase price.
ByeBuy writes on its website, "You can chose from all shown items, ask for other ones, and simply subscribe month by month. We'll send you the product right away without a deposit if you pass our people check."
Items can be returned at any time. If desired, they can also be bought with a portion of the accrued monthly payments working towards the quoted purchase market price.
The bigger idea behind the business model is that many Americans are already choosing to "access things" through Netflix, Spotify, Uber and other services rather than "own" them. As such, Michael Cassau, ByeBuy's founder, believes many more items and services will eventually embrace an all-subscription model.
Source: ByeBuy
"We don't own cars. We just drive them. And we don't own vacation homes. We choose from thousands," he told PSFK of the inspiration behind ByeBuy. "We truly believe that it is time to make possible what people are doing all along anyway: time limited consumption for consumer electronics."
Particularly in consumer electronics, the pace of innovation is moving so fast that many items become outdated within less than a year. Mr. Cassau told Wired U.K., "We want to enjoy all the cool tech, but we certainly don't need to own it to enjoy it."
Mr. Cassau, who formerly worked for Goldman Sachs, believes consumers are recognizing the drawbacks of purchasing or financing everything.
"We are trying to really reduce cost and smooth everyone's cash flow," Mr. Cassau tells Protein. "We also believe that the decision to enjoy the newest tech should be as easy and as quick as ordering food."
The service is expected to launch this month.