Hire a Designer Handbag – Exclusive Collection

Hire a Designer Handbag – Exclusive Collection

If you want it, rent it … from a ‘must have’ handbag to an Aston Martin

Money is tight and getting tighter but you still hanker after the finer things in life. As Huma Qureshi discovers, demand is soaring for anything from a laptop to little luxuries like a diamond ring.

 The rental market is certainly booming: only this particular market has nothing to do with landlords and tenants, and everything to do with televisions, lawnmowers and designer handbags.

At a time when money is tighter than ever, an increasing number of people are turning to renting items they would normally have bought outright, such as household electrical items. They’re even renting luxury treats rather than saving up and then splashing out.

Online rental marketplace erento.co.uk says it has seen a 25% monthly increase in the number of people visiting the site since it was founded just over a year ago. It offers a wide range of products from laptops, carpet steamers and digital cameras to sports cars you can hire on a daily rate.

You can also hire a Chanel Boy bag from elitecouture.co.uk for £201 per week which retails at nearly £3,000 from the Chanel shop in New Bond Street.

“Because of the credit crunch, people just don’t want to splash out on big purchases,” says Chris Moeller, managing director of Erento, “particularly on goods they’ll only use a few times. It’s much more economical to hire garden tools, for instance.”

Renting can also offer peace of mind for servicing and a convenient way to manage household budgets, says Martin Strange, sales manager at online rental store View Direct. “There is no capital outlay,” he says. “You don’t have to think about how you are going to pay off the £500 television you’ve just put on your credit card.” And, he adds, if something does go wrong, you only have to pay for an instant repair or replace service.

For items you only want to use once or for a short-term project, renting can offer a good deal. On Erento a petrol lawnmower costs £18 a day or pick up an electrical hedge trimmer for about £12 a day. Go out and buy the lawnmower, and the bill will be close to £80, while the cheapest hedge trimmer would set you back around £50. You can rent a Toshiba laptop for £70 a week; the same model would cost close to £900 to buy.

It isn’t usually logical to rent everyday electrical equipment such as televisions. A 42-inch Sony Plasma, which would cost £116 a day, would tend to be taken out by people who want a big screen for a particular special event, says Moeller. ForbesDirect (forbesdirect.tv) offers a 37-inch Panasonic LCD television for £50 a month with a minimum 18-month contract. It would cost less to buy outright: at the end of the contract, you would have paid £900 in rent, while the retail price is around £879. But this is an option for people who simply cannot afford to fork out £900 upfront and do not qualify for a credit card.

Other goods work out cheaper rented. View Direct is offering a Zanussi washing machine for £12.97 a month with a minimum contract of 18 months. The machine has a retail price of £349 – and by the end of the contract, you would have paid out £233 in rent. Of course, you would then have to rent or buy another machine, but it could be particularly cost-effective for someone who knows they are moving overseas in 18 months and doesn’t want to splash out on an expensive item they will have to sell. You can also make money by offering your rarely used goods up for rent. “There’s huge potential to make a lot of money by hiring out things that you don’t use all the time but that you don’t necessarily want to sell or get rid of,” says Moeller. “So you might have bought an underwater camera for a diving holiday for £500, and only ever used it that one time. You might think it’s a shame to sell it, so instead you could rent it out to other people going on holiday for about £50 a week, who don’t think it’s worth them buying one.”

It’s free to join Erento, but you do have to pay a listing fee and commission for every successful rental transaction – and these costs are pretty steep.

The cheapest “package” lets you list five items a year for £25 a month, but you have to sign up to a minimum 12-month contract. Once you hire an item, Erento also takes 4.9% of the hire fee in commission.

Zilok is offering free rental listings until April, but then commission is charged as a percentage plus a flat fee for each item rented, depending on its cost. So if your transaction fee is between £500 and £2,000 you pay the website 6% plus £6.60.

When it comes to luxury items, it seems that not even the credit crunch can dampen the demand for designer handbags – only instead of buying them, money-savvy fashionistas are resorting to renting. Elite Couture was launched last year by fashion expert Ingrid Borcova. She says: “We’ve recently noticed a change in our type of member. People who may have bought expensive handbags are now renting them, while people who were only just able to afford to hire expensive handbags are starting to cancel their membership. We’ve definitely seen a lot more members joining from exclusive post code areas and most are professional women working in big City banks.”

The monthly rental hire works out at roughly 10% of the retail price of the bag. So while the latest Prada Bay bag would set you back between £1,000 – £1,000, it would cost £100 a month to rent (on top of the membership fee – www.elitecouture.co.uk).

And if you can’t afford diamonds, it doesn’t matter: you can even rent them.

For an annual membership fee of £10, you can hire three items of jewellery at a time at rentyourrocks.co.uk; specify your preferred rental dates, and the jewellery arrives in the post – so credit-crunched Cinderellas can still go to the ball.

Sophie Croydon, who set up rentyourrocks, says: “This is hugely cost-effective – it allows you to have a sense of luxury without having to invest a large sum of money long term.”

At present, you can hire a vintage diamond and onyx 18 carat white gold ring for £115 a week (it costs £1,725 in full), or cascade diamond earrings for £240 a week (their full retail value stands at £3,635).

Know your limits

When renting household goods and electrical appliances from standard high street rental chains, you will normally be required to prove that you have contents insurance in your own name to cover the product.

You should check your policy contents insurance limit, to find out the total value of goods that are covered as well as the single item limit. If the limit is less than the value of the item you are renting, you should consider increasing it, as it may work out cheaper than buying insurance directly from the rental company.

Both Erento and Zilok, on the other hand, provide rental agreements, making the hirers liable for any damage beyond reasonable wear and tear.

Zilok hirers are required to pay a security deposit before they rent, the amount is chosen by the hirer.

All jewellery pieces at rentyourrocks.co.uk are insured through the company, so if any pieces are returned and damaged, Rentyourrocks will claim for it on its insurance. If, however, a customer fails to return a piece because it is lost or stolen, then Rentyourrocks has the right to charge your credit card for the full purchase price of the item.

For handbags, customers are expected to have their own insurance to cover loss or theft. If there’s any damage, like a strap breaking, then customers are advised to send the bag back to Handbaghirehq who will assess the damage and, if it is deemed to be as a result of everyday wear and tear, they will cover the cost of getting it fixed.

If the customer is responsible for any damage – like an ink or wine stain on leather – then they will have to pay for it.

What you can hire

Computers: Apple iMac 20-inch computer, £85/week and a Macbook Pro from £89 to £173 on erento.co.uk

Washing machines: Zanussi 6kg load machine, £2.99 a week/£12.97 a month, View Direct at azrental.co.uk

Televisions: 46-inch Panasonic plasma, £18.46 a week at forbesdirect.tv

Handbags: Chanel Boy Bag, £201 a week at elitecouture.co.uk

Cars: An Aston Martin V12 Vanquish S, £950 a day at uk.zilok.com

(The Guardian) Elite Couture Ltd

Dior – Available to hire from Elite Couture