Parently - a platform for parents to rent baby products and for brands to offer their products as a service.
Parently is a platform that aims to make parenting worry-free by offering subscription services for children’s things (i.e. strollers, carriers, bikes, cots). Private customers choose from multiple packages with various child-related products – and from different rental timeframes (e.g., from one day to 24 months or more).
Parently also works with brands to offer subscription services. These brands offer subscription services via their website, but Parently fulfils such orders and takes care of the cleaning, refurbishment, reverse logistics and redistribution of their products. As a result, operational barriers for brands to adopt a circular business model are broken down. This case study explores why Parently was started, how their business model works, and some of the challenges they have faced.
David Knutsson, founder of Parently
About David Knutsson, CEO and founder
David founded Parently in 2019 after learning about circular economy while expecting his first child. He wondered why no other companies offered high value children’s products through subscription-based, circular business models. Thus, Parently was born.
Parently’s approach to renting instead of selling products addresses the changing needs of a growing child:
We had so many things early in [my son’s life] that friends told us that we need to buy; parents that wanted to give us something that we thought we would need, and things – a lot of things we actually needed – but just for a short period of time. And then we realised ourselves… this is bonkers, we should definitely just rent them when we need them.
On making the business model work
Parently focuses on larger products that have higher purchase costs such as strollers, car seats and bikes. These have an added benefit in circular business models because they usually retain their value longer. However, Parently also has other products, such as baby alarms and safety gates to provide new parents everything they might need.
Unlike many other subscription models, Parently does not own their products. The products come from premium producers that partner with Parently. David sees this partnership not only as a way for producers to earn money (Parently gives producers a percentage of the product’s rental fee), but also as an opportunity for the producers to gain more information about their products and users.
[The producers] want to innovate and we can help them... they own the products throughout the entire lifecycle of the usage. And we take care of the refurbishment, logistics and the customer experience. And then we feed data and information back to the producers, so they can develop better products that will last longer. In this way we also help them to take further steps towards the SDG´s.
However, starting Parently has not been without its challenges. Not all producers want to give products initially for free, as it usually takes time for Parently’s partners to earn money back. There are many safety regulations that must be considered for children’s products, especially for car seats, which adds complexity to the refurbishment process. Moreover, refurbishment is often time consuming and labor intensive, so to make it more cost effective, Parently shares a refurbishment center with other brands.
Still, David says one of the biggest challenges to a business model like this is getting the users to change their mindsets around products as services and secondhand products. Especially for children’s products, when some parents or friends might say:
It's for your baby. Are you crazy? Like why would you rent that? Then you would answer: Well, because it's easier for me and it's better for the planet. And I do not want to put any negative climate impact on my baby from day one.
