The Sharing Economy Moves Into…Fashion?

Okay, here’s the nightmare scenario:

You’re traveling for work or to a high school reunion or whatever. The big event you’ve traveled for is in a few hours and you realize, “Holy shit! I forgot my (fill in important clothing item here).”

A couple of years ago that exact thing happened to Amrita Aviyente while she was in India for a high school reunion. She ended up buying really expensive shoes that she had very few occasions to wear after that trip.

The whole experience made her think, “Wouldn’t it be great if there was someone just down the street I could borrow shoes from?”

Back in Boston, she set to work on Date My Wardrobe, a peer-to-peer service that allows users to post their upscale wardrobe pieces online and rent them to other people. Aviyente calls it “AirBnB for high-end wardrobe items.”

She’s particularly excited about the social component that’s possible with Date My Wardrobe. You’re in a new city, need some shoes, and suddenly you find yourself meeting someone with your exact taste in fashion.

The team–which also includes Izi Aviyente and Chetan Chawla–piloted the beta during the Boston Lean Startup Challenge. They were in the top 5 teams in this year’s class, and are now busy working on the updates they want to make to the platform.

Those changes will be easy to implement quickly because two of the three founders have technical backgrounds. They are working on a payment platform (right now they use Square Cash) and hope to launch on mobile soon.

Competition, obviously, comes in the form of just buying something when you need it. However, there’s also New York-based Rent the Runway, which has an inventory of used designer items for rent. There’s also DC-based SnobSwap which works as an online marketplace that lets you buy, sell, or swap clothes.

Neither of those companies are strictly peer-to-peer like Date My Wardrobe, but some people will prefer that. While it’s fun to think about sharing clothes, it could potentially be a little creepy.

Of course, staying in someone’s home or getting a Lyft from a stranger could be creepy, too, and those things are doing all right at the moment. Buzz aside, the sharing economy is still in the early days, and there is plenty of room and time to grow.

Amrita and her team plan to be a part of that. They are looking to 2014 to be a big year for Date My Wardrobe.

How Hot Are Collaborative Economy Startups [infographic]

Next to loyalty and rewards, the “shared economy” or “collaborative economy” is probably the second hottest space in startup land. Startups that encourage borrowing, bartering, ride sharing, or swapping are often categorized in the collaborative economy. Startups that facilitate a direct transaction between Person A and Person B–whether it be with services, money, or goods–fall into the shared economy.

RidePost, Airbnb, FlightCar, ToySwap, and the hundreds of others like them are collaborative economy startups.

Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst with the Altimeter Group, has been tracking this hot trend in startups since February. He compiled this awesome list of 200 startups that fit into the “collaborative economy” category.

On Friday Owyang released Altimeter’s latest findings along with a great infographic outlining how hot the collaborative space is. They polled the 200 startups in the list linked above to see how they were spreading across many verticals and released some important findings.

According to Altimeter’s research, entrepreneurs are entering into the collaborative space with new startups because the cost of getting into the space is rather low. They also seem to be the hot space that VC’s are looking into, and of course there’s the “sharing” and “helping” your fellow man appeal of collaborative startups.

While Owyang seems bullish on the collaborative space, that optimism comes with many warnings. The first thing that he cites is the fact that each collaborative vertical has 5-15 startups doing the exact same thing.

“I see 5-15 startups in nearly every category, for examples a variation of car share ownership, shared car usage, shared car services, and more being offered.” Owyang said on his blog.

Owyang also points out that many startups are looking to either partner with major companies the way Relayride is partnering with GM for OnStar, get acquired by major companies the way ZipCar got acquired by Hertz, or disrupt major companies or industries, the way Airbnb does for hotel chains.

The one thing he doesn’t comment on is the legal snafus that these startups are getting into. In most cases, like the case with FlightCar, the major companies being disrupted by these collaborative economy startups are fighting back with lawsuits.

If your startup is in the collaborative or sharing space Owyang’s entire series of posts on the topic are great reads.

The infographic below, chronicles the rise of the collaborative economy.

Now check out this infographic: Is The Gender Gap In Women Funded Startups Closing?

Brandery Startup Alum FlightCar Faces Lawsuit

Brandery, FlightCar, Cincinnati Startup, Lawsuit, Sharing Economy

(flight car founders: Kevin Petrovic, Shri Ganeshram, Rujul Zaparde photo: bostonglobe.com)

Last year, one of the most exciting startups in the 2012 class at The Brandery startup accelerator in Cincinnati, Ohio was FlightCar. The startup, made up of teenage MIT dropouts. had a revolutionary idea. With FlightCar, instead of paying to park your car at the airport, you could rent it out to somebody else, making money rather then spending it.

After honing their branding, image, and product at the Brandery last summer, the FlightCar team secured a huge insurance policy, follow on funding, and their place in Y-Combinator. In April, after Y-Combinator’s demo day, the trio raked in another $5.5 million dollars in venture capital.

FlighCar quickly began testing their model at Oakland Airport and soon after rolled out service to San Francisco International Airport.

That’s when the trouble began.

Insidebayarea.com reported on Wednesday that the startup is being sued by the city of San Francisco. San Francisco City Attorney, Dennis Herrera, is accusing FlightCar of dodging fees, undercutting competition, and not adhering to rules which include payments by car rental companies back to the airport.

The kicker, though, is the fact that FlightCar actually operates off a lot not located on airport property. FlightCar’s co-founder and Chief Operating Officer, Kevin Petrovic, who isn’t old enough to rent a car himself, told insidebayarea.com “I think they have a lot of pressure from rental car and airport parking companies,” he said. “We do take away some of their business.”

Herrera is counting on ordinances that say SFO is entitled to collect fees from rental car companies that primarily serve it’s travelers even if the rental operation is not located on SFO property.

Petrovic defends FlightCar by saying they aren’t an actual rental car company and hotels and restaurants surrounding the airport don’t pay fees to the airport.

“FlightCar has refused to comply with any of the rules,” Deputy City Attorney Jennifer Choi said. “We want the court to order them to comply with the law.” The city also points out that FlightCar doesn’t currently hold a commercial ground transport permit or an off-airport business license.

FlightCar joins a slew of “sharing economy” startups–including ride sharing startups like SideCar and room sharing startups like AirBnB–which have faced legal and public scrutiny over their business models.

FlightCar has been operating in Oakland and Boston without incident, so far. Outside of this lawsuit from the City Of San Francisco, people seem to like the idea of renting out their car for money rather than spending it. In addition to the rental fee, FlightCar cleans and washes each car before and after the rental and insures that you get to and from your car without hassle.

For more info on FlightCar, check them out at flightcar.com

See FlightCar’s pitch video from the Brandery’s 2012 Demo Day.