Handbagista

Bag Borrow or Steal, or more correctly, renting designer handbags, is quietly taking the fashion world by storm.

Actually, if you happen to be in the neighborhood of a woman who just received her latest rental in the mail, it isn’t a quiet phenomenon. Her squeals of glee for Bag Borrow or Steal reverberate throughout a ten block radius.

This handbag rental service suits so many ladies’ lifestyles that there is no need to try to sell you on the idea. Instead, read on to find out about the simple details about the Bag, Borrow and Steal service.

They’re usually convincing enough on their own.

Designer Handbag Rentals - The premise behind Bag Borrow or Steal is simple enough.

You pay a monthly membership fee of $9.95. If you want you can pay for three months at a time which brings the monthly cost down to $6.95 per month or even a year’s membership in one, making the cost just $5 per month.

You then pay extra each month you have the rental, the amount varying depending on which bag you are renting.

They have 5 levels of bag, shown here with average monthly cost on top of the membership fee:-

TRENDSETTER ($15 to low $100s per month)
Designers include Perlina, MAXX New York and Dooney & Bourke.

PRINCESS ($15 to $300 per month)
Designers include Coach, BCBGMAXAZRIA, Fendi and Betsey Johnson.

DIVA ($20 to $500 per month)
Designers include Kate Spade, Tory Burch, Isabella Fiore and Burberry.

COUTURE ($20 to over $750 per month)
Designers include Gucci, Prada, Chanel and Dolce & Gabbana.

VINTAGE ($150 to over $2000 per month)
Sought-after classics, in very limited availability.

Now you may well ask “Why not just buy your own designer handbags for these prices?”

Well first off, Bag Borrow or Steal promises that every bag you rent will be 100 percent original. You will never have to worry about the humiliation of toting around a rip-off pseudo-designer bag. What’s more, Bag Borrow or Steal guarantees that every bag you borrow from them will be in new or near new shape.

Before they send a bag out to you, the customer service experts examine the product to make sure it meets their stringent quality conditions.

Another perk is the rental duration. You don’t have to worry about late fees or rental limits!

As long as you meet your monthly payments, you can keep a bag as long as you like. Or if you want to change your wardrobe options, return the bag as soon as you like and request a new one. This last option may be the most seductive — your power to transform your wardrobe with the latest and hottest bags on the market. You see, Bag Borrow or Steal is constantly updating their collections. New bags appear daily on their Web site.

Unless you’re married to an oil tycoon or a movie mogul, it may be difficult, almost impossible even to match this through buying your own bags.

Bag, Borrow,or Steal truly gives you a reasonable way to have the bag options at your disposable that you could never dream of if you actually had to pay for each one.

written by Julie

But sadly, before you get too excited at the prospect of renting handbags by the dozen and ending up rolling on a bed covered in $$$ - you need to be the rentee, not the renter!

There’s an article by Catherine Jhee on the GreatReporter website about the two Handbag Rental sites, Bag, Borrow and Steal and Bags To Riches. (You can read it here)

In that article, Catherine has interviewed both companies and there was an interview with Patricia Hambrick who is the Chief Marketing Officer of Bag, Borrow and Steal (BB&S).

BB&S run a monthly membership system where members pay between $5 to $9.95, depending on which level of membership they want to have. They then pay extra per week to rent a bag, the amount depending on which bag they rent.

During her interview, Patricia said that they have 450,000 members live on their books.

450,000!!!!!

Let’s do a bit of maths.

Let’s imagine that the true figure is 70% of what Patricia said. (No, I’m not saying she’s lying, just allowing for non payers, problem accounts,  drop offs etc.)

So - 350,000 live members.

350,000 members X minimum  monthly charge of $5.00

=

$1,575,000.000 minimum  monthly gross turnover!

If you then estimate that a low amount of members, 10%,  have bags on rental and are paying say, 20$ a month extra ($20 will be low but it helps to underestimate when doing this type of assessment!)

350,000 X 10% = 35,000

35,000 x $10.00 = $350,000.00 per month

So the estimation has to be that, if the figures given in the interview ARE correct - the handbag rental business generates at least $2,000,000 PER MONTH!!

That’s an outstanding amount to be turning over each month from a rental business where the actual monthly cost is so low.

Wish I’d thought of it!

written by Ruth