Peerby
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Peerby Belgium
Sharing economy
Non-profit (currently)
Belgium
www.peerby.com/?host=wijdelen.be
Demand-driven, clever algorithm, easy accessible.
Lieven D’hont, Press and communication.
Yoshi Janssens
Lieven D’hont, Kristof Morlion and Ludo Dhelft
Summary
Originally Lieven and Ludo started with ‘wijdelen.be’, a platform where people could share their things with each other. It didn’t take long before they got attention from the Dutch parent company of Peerby, a company that was doing the same concept. So Peerby Belgium was born.
Ever since May 2013 Peerby gives people the incredible opportunity to share almost with your neighbors. From a spoon to a lawn-mower, on Peerby its online platform or app you can find it all in the direct neighborhood.
Background
Peerby’s name comes from the term ‘peer nearby’. Peerby’s inspiration comes from the idea that sharing is a sustainable development that has big consequences on ecological and social side. Peerby consider renting also as a form of sharing.
Peerby actually started a non-profit organization, funded by Lieven and Ludo and some subsidies. Now they have Peerby Group and Peerby Pro which gives them some revenue (and Peerby Go in the Netherlands). Peerby Pro and Group are still in a testing phase.
Mission
The goal of Peerby is quite simple: provide a user-friendly online platform where people can lend or borrow articles for free with people from the neighborhood.
Vision
Make people aware to use their goods in a more sustainable and ecological manner. Peerby tries to lower the superfluous expenses of people, by giving them the means to share in an easy way.
They also try to convince the inhabitants of the Netherlands and Belgium to not hold on to possession, but to navigate to the use of a product. Peerby tries to pull producers over the line to produce products for use instead of products for possession. They also want to keep the platform free, since the platform is a common good.
Values
Sustainable, ecological, economic and social. The main focus lies on the social aspect.
Business Model
Ludo and Lieven started to develop their own business model. They work as lean as possible, so the business model is rapidly outdated. Peerby is the (non-profit) foundation, Peerby Group and Peerby Pro have their own business model and their own revenue stream. They also received €50 000 of subsidies.
Peerby’s business model is built around different communities and the peer-to-peer movement. If you can borrow more, you have to buy less. The foundation of this business model is a non-profit philosophy. There’s also no interaction of the company with ‘customers’, because there simply aren’t any. People borrow from other people and Peerby only provides the platform to do so.
Peerby Go is developed in the Netherlands, but Belgium will also follow this model soon. Besides the basic business model, which serves as a common good, Peerby has the Peerby Group and the Peerby Pro business models. In short, Peerby is free but offers extra services which people / companies have to pay for.
The first one that will create revenues is Peerby Group. When paying a fee, you can create private groups with friends, colleagues, etc. on the platform. E.g. A community of schools that shares goods with each other.
The second model that will create earnings is Peerby Pro. Here, Peerby will show location of tools, appliances, etc. when a request didn’t receive a response within 24 hours. In cooperation with ‘Huurland’, they will give people an offer to rent the things they need in exchange for a service fee. Peerby will get a commission of 10% and the letter will also receive 10% commission.
The models that will create revenue are currently in the testing phase. There’s already a little bit of earnings generated by the testing panel. These models and concepts want to exploit unused capacity, but still have to grow and develop further.
Thinking where it all started, an online Excel file to share things amongst friends. Ludo was renovating his house and didn’t want to buy all those expensive tools. After this, the group of friends built a platform ‘wijdelen.be’ and were contacted by Peerby.
The beginning is always difficult. Together with Peerby Netherlands, Unizo, ‘Hart boven hard’, etc. the growth is slow but steady. Their growth in Belgium began to take a leap when they got the attention of the media. They were a guest at Café Corsari and in two years, they reached the cape of 20 000 members.
Growth
Peerby is growing 1 – 2% a year. There’s almost no budget for publicity. Publicity has to be scalable, so they are dependent of the word-of-mouth. The platform Peerby offers has to sell itself.
Customers
Peerby mainly reaches young two income households. But the more they expand the platform, the more this will spread and will become known by the population.
Competitors
For now, there are no direct competitors. There are some indirect competitors, for example Ezilize.be, the ‘Instrumentheek’, Tournevis and Olease (stopped).
The reason why these are not direct competitors is that Peerby is only one that’s demand-driven, the named indirect competitors are supply-driven.
In Brazil there’s one company Peerby knows of that does the same: Tem Azucar, and in France: Share voisin.
Conclusion
The biggest opportunity is that sharing becomes increasingly popular and is done more and more frequently. Treats for Peerby are the government rulings. Peerby’s weaknesses is the revenue models that are in the initial phase and the financing has to follow their growth pattern.
What Lieven and Ludo have learnt from starting Peerby Belgium is that sharing is an old phenomenon, but online sharing is new but people trust each other enough, to share online. A good tip Lieven gives us is that you have to surround yourself with the right people and you have to talk to a lot of people to expand and grow a meaningful network.
Lieven’s biggest obstacle when starting Peerby Belgium was that Lieven had to leave his job to work fulltime on subsidies. He depended on the subsidies who served as an income for them. Finding financial support and getting financial resources was also not an easy part of the job.
Lieven and Ludo want to stimulate as much people in Belgium as possible to start sharing and later on, they hope to become worldwide.
Posted on 23/03/2016