Over the last few years, consumerism has taken a hit as a new Sharing Economy has blossomed. Definitions of this vary. In its broadest form, it’s where members of the public harness the wide reach of the Internet to borrow, swap and recycle things, buy and sell second-hand goods, or trade personal resources. It’s become big business – but with more of a conscience than buying new. It is saving people money, giving them access to goods and services that might otherwise be out of their reach, and easing their conscience about their impact on the planet. More excitingly, people are really taking to the sense of community and feeling of ‘giving back’.

If the stats are to be believed, there are now 23 million active ‘sharers’ in the UK – just over a third of the population. These figures come from the first report profiling the collaborative economy – a study conducted by Vision Critical & Crowd Companies survey in the UK, US and Canada between Oct 2013 and Jan 2014. The figures include eBay users however. They also take into account crowdfunding – ie: peer-to-peer lending. So the findings don’t necessarily mean there has been a seismic shift in people’s propensity to share their cars/journeys, homes and time – or not yet. But there is a feeling that it won’t be long now.

What’s mine is yours

As the concept of ‘sharing’ begins to mature, and the associated brokering opportunity enters entrepreneurs’ awareness (helped by financial backers warming to the trend), offerings are becoming more sophisticated and creative. A recent survey by Nielsen found that people (internationally) are willing to share or rent their electronic devices (28% of respondents), power tools (23%), bicycles (22%), clothing (22%), household items (22%), sports equipment (22%), cars (21%), outdoor camping gear (18%), furniture (17%), homes (15%) motorcycles (13%) and pets (7%).

Skills and services are also exchangeable: 26% indicated they would rent lessons or services via the Internet, such as music lessons or dog-sitting services.

The UK is host to some inspiring examples.

Donating time to charity

Fcancer is a cancer charity with a difference; it doesn't want people’s money, but rather their time. Would-be volunteers simply list their particular skills (for example web design), how much time they are able to donate, and their location, and Fcancer puts them in touch with charities that desperately need these skills. This helps charities save significant sums as they can work with highly-skilled people for free, rather than having to recruit new staff or hire expensive external agencies.

To date more than 1,000 volunteers (from 52 countries) have signed up, collectively pledging over 21,000 hours of donated time. This spans 43 different skill sets. The operation was founded in 2012 in London and New York, by Sal Lahoud, Oren Bass, and Noor Fares. In common with other sharing initiatives, the driving force was personal need: in this case friends had each witnessed a close family member suffering with cancer, wishing they could do more.

Pet-sitting as the key to cheap travel

In the case of house- and pet-sitting web site TrustedHousesitter.com, it was first-hand of the need for home-based pet care that gave founder Andy Peak his inspiration. He set up his Brighton, UK-based matchmaking service in 2011. The vision was to make it easier for home and pet owners to find reliable guardians during periods of absence. Peak rightly calculated that people would willingly provide the service for free in return for having access to the same facility – and/or as a means of seeing more of the world, paying only for the cost of the journey. A lot of the sitters are retired, keen to see their world without making too much of a dent in their pensions.

In three years, TrustedHousesitters.com has become the world’s largest house and pet sitting website in the Sharing economy, according to Peak. Homeowners in over 50 countries are registered on the site, with over 1,000 new homes being signed up monthly. The service has so far helped facilitate more than 450,000 house-sitting nights.

“As no money passes hands between the two sides – rather a sharing of time and services - a different type of relationship is formed between the two parties,” Peak explains. “This works incredibly well and helps to build a very strong and loyal community.” The web site currently gets over half a million site hits a month, and the business is growing at a rate of more than 300% a year, generating over 20% of revenues – largely by word of mouth. The business model is subscription-based, costing from £5 ($9) a month.

Peak is passionate about the service. “We believe in the karma of it all,” he says. “Our service combines the emotive subjects of pets and travel. Pet owners don’t like to keep asking friends and family to look after their homes and pets when they go away.

“We get letters and emails from customers with some lovely stories,” he adds. One was from a widow who had taken up the house-sitting option as a way of easing in to holidaying alone. She fell in love with the neighbor and they’re now life partners.

Trust is a big part of the service, and technology can help with this. Communications happen via the web site and mutually interested parties can ‘meet’ each other online, introducing them to their homes and pets visually in advance.

Plugging the university accommodation shortage

More mainstream Sharing sites match tenants with accommodation – a big market especially in busy and expensive cities. FlatClub’s  take on the opportunity is to match academics and professional people with medium-term accommodation in London. Again, the founder - Nitzan Yudan - was inspired by his own experiences when he set up the web site 3.5 years ago. “I needed to rent out my own place to bring in some money, but didn’t want to put it publicly on a site like Gumtree (a local classified ads web site),” Yudan explains. When it’s your home, you care about who’s going to be living in it, which requires the ability to select and screen applicants.”

FlatClub is an accommodation marketplace which deals with trusted networks (for example universities, schools and employers). On it, landlords can be selective about who they show their property to. There are now 75,000 members and 20,000 London properties signed up. A typical let is around 45 days (somewhere between Airbnb and Spareroom). A study by University College London (UCL), one of the institutions promoting the service, found that being able to use FlatClub’s model has doubled the potential number of hosts in the short-term rental market. This is making it easier for international PhD students to find affordable accommodation, for example as they attend summer courses. Typical property rentals range from £700-800 ($1200-1350) a month for a room in an apartment, to £2000 ($3400) for sole occupancy.

FlatClub is about to launch a new feature called LiveDemand, allowing potential guests to post requests. This will allow hosts to be more proactive in letting out their rooms or properties, by allowing them to target offers to guests who are actively looking for accommodation. Reviews and analytics play an important role in refining the offering too. “After a stay, both the host and guest review their experience. We analyze what people look for in these reviews and the most popular go to the top of the results,” Yudan says.

Sharing work ‘hangouts’

More tenuously, there are shared working spaces for startups and entrepreneurs. Huckletree, based in Clerkenwell in London, bills itself as a ‘next-generation’ eco-friendly co-working space, providing energy-efficient desk office and workshop space for 40 people. A reservations system allows members to make bookings, change membership plans, and so on, and the building offers a mix of ‘hang out’, ‘collaborate’ and ‘focus’ space over different floors. Huckletree was founded by Gabriela Hersham, an actress and film producer.

Hitch a ride with a friend

Car/journey-sharing services continue to be popular. GoCarShare , now four years old, allows people to get a ride cheaply (or earn money on spare seats in their vehicles). It recently launched a new mobile app enabling users to find a car-share while out and about. At this summer’s Glastonbury music festival, visitors used the service to get there.

GoCarShare has 26,000 members. To join, people must login via Facebook or be manually vetted. Its new on-demand app is the result of investment raised from more than 300 members of its own online community.

As well as bringing like-minded people together, eg fans of festivals (the company has partnerships with over 100 leading events), the car-sharing initiative helps save energy and reduce pollution. Interesting spin-off initiatives include bands car sharing and performing en route, priority parking at festivals, and even an empty car seats tax, where people who don’t car share must pay more.

Park and play

Services that broker private parking are another big winner in the UK, where capacity is so often in short supply. Fanbed.com is one example of a web site capitalizing on the opportunity. It finds homes and parking for people attending sports events and competitions – both fans and participating athletes.

Sharing the success

Finally, there are the services piggybacking off sharing service success. One example is a storage service, bySTORED , which targets would-be room-letters looking to de-clutter their homes. The storage industry was worth over £355 million ($607 million) in 2013, the company claims.

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