Nov. 29 (NBD) -- As the sharing economy takes root in China, consumers come to realize that they don't need to own something in order to enjoy them. Things like cars, bikes, umbrellas and even clothes can be shared. 

Based on such change of thought, the clothes sharing emerges, providing women with a rental solution to solve their needs for various clothes at a lower cost.

How current clothes sharing companies operate?

NBD learned that most of the companies make foray into this sector by providing gowns renting service for young ladies on the pay-per-use basis, and then expand to day dress rental business. 

Compared with the rentals of gowns, costumes and other clothes for special occasions, daily clothes rental business is still new to consumers and it needs to nurture the spending habits of customers.

So far, there come some clothes rental platforms like YCloset, MSParis as well as Dora’s Dream, and the sector has drawn investment from well-known venture capitals such as Internet Data Group (IDG), Sequoia Capital, GSR Ventures, Alibaba, ZhenFund and Legend Capital.

Though the market size of women's clothes appears large, consumers haven't yet been used to renting stuff on the internet, especially personal stuff like clothes, and there exist concerns about the clothes cleanliness.

Besides, the clothes sharing mode entails high quality supply chains. Since clothes are non-standars products, to meed varing customer needs, the rental service providers have to keep a large number of Stock Keeping Units (SKU). This poses a big challenge for the companies in terms of clothes selecting and washing.

Email: zhanglingxiao@nbd.com.cn