Partner Article

The sharing business

As millions gear up for Global Sharing Day on June 2nd, Benita Matofska, Chief Sharer of Compare and Share reveals why the future of business is sharing.

Businesses everywhere are moving into the emerging Sharing Economy now worth over £330 billion globally and £22.4 billion in the UK (source: Business Green)

The smartest businesses know that making money from idle assets and building business models around the efficient sharing of resource is about survival, it’s about future proofing your business.

With over 10,000 Sharing Economy businesses globally (source: The People Who Share), economists and academics have predicted that this new economy will have the biggest impact on society since the Industrial Revolution.

33 million Brits are already sharing and a further 14 million would consider it, reveals the first in a series of reports on The State of the Sharing Economy, conducted by Opinium Research and commissioned by The People Who Share, the campaign to build a Sharing Economy for June 2nd’s Global Sharing Day.

There are 3 ways that businesses are joining the Sharing Economy.

1. Born to share: new business models are emerging, built around the sharing of resource. Examples include: Compare and Share, the world’s first comparison marketplace of the Sharing Economy, currently aggregating car and ride sharing in the UK; airbnb (www.airbnb.com) a peer-to-peer accommodation site and Zipcar (www.zipcar.co.uk) the pay-as-you-drive pioneers.

2. Adopt sharing: businesses are adopting the Sharing Economy to future-proof their business; examples include: M&S with Shwopping, 5,500 tonnes of clothing have been donated to Oxfam via Shwopping since it’s launch in May 2012. B&Q launched streetclub.com an online initiative to enable communities to share tools with others in their streets; and American retail giant Walmart recently announced they were considering having store customers deliver goods to online customers, capitalising on the peer-to-peer Sharing Economy.

3. Buy It! Sharing brands can be bought. In January Avis purchased the pay-as-you-drive service Zipcar for $500 million, signalling for many, the mainstreaming of the market. Avis recognised the growing consumer appetite for sharing and the trend towards access over ownership.

The Sharing Economy – it’s shaping the future of business.

Benita Matofska, a former TV entrepreneur is the Founder of The People Who Share and Chief Sharer of Compare and Share.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Benita Matofska .