Young People Are Making Up to $36K a Year Renting Their T-Shirts and Speakers

Over the past decade, platforms like Airbnb and Turo have made it simple for people to earn extra cash by renting out their spare bedrooms or cars—but what about a pair of jeans from Zara or a lawn mower that’s been catching dust?

It turns out, there’s a market for that stuff too.

Recently, a number of online services have begun to normalize peer-to-peer rentals of lower-ticket items, proving to young people that a limited run with their T-shirts, Bluetooth speakers, or chain saws—not just the nonexistent fourth bedrooms in their nonexistent three-story houses—might be of value to internet strangers, too. These apps target Gen Z and millennials, appealing to people cutting down on overconsumption, accustomed to on-demand delivery services, or just looking for a new revenue stream—power users can make up to $36,000 a year.

Pickle, a peer-to-peer clothing rental app, currently lists 200,000 items, including everything from a $100 Goldbergh Pascale headband that can be rented for $30 to a Cult Gaia dress—$898 to buy, $100 to rent. Typical customers are in their mid- to late-twenties, and the company partners with students on college campuses, which CEO and cofounder Brian McMahon calls “the perfect ecosystem” for this model to thrive. One of the app’s particularly millennial-and-Gen-Z-friendly features is its door-to-door delivery service (offered in Los Angeles, New York, and Miami) which is “like DoorDash for clothes,” McMahon says.

“That’s why the company’s called Pickle. If you’re in a pickle, you could still get something at the last minute.” He says business goes especially well on weekends. “Plans come up, and people are like, ‘I need something.’”

According to Arun Sundararajan, professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and author of The Sharing Economy, rental platforms for clothes and household items emerged between 2011 and 2013, around the same time as those for home and car rentals took off. But “they didn’t attract venture capital in the same way that the automobile and home rental platforms did, or the way that Uber and Lyft and the others did,” he says. That’s partially just because there’s a lot more money to be made from a car or a house.

Still, Pickle says it has tripled its number of monthly active users year over year and in March announced it had raised $12 million in Series A funding.

Sundararajan says the popularity of these apps represents a shift toward more responsible consumerism and a decline in the fixation on owning things. “I think Instagram had a lot to do with this. People who grew up seeing other people’s vacations on Instagram are more wired to think of value as coming not from what you own but what you experience,” he says. “They’re more likely to say, ‘Well, why should I buy this if I can just sort of get it, experience it, and then give it back?’”

Beccah Erickson, a 33-year-old product designer living in Brooklyn, has both listed and rented through Pickle. While she’s had success as a customer—she rented a seashell-shaped statement purse for a wedding last summer—finding takers for her own items has been more of a struggle. She’s had two Pickle users come over to her place to try on a dress, but both ultimately declined to rent it because of the fit. She feels the platform’s demographic runs disproportionately thin.

“In New York a lot of the people listing stuff are of a certain age and size,” she says, adding that it could be “harder” for people who wear larger sizes to find items. Pickle tells WIRED it is working to address this issue by partnering with “creators, influencers, and tastemakers across a wider range of body types and aesthetics.”

Erickson’s own wedding is coming up, and she’s considering renting her bridal accessories, primarily in an effort to make environmentally conscious choices. “When I buy something new it’s very considered and I’ve wanted it for a long time, so I use rentals for more of the fun items or one-off use cases,” she says. “I definitely like the kind of circular fashion aspect of it.” She says she hasn’t encountered any negative stigma surrounding her choice to rent instead of buy, which she attributes to the popularity of non-peer-to-peer rental platforms like Rent the Runway.

The financial burden of attending weddings is also what drew fellow Brooklyn resident Jane Kim, 35, to Pickle. “I don’t want to have to buy another sand-colored dress,” says Kim, who has been a bridesmaid at multiple friends’ weddings. “I’ve already spent $600 on beige-sand dresses.” She rents out her own clothes as well and makes around $200 a month on the platform.

While Pickle’s selection heavily features high fashion, the platform welcomes any in-demand item, regardless of its price point or brand, including low-cost pieces from brands like Urban Outfitters and Edikted. The highest earning “lenders”—users who list their items for rent—earned more than $3,000 monthly in 2024. Pickle takes a 20 percent cut of each transaction.

Pickle plans to expand its scope of inventory, first to men’s clothing and eventually beyond the clothing and accessory space.

Yoodlize, a Utah-based app that operates near three college campuses, allows users to rent party supplies (bounce houses, tables and chairs), tools (tile cutters, really tall ladders), electronics (cameras, PA systems, karaoke machines), and outdoor sporting equipment like paddleboards.

“We do get a pretty wide age distribution, but we feel like we’re building this for the Gen X, Gen Z, millennials,” says Jason Fairbourne, Yoodlize’s CEO and founder. “Our biggest demographic are still in college or in high school at this moment. So we’re trying to build for the future.”

The average rental transaction on Yoodlize is $50, and its top users make $10,000 to $15,000 a year. The delivery mechanism is determined by the buyer and seller on a case-by-case basis. Yoodlize tacks a 10 percent fee on both the buyer and seller side of the transaction.

By reducing the demand for products that spend most of their lives taking up space, the peer-to-peer rental model appeals to both environmental and economic concerns. “Why does every house have a lawnmower? Why does everybody own this $600 machine that you rarely use?” Fairbourne says.

Similar platforms include BabyQuip, catered to baby items, KitSplit, which specializes in electronics, and Fat Llama, where you can rent anything from construction machinery to your wedding’s selfie station backdrop.

Both Yoodlize and Pickle hope to build a robust nationwide user base and want to shift cultural norms around consumption, so even those without tight budgets feel inclined to rent rather than buy.

“Sometimes it is kind of a pain,” Kim says. Once, a courier rang her door bell at 1 am to return an item she rented out through Pickle when the app estimated that it would be returned by 8 pm. “There have been times where I’m like, this isn’t worth 40 bucks that I’m making.” But some environmentally conscious users might tolerate inconvenience if it means combatting overconsumption: “It’s nice that it makes me feel less guilty about the things I already own,” says Kim.