Y’earn X Superhog

Superhog’s advanced screening with embedded insurance can be used for different businesses in the sharing economy, not just the vacation and short-term rental industry.

We caught up with Superhog partner, Y’earn and Carley Read their Founder, about how using a service like Superhog is important to rental/sharing platforms when it comes to knowing your customer and increasing trust within the community you are creating as a business.

About Y’earn

So tell us a little bit about Y’earn and how you came up with the idea to turn this into a business?

Y’earn is a peer to peer marketplace to rent items from local people or to make money from items that you don’t need at the moment.

So we started with baby and kids items, but the initial idea for the business was to do with furniture, so the idea is that we are there to help people through these big life moments.

Whether that’s starting a family, setting up your first home, or moving to a new city, there are so many things we need at that moment, it’s a really expensive time and is sometimes stressful.

You might not be an interior design expert on everything that you need for your baby and actually wouldn’t it be great to tap into your community to rent what you need for the short period you need it and then it can go on to another family or go onto a charity.

There’s a lot to do with community and sustainability.

“I suppose that’s true isn’t it, as a new father there are lots of things that I’m using now that I’ll never use again!

I think part of it is that there are places at the moment where you can pass things on second-hand, so we’re not completely changing the world, but we are trying to bridge that retail price and second-hand experience. 

So lots of people are too busy to list everything individually on Facebook marketplace or other apps, and actually, if you just wanted to create one listing with all of your products, we come pick it up, clean it and drop it off.

As I say, if you want it back at the end which is really great for people that are planning for more children, somebody else could be using it which gives you space and also mitigates maybe having to get rid of items and then buy them again if you don’t have the space to store them in the meantime.

So the key concept of Y’earn is that you bundle, clean and then deliver these items to your members?”

Yes. So we’re building a community around this, around here’s everything that my child has outgrown, another family could use it.

Some people have said “ok well I maybe don’t need to make money from all this, I don’t need the cash per say, and our response there is: maybe there are families in your community that can’t afford all of these items. 

We know that we have lots of children living in poverty, so you can create a listing and we can help you get that item to a family who could maybe not afford it or maybe could not afford the quality items, or just want to do it from a “let’s stop buying so much” perspective, and so we’re helping facilitate that.

Y’earn and Superhog

What made you decide to add ID verification and protection into your marketplace, and how did you then engage the services of Superhog?

One element is for our community. If people are creating listings and they want those items back, there is a slight risk and concern around damage, and therefore knowing who these items are going to is important.

There’s also the business aspect. We are allowing people to pay for their first months and then only paying in instalments post-that for the period of their rental, and so there could be some people that wanted to use the service, pay a small fee and then take lots of items, which is more of an issue when you look at more expensive items like furniture or lots of things like that.

So there’s verifying who they are and knowing and bringing that community wall around us that we’re confident that people inside are who they say they are.

So having a process like Superhog can show that every member is vouched for and trusted, which is super powerful for your business, isn’t it?

Yes and I think that as well, we’re moving to a world where sharing is going to become more common.

You have Airbnb which you guys know well, and that concept of sharing is moving into different areas.

So I really like the idea with Superhog, that we could become part of that community of businesses that offer sharing facilities and knowing that you have a view of a profile in Y’earn but it’s not just Y’earn, because within Superhog it’s all the other businesses that are using Superhog, and the information is being consolidated, with a profile being made that shows not just how they behave with our platform, but how they behave with other businesses.

As more businesses get involved, that’s a really powerful thing for us if somebody does maybe cause damage and is questioning if they want to work with us.

So knowing they have a profile that can be used in these different sharing platforms is really powerful for us as a business.