Along with renting, lending, borrowing and sharing, swapping is the new (and cheaper version of) shopping right now, part of a phenomenon called “collaborative consumption.” You yourself have consumed collaboratively if you’ve ever been a member of a car-sharing service such as Autoshare, purchased used items off Craigslist or joined the recycling listserv Freecycle.
Coined by British management consultant Ray Algar, collaborative consumption describes the new consumer thinking: a shift away from ownership toward fulfilling need. Do you need a drill or do you need a hole? Do you need a car or do you need to get from A to B?
In a 2010 TED Talk, Rachel Botsman, author of What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, suggested that the trend has taken roof because, collectively, we’re at a point “where the sharing of behaviours – through sites such as Flickr and Twitter, [which] are becoming second nature online – are being applied to ... our everyday lives.”
A case in point: This weekend in Toronto, an organization called The S.W.A.P. Team is hosting a two-day event called Take Off Your Clothes, billed as North America’s biggest clothing swap. What began as a private get-together in a Montreal living room in 2005 has since expanded to large-scale public swaps in five cities across the country. “If you go public, you get more people, which means more items and more sizes,” says S.W.A.P. Toronto chapter director Gail Burgin. “It opens the door to new opportunities and, when there’s no money involved, the decision to try something beyond your comfort zone becomes fun.”
In Brooklyn last May, Score! Pop-Up Swap drew 3,000 attendees who traded everything from clothing to household electronics. Vintage-lovers browsed curated clothing items draped on racks and clotheslines while a DJ played all afternoon.
Leslie Hermelin, a Score! co-founder, says the organization’s swaps are meant to resemble retail stores rather than “free-for-alls,” adding that, “first and foremost, [each is] a party.”
“It was about creating a fun experience for ourselves,” Hermelin says. “Then we realized what we could do good with it.” Score! donates proceeds from the $5 cover fees to charity and sends unsuitable items to recycling facilities. Still, Hermelin says, to look at what Score! does from an “altruistic angle” is to look at it “the wrong way.”
“It’s really a treasure hunt,” Hermelin says, laughing.
As swaps transform from private exchanges into public “shopping” experiences, communities seems to be forming in their wake, which is more than one can say about individual visits to a mall. Whether collaborative consumption will really overtake our addiction to owning remains to be seen, but, for now, who needs to shop when one can swap?
