The young shoot of the year opposed to Black Friday

Black Friday. Cyber ​​Monday. The entire holiday season. Everything is focused on consumption, on overconsumption. This saddens the two co-founders of Partage Club. The elected platform start-up Montrealer of the year Thursday evening wants to correct this problem.

“Holiday shopping affects us deeply,” says Fauve Doucet who, with his colleague Anaïs Majidier, created the borrowing and sharing platform between members Partage Club following an online crowdfunding campaign, on the La Ruche site, between the summers of 2022 and 2023. “It stimulates overconsumption. It’s horrible. »

Read “Borrow the lawn mower from the neighbor you don’t know”

The two young entrepreneurs are not alone in thinking this way. Their platform has 17,000 subscribers, who pay monthly or annually, to then borrow or share all kinds of goods, tools and devices. It can range from a hammer to a video game console to an electric guitar.

The annual subscription to Partage Club costs $60. The average value of a good borrowed through the platform is $150. Already, from its first use, a consumer has saved precious money, explain the two co-founders.

“We are responding to three problems at once,” continues Fauve Doucet. “There is obviously over-consumption and under-use of objects that we already have at home: we wrongly think that we absolutely must have a tool to use it. »

There is also the question of the neighborhood. “In Quebec, 40% of people do not know more than two of their neighbors. This erosion of social bonds has been amplified by the pandemic. These are human relationships and trust that often arise from the need to talk to your neighbors to borrow something from them. »

And there is, of course, the rising cost of living. “We can clearly see that more people across Quebec need help. We think we can help a certain number of people to save, or to avoid spending too much,” concludes M.^me Doucet.

“The craze around sharing”

Two features distinguish Partage Club from similar platforms.

First, as a technology startup, the company is already out of the red. During the last three months of its current financial year, Partage Club recorded a positive financial balance.

It’s early for a small business. This is even rarer for a young technological start-up. These companies often struggle to become profitable even after several years of strong growth. It must be said that its business model is not designed to attract subscribers like flies, to then “monetize” their very large number, an extremely popular practice in global tech (talk to Facebook, TikTok, OpenAI …).

Not for Partage Club. “It also proves the enthusiasm for sharing. There is a real demand,” says Anaïs Majidier.

The share of municipalities

The other particularity of this platform is that it targets individuals, but through organizations, municipalities, mainly. Already, 50 cities in Quebec pay for their citizens to borrow items from their neighbors on Partage Club. This includes cities of different sizes, from Beloeil to Laval, among others.

This is also Partage Club’s growth vector for the coming months: attracting more municipalities, in Quebec, France and the United States.

Partage Club also hopes to directly attract citizens, so that they in turn become ambassadors of the platform. “To build sharing communities, you need citizens who promote them. »

For a start-up of the year, it’s refreshing. We expected to hear about artificial intelligence or immersive reality. But reviving good neighborliness by borrowing tools and devices of all kinds? A technology that arrives like a Christmas present!