Shopping online for electronics can be overwhelming. First you have the tech blog reviews, and then the forums, and then the product page itself. Finding the right product, at the right price, can be difficult.
That’s where Grover (formerly ByeBuy) comes in.
For roughly 5 percent of the retail price, users can rent electronics for a month and try before they buy. Plus, users can extend their rental experience up to a year, paying a monthly fee for holding on to the device.
This includes laptops, headphones, cameras, wearables, smartphones, and IoT products. Users can subscribe to various packages, spanning all of the aforementioned categories, to try out a wide array of cameras, smartphones, wearables, and more.
When a user finds something they really like, and want to keep, they can earn credits by renting the product for a while. Grover offers a 30 percent credit of the monthly payments toward purchasing the device permanently.
For folks who potentially lose track of their rentals, Grover ends the rentals three months after the sum of the rental has reached the purchase price.
Grover launched in Germany in 2015, and has seen more than 80 percent of their customers remain on monthly plans after one month of use.
For the U.S. launch, Grover is only shipping to New York City, but the company will gradually expand to other markets within the United States.
Part of the inspiration from Grover comes from the increasingly short life span of consumer electronics, constantly being updated and upgraded. Grover wants to dismantle the idea of ownership when it comes to gadgetry, offering a more flexible alternative to spending hundreds of dollars (or thousands) on a device that will soon be outdated.
You can check out Grover for yourself right here.