The Emergence of the Sharing Economy

Sharing is not only a nice thing to do – it is also a smart thing to do. Sharing makes you feel good, just like giving, but it also has a whole new purpose in this world of wanting it all and wanting it now!

When the share economy first emerged some 10 years ago, Time Magazine called it “One of the 10 ideas that will change the world”. 10 years on it is well on its way. It is based largely on trust which is a lovely attribute to possess.

Sharing has been a very big part of our lives both in our personal life and also in our businesses. We enjoy sharing good things and good times with good people and we hope we have helped to improve the lives of our family, friends and business associates with the philosophy of sharing.

The most obvious and well known examples of the shared economy in the past 10 years is the emergence of Air bnb and Uber. These two companies have grown exponentially in recent years and have highlighted the benefits of sharing your home, holiday unit or car for the mutual benefit of many. Sharing assets that are underutilized is now an accepted and normal way of life in today’s society, as it has been from the beginning of time.

Our history in this industry spans some 25 years and started with, what we thought was a good idea, while on Holiday and this started Boatshare Australia. This was a company where owners bought equity shares in new Mustang boats and shared the purchase cost as well as the ongoing running expenses. This was an amazing learning curve, a lot of fun for us and our many customers and led us into greater things.

Riviera Syndication followed which was a similar business model, however working with a large corporation, implemented more professional systems and marketing and exposed shared boat ownership to a much larger audience.

It didn’t take long from here to conceive the idea of shared property and so was borne our involvement in a shared Villa in an amazing little village in the middle of Italy called Mercatello Sul Metauro. This has proven to be one of the most enjoyable and involving investments we have ever made – more about this later.

Queenstown New Zealand has always been one of our families and friends favourite places to visit and so was borne the idea of a shared home here. We are in the process of building this home with a wonderful group of friends and the idea has proven so popular that we have started “Second Home” a company specializing in Co-Ownership holiday homes in New Zealand and Australia.