South Korea: CU retail chain launches short-term rental service

The brand has partnered up with Aroundable for its “Pick and Pick” initiative at five of its locations across the country.

The CU convenience store chain, a subsidiary of the South Korean BFG Group, has unveiled its latest rental service: “Pick Pick”. This new option is available at five of the retailers' sites for customers to rent more than 300 products in 11 different categories.

CU has teamed up with rental service startup Aroundable to launch its new offer for clients. The system operates by a minimum rental period of three days, replacing old products with new ones on a weekly basis to keep up with changing trends, as reported by The Korea Bizwire news site.

This kind of system is mainly focused on digital appliances, since products from this category can be updated more quickly than others. Users will have a wide range of options to choose from for renting. These include items such as game consoles, smart devices or sporting and beauty goods.

CU launched a trial period of one month during December of last year before officially inaugurating this new service. During the evaluation, the company registered that 80% of the users consisted of young customers in their 20s.

According to the article cited, the technology category accounted for the majority of the items rented, with 34.1% of the total rents. Beauty and sporting goods followed, with 20.6% and 17.7% respectively. Massage devices and pet products completed the top five with a rate of 8.2% and 7.9%.