Joan Moore got to the recent green festival in Phoenixville, Pa., early so she could set up the clothing swap.
Good thing.
Before I knew it, I was surrounded by bags of clothes, she recalls. People brought so many clothes that she abandoned the rule that you had to bring some to get some.
It was too much to even take back to her vintage clothing and consignment shop, the Lulu Boutique, in Phoenixville. She began telling everyone, Please look. If youre interested in anything, take it!
The nations traditional economy isnt so good. But its swap economy seems to be thriving.
People swap not just clothing, but also books, movies, games, toys, tools and more.
They swap in person. And online.
Its something thats going to continue to grow, said Perry Lowe, a marketing professor at Bentley University in Waltham, Mass. Its for real.
Hes studied the swap economy, and while many probably started to swap to be frugal, its becoming more and more a matter of being green.
Its now, quite frankly, cool and important, he said.
Lisa Gansky – who once owned seven bicycles – would agree. She thinks were on a stuff hangover. Now were trying to make sense of it.
Or just get rid of it.
She looks at the swapping economy a little more broadly, including sharing and renting possessions – as in the Vancouver family who rented their parking space during the 2010 Olympics.
My way of thinking about it is that unused value is waste, she says.
Ganskys 2010 book, The Mesh (Portfolio Trade, $15), explores the swap/share/rent economy as a new business model.
Were shifting to a world in which access to goods, services, and talents is going to triumph over the ownership of them, she says.
Technology is helping.
Consider, Gansky says, doing a search for a lawn mower on a smartphone.
Instead of finding three nearby places to buy one, as you would have a few years ago, what if you found three neighbors who would rent or lend you one instead? Or swap it for use of your snowblower come winter?
Gansky sees this not as anticapitalism, but as a shift. Some swapping is free, but theres also money to be made here.
Her website – http://meshing.it/ – lists about 5,000 businesses and communities in 32 categories that have entered this world of trades, transfers, and shares.
Sites such as www.Thredup.com for swapping childrens clothes are popular, considering how fast kids grow.
Gansky talks of office-swapping for business travelers.
One permutation is communal possessions. Annie Leonard, creator of the Internet movie The Story of Stuff, told me once that she and her neighbors share ownership of things they need sometimes, but not always.
One neighbor stores the ladder. Another keeps the pickup truck. A third has the swing set. And so on.
All this makes sense. The trap of possessions is the dreaded I-might-need-this-someday syndrome. My theory is that swapping and sharing is an antidote, a good way to pry things out of a closet. It works because youre getting something else that presumably youll actually use.
By now, swapping can be so swank that some are attaining celebrity status, like the Boston duo the Swapaholics. Featured in national publications, lately theyve expanded into food swaps.
To them, swapping isnt just green. Its fun.
Shopping seems so sterile and solitary and, well, vanilla, when compared with the fun, friendship-driven experience that is a swap, they maintain on their website.
Theyre now the event hostesses for www.swap.com, formed a year ago by fellow Bostonian Jeff Bennett.
He views swapping as the original form of commerce, thousands of years old. Taking the marketplace online simply helps participants access a wider community.
So far, Bennetts site is concentrating on books, DVDs and video games. But he envisions expanding to other categories, including one in particular he thinks will be a hit – sports equipment.
The business has 1.1 million members, Bennett said. The most common user is female, age 25 to 45.
Members list what they have and what they want, and computers do the rest.
Bennett makes money from sponsors and by charging for added-value subscriptions.
One of his members is Bill Gallagher of Bryn Mawr, Pa. A financial adviser, he originally joined because it was the frugal thing to do.
But now hes into the greenness of the deal. He said the site does a good job of making you aware of how much youve reduced your carbon footprint with each swap.
Meanwhile, Im looking for some of my favorite John Gardner novels. Anyone need the new T. Coraghessan Boyle? Guess I can go online and find out.
Visit Sandy Bauers blog at http://go.philly.com/greenspace.