Rent The Runway is a fashion startup that provides designer clothes, jewellery and accessories to women on rent at pretty affordable prices. Recently, this sartorial startup concluded a funding round in which the firm raised $20 million. Condé Nast Publications, the publisher behind popular fashion magazines like Glamour, Vogue, Lucky and others has led the funding round, which also includes all of Rent The Runway’s existing backers, including Highland Capital Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Bain Capital Ventures.
This recent deal between Rent The Runway and Condé Nast Publications is a significant milestone for this fashion startup, as it not only represents the financial deal between the two groups, but also an important product partnership.
President of Condé Nast, Bob Sauerberg, who will soon join the Board of Directors of Rent the Runway said on this occasion that, “We are excited about diversifying our portfolio through an association with Rent the Runway which allows our readers a new way to access luxury brands and we look forward to creating unique consumer-centric programs with them”.
“This is a partnership beyond just being an investor. We will be integrating with their organization to take advantage of marketing and sales prowess they have, and help create brand awareness for Rent The Runway.”
With this latest investment, Rent The Runway has collected over $51 million in VC funding. The co-founder and CEO of Rent The Runway, Jennifer Hyman said that with this new investment they will add new technology to this fashion platform. She explained during an interview that, “We want to disrupt and revolutionize the retail industry and the backbone of this is technology,” because consumers are shifting towards this rental model.
Rent The Runway’s rental tool is quite simple, as customers simply select a design from the site and then schedule its delivery date. The customer will receive two sizes from Rent The Runway on the delivery date to make sure that they will get the appropriate fit. The rent of a dress is 10 percent of its price, running between $50 to $200 for four nights.
With this rental model, Rent The Runway has so far attracted more than 3 million members as well as 170 exclusive brands. Moreover, the fashion startup has also introduced a never before seen online social shopping site called Our Runway that enables women to shop according to their body shape by showing them pictures of real woman with similar sizes instead of models.
Women can do this type of shopping thorough the “Find Women Like Me” tool, which requires bust size, height, age and dress size from customers in order to find relevant images of women. Members can also leave their comments on a particular picture shown through this tool. In this way, women will be able to select an apt dress for themselves through Rent The Runway’s platform.
Source: TechCrunch
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