Rethinking the Fashion Rental Model for the Post-Pandemic Era

The Business of Fashion Podcast

The Business of Fashion

Fashion & Beauty, Business, Arts

4.6 • 770 Ratings

🗓️ 6 April 2021

⏱️ 20 minutes

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Summary

Rent the Runway chief executive Jennifer Hyman shares her strategy for making the fashion rental model work as retail, restaurants and workplaces slowly begin to re-open.

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The pandemic was a near-death experience for Rent the Runway, the business that introduced and popularised renting fashion on a wide scale in the United States. As consumers stopped heading to offices and events, chief executive Jennifer Hyman was left wondering: “Will my business still be relevant after Covid?” The executive had to make difficult decisions, fast, laying off and furloughing staff and cutting spending.”

As a leader, that was for sure the hardest thing that I’ve ever had to do,” Hyman told BoF’s Lauren Sherman at VOICES 2020, describing it as “the second founding moment of the company.”

Now, as retail, restaurants and workplaces slowly begin to re-open, the company is betting on a post-pandemic shift in consumer values that couples a desire for more sustainable consumption with a “hedonistic” environment of “worldwide euphoria,” Hyman said.

The Return of Rental

Inside the Closet of the Future

The Pandemic Changed the Way People Live. How Can Fashion Adapt?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Everyone in the world is focused on the same thing at the same time for really the first time since World War II.
0:08.0	And this is going to change people's values in a big way.
0:12.0	Why do we buy dozens of items of clothing per year?
0:16.0	It's not because we're all vain.
0:18.0	It's because wearing something new to you gives you the opportunity
0:22.3	to change your mood, to change elements of your life. That's how you present yourself to the world.
0:32.2	Hi, this is Imran Ahmed founder and CEO of the Business of Fashion, welcome to the VOF podcast.
0:38.6	Retail, restaurants, and workplaces are slowly beginning to reopen in parts of the world.
0:44.7	On this week's episode of the podcast, we go back to Voices 2020, where Rent the Runway
0:49.5	chief executive Jennifer Hyman told our very own Lauren Sherman about her strategy for making the fashion rental model work in the post-pandemic era.
0:59.0	Here's Jennifer Hyman at Voices 2020.
1:07.0	In general, operating in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment, like the one created by COVID-19, requires business leaders to ruthlessly prioritize.
1:23.9	They must prepare their businesses for alternate realities and find new business opportunities.
1:29.3	Within the fashion industry, there may be no better example of this than rent the runway.
1:35.3	Pre-pandemic, it was riding high on the growing fashion rental market, something we covered a few years ago in the state of fashion under the theme, the end of ownership.
1:46.1	But then, of course, COVID-19 hit, and the business, like many other fashion businesses, ground to a halt.
1:53.9	But for rental businesses, it was even tougher. Who needs to rent clothes when people rarely leave
2:00.1	the house and all special occasions are cancelled?
2:03.6	For entrepreneurs with a growth mindset, the past few months have also been one characterized by hope, change, reinvention, and reset.
2:13.6	And for Jennifer Hyman, co-founder and CEO of Rent the Runway, the last 10 months have constituted what she calls the second founding moment of her company.
2:23.9	And she's ready to take on the post-pandemic era with new fervor.
2:29.0	To learn more, please welcome Jennifer Hyman in New York in conversation with BOF's chief correspondent,
	...

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