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Rent the Runway

What Are We Going to Wear?

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A festive cape, draped from your shoulders, paired with a dress and glitzy heels while you sip on mulled wine. That’s the sort of scene Macy’s was envisioning for holiday parties in 2020, before the reality of Zoom nights in living rooms.

“We really felt good about this dress-up opportunity, people really feeling glam,” said Nata Dvir, Macy’s chief merchandising officer. “We were thinking about outerwear being as bold as capes.”

Bloomingdale’s, which is owned by Macy’s, had forecast “a mix of utility and romanticism,” which would have included puff sleeves, eyelets and maxi dresses, said Denise Magid, an executive vice president at Bloomingdale’s who oversees ready-to-wear apparel.

Major department stores have fashion offices filled with undisclosed numbers of employees who keeping track of new styles, surfing social media and liaising with designers. Big retailers also usually subscribe to online services that aggregate signals from Google Trends and social media. They work with agencies that specialize in fashion forecasting, like Stylus and WGSN, which project broader consumer habits along with more granular details like seasonal color palettes, textiles and silhouettes. They all also obsessively track their competition.

Much of that work used to take place in person. WGSN, for example, offered city guides to American retail buyers on trips abroad. “If a buyer from a department store wanted to go to Paris, we’d have a guide that would tell them where to go and eat and which stores they should see for different things,” said Francesca Muston, the vice president of fashion content at WGSN. Runway shows were also important. At Bloomingdale’s, before the pandemic, “runway was a huge component of what we were forecasting, because what you saw on runway would trickle down to other collections,” Ms. Magid said.

As everything went virtual last year, including runway shows, social media took on new importance, and retailers rushed into anything that smelled like a trend, sometimes tapping Los Angeles-based manufacturers to help them out on a faster timeline.

“Instagram and TikTok have filled that void, and it kind of changes the dynamics again about speed and being reactive because things have a shorter life span,” Ms. Magid said. She recalled an overnight surge in demand for denim joggers in the fourth quarter after a “famous influencer” (the retailer wouldn’t say who) wore a pair by Rag & Bone on an Instagram Story.

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Filed Under: BUSINESS Tagged With: Ann Inc, Bloomingdale's, Brooks Brothers, Color, Dresses, E-commerce, Fashion, Fashion and Apparel, Google, Holiday, Instagram, J Crew Group, Macy's Inc, Madewell, Media, Nordstrom Inc, NPD Group Inc, Proms, Quarantine (Life and Culture), Rent the Runway, Shopping and Retail, Social Media, Surfing, Textiles, TikTok, Wine

Rent the Runway Is Bouncing Back

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Ms. Hyman said the valuation dip did not mean anything. The company needed money to ensure it was prepared for any scenario, she said, pointing out that nobody knew when the pandemic would abate.

Of all the changes Rent the Runway made to its business last year, the biggest was the shift from its unlimited offering, which had allowed subscribers to swap as many items as they wanted for a monthly fee. Now, it offers a few different tiers — users can rent up to four items per month, in one shipment, for $89, or up to 16 items, and up to four shipments, for $199. The new model appeals to a broader array of customers and is more cost effective and better for the environment, Ms. Hyman said, as it cuts down on the nonstop deliveries and dry cleaning.

Traction in the men’s wear rental market continues to be slow, but before the pandemic, the sector was surging for women.

Urban Outfitters introduced its rental service, Nuuly, in 2019, and offerings had cropped up from a wide variety of mall chains and other brands, like Vince, Rebecca Taylor, H&M and Ganni. Major department stores such as Selfridges in London recently began high-profile women’s wear rental programs, and this year Ralph Lauren became the first luxury brand to offer direct clothing rentals.

For luxury brands, rental could represent 10 percent of revenue by 2030, according to a recent Bain & Company report. When an item is rented 20 times, for instance, it generates a profit margin of more than 40 percent, the report found.

While rental clothing services and their monthly subscription fees became far less appealing during the pandemic, secondhand clothing sites flourished, with companies like Poshmark and ThredUp going public. Coresight Research estimated the size of the U.S. rental apparel market at $1.3 billion in 2019, and said it declined to $1.1 billion last year. The firm expects a rebound to “at least” $1.2 billion in 2021.

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Filed Under: BUSINESS Tagged With: Anthropologie, Bain&Co, Business, Consumer Behavior, E-commerce, Environment, Fashion and Apparel, Free People, Hyman, Jennifer, London, Money, Poshmark Inc, Quarantine (Life and Culture), Rent the Runway, Research, Selfridges, Sharing economy, Shopping and Retail, Social Media, United States, Urban Outfitters Inc, Women

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