Rent the Runway is redesigning and bolstering its designer apparel offering today with looks from Jason Wu, Nina Ricci, Giambattista Valli, Derek Lam and Kaufman Franco.
Later this year, 3.1 Phillip Lim and Suno will be added to the firm’s roster of more than 350 designers. (Rent the Runway carried just 30 brands when it launched almost six years ago).
In tandem with the arrivals, the rental company will introduce a general redesign with a reimagined logo.
Jennifer Hyman, cofounder and chief executive officer, said it was time for Rent the Runway to “start talking” to savvy Millennial women who want to wear sportswear to an interview or on a date.
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“The design had to appeal to the fashion-forward woman in her 30s who is living in a city, who is living a busy life and is smart and knows about these designer brands,” Hyman told WWD. The rental portal began to offer sportswear to its five million active members in April and is looking to continue to expand its presence in the category.
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Hyman said a key component to the site’s makeover is the revamped styling and photography. Images are now shot in a way that evokes the look and feel of a fashion editorial, mirroring the presentation of top-tier designers that Rent the Runway offers, she said.
A new section of the site, The Real Runway, will showcase fashion-minded female entrepreneurs and stories about how they founded their businesses. This will be accompanied by photos of women — from Brit Morin, founder and ceo Brit + Co, to Payal Kadakia, founder and ceo of ClassPass — wearing a range of looks that can be rented on the site.
Hyman projected the company will grow at a rapid pace this year, and the retail equivalent of rentals will more than double from $500 million last year to $1.35 billion in 2015. She said the valuation of the firm — estimated to be between $500 million and $600 million at last year’s Series D fund-raising round of $60 million – is higher now, given that the company beat its financial projections. Organic traffic is up 45 percent so far this year.
“I think it says something both about the normalization of rentals for Millennials and society across the board,” Hyman said of consumers using services such as Rent the Runway, Uber, Spotify, Airbnb and Blue Apron. “Now it’s par for the course.”