Rent The Runway

RENT THE RUNWAY

“

If your work isn’t mission-driven or emotionally resonant to you, it will be very hard to maintain passion and focus over a long period of time, which is critical in entrepreneurship.

-Jennifer Hyman ”

CONTENTS Jennifer Hyman 4 Rent The Runway 8 The Process 10 CONTENTS Getting Dressed 6

JENNIFER HYMAN JENNIFER HYMAN JENNIFER HYMAN

An American Entreprenuer

Jennifer Hyman is the CEO and cofounder of Rent The Runway, a fashion and technology/logistics company that offers clothing, accessory, and home rentals from over 600 designer brands for women and kids via on-demand rentals Wand subscription. Rent the Runway pioneered dynamic ownership in the fashion industry and amassed a huge customer following of 11million people.

Jennifer Hyman grew up in New Rochelle, New York, and attended New Rochelle High School. Hyman was recently inducted into the high school’s wall of fame. She received a BA in social studies from Harvard University in 2002. At Harvard, Hyman was the Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Crimson. She later attended Harvard Business School, where she met co-founder of Rent the Runway Jennifer Fleiss, and graduated with an MBA in 2009.

Prior to Rent the Runway, Hyman was the Director of Business Development at IMG where she focused on the creation of new media businesses for IMG’s Fashion Division. She also ran an online advertising sales team at WeddingChannel. com and was an employee at Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, creating Starwood’s first wedding business which was recognized on The Oprah Winfrey Show for its innovation.

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THE STORY

How Rent The Runway was Created

The ‘aha’ Moment

November 30th, 2008

Dream Big

The Next Day

Over Thanksgiving, Jenn’s younger sister Becky showed off a $2,000 designer dress she bought to go to a wedding. This splurge was sending her into credit card debt! Jenn wondered, wouldn’t it be so much smarter if we could rent designer items rather than purchase them? She returned to Harvard Business School and shared the idea with her friend, Jenny.

Jenn and Jenny wondered whether the fashion industry would be on board with their idea. They cold-emailed Diane von Furstenberg that afternoon (why not start at the top?!) who agreed to a meeting. The next day, they walked into Diane’s office (wearing their DVF dresses) and introduced themselves as the founders of Rent the Runway. While Diane was initially skeptical, she offered key advice and gave each a good luck charm.

Cinderella Experience

April 2009

It was time to test whether women would ever rent clothes. Jenn, Jenny, and Becky set up a pop-up shop on campus where students could rent on the spot. One woman spotted a Tory Burch sequined dress across the room, ran over, put it on, and exclaimed, “I look so hot!”. It dawned on them that renting could make women feel amazing, solidifying RTR’s mission to deliver that feeling of empowerment to all women.

Scrappiness is a Virtue

June - October 2009

With a few months to launch the site, Jenn and Jenny, along with a few core team members and a slew of interns, hustled to get the job done even when things didn’t work according to plan. They pitched to countless designers (and persevered through constant rejection), staged a last minute photo shoot (when they realized designers don’t provide product shots), outsourced tech development (and recovered when they dropped the ball), set up a distribution, dry cleaning operation, and emailed anyone and everyone to get the word out.

We Are All Founders of RTR

November 2009

The launch day was huge. The New York Times ran a cover story picturing Jenn and Jenny. The story drove 100,000 people to sign up! The mentality that propelled Jenn and Jenny from idea to launch still drives Rent the Runway’s entrepreneurial culture, every team member plays a critical role in building the ‘closet in the cloud’.

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GETTING DRESSED FEELS GOOD

GETTING DRESSED FEELS GOOD 6

RENT THE RUNWAY

Their Vision

We were told we were crazy. We’re glad we didn’t listen. When we’re able to wear what makes us feel our best, we can be our best selves, and in turn live our best lives. Yet we’ve had to compromise – we’ve spent a lot of time and money on our clothes, but never had what we wanted. The result?

“Our mission is to make women feel empowered and self-confident every single day.”

A closet full of clothes and nothing to wear! We are changing that by building the world’s first and only ‘closet in the cloud’: a dream closet filled with an infinite selection of designer styles. Imagine every trend, every color, every print, everything you’ve ever wanted to wear but settled for the boring black dress instead. Some call it fashion freedom. Call it a fashion revolution. With an unlimited closet, women can express themselves and dress for the incredible lives they lead that’s a special look for a big event or rotating outfits everyday. We believe that renting is the future of getting dressed, and we’re only getting started. What will you do with your closet now that you Rent the Runway?

Giving Back

Along with changing the way women get dressed, Rent the Runway is also transforming the face of entrepreneurship and showing how powerful it is when women support women.

Project Entrepreneur

Created in partnership between the Rent the Runway Foundation and UBS, Project Entrepreneur is on a mission to even the playing field for women in entrepreneurship. Through programming, a venture competition, and an accelerator, Project Entrepreneur gives early-stage female founders access to the resources and networks necessary to build scalable, economically-impactful companies.

Rent the Runway Foundation

Rent the Runway’s co-founders, Jenn and Jenny, felt fortunate that they had been able to overcome the barriers in women’s paths to entrepreneurship and wanted to give back to the next generation of female founders. In 2015, just five years after founding Rent the Runway, they launched the Rent the Runway Foundation to put their lessons and experience into action.

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The Real Sustainable Fashion Movement

We Pioneered the Reusable Garment Bag

The Real Sustainable Fashion Movement We Pioneered the Reusable Garment Bag

The retail industry is the second largest polluter in the world (Oil is the first). Let’s change the way we get dressed, one rental at a time. Mother Earth will thank us.

Rent

Every time you rent, you are participating in the shared clothing economy. We hope this reduces the amount of clothing that ends up at the back of our members’ closets and in landfills.

Reuse

Once our garments are no longer suitable for rent, we do our best to extend the lifecycle of our garments. For example, we offer them for sale through Sample Sales or donate them to carefully selected organizations like Dress for Success and Operation Prom.

Reduce

The average woman throws away about 82 pounds of clothing per year. Renting things you’d only wear a few times is a more sustainable answer and more people sharing clothing means less clothing waste.

Long ago, we decided there had to be a more sustainable way to package clothing, and converted three pieces of packaging (plastic mailing bags, cardboard boxes and vinyl garment bags) into just one: our patented reusable garment bags that power the Unlimited Closet and our entire community. We can use and reuse these garment bags, reducing the amount of packaging waste. And we’re just getting started. In 2020, we’ve committed to further innovating our packaging and operations to be even better for our community and our planet.

Smart Buying:

We offer high-quality garments that are meant to last multiple seasons. By offering garments made from materials that are intended to last, our community is able to get more use out of a single piece of clothing, reducing the need to produce or use unnecessary garments.

Recycling:

We use plastic covers to protect the garments in our shared closet. Using plastic covers allows us to preserve each item, enabling more women to wear the same piece of clothing and reducing the need for more clothing production and waste. We ask all our RTR customers to return their plastic coverings and hangers when they return their rentals in our reusable garment bags so they can be recycled and reused. Our recycling partner, Trex, transforms plastic into wood-alternative building materials, which we think is an amazing way to reuse and extend the life of plastic.

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THE PROCESS THE PROCESS THE PROCESS

You no longer need a closet full of clothes because they bring you your dream closet. Leave it to them to make renting easy, convenient, and magical.

Dream Fulfillment Center

The “Dream Fulfillment Center” is exactly what it sounds like: a fashion wonderland filled with hundreds of thousands of styles – tops, pants, skirts, jackets, cocktail dresses, gowns, handbags, jewelry, and more. And it is all just a click away!

Quality and Care Quality and Care

Our staff of experts provides the utmost care and skill to ensure everything looks perfect. All items go through a rigorous quality inspection. We handle dry cleaning (we’re the world’s largest dry cleaner) and garment restoration. Seamstresses take care of repairs, right down to every last sequin and seam.

Technology and Logistics

Dream Fulfillment Center Technology and Logistics

When you make a selection, our proprietary technology and reverse logistics operation kick into action to deliver it seamlessly to you. We ship in reusable carrying cases (better for the environment and more convenient for you), and returns are easy with a shipping label included.