The Business of Fashion
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
By Rotation, a peer-to-peer fashion rental platform, has raised $3 million in seed funding.
The round was led by Redrice Ventures, with additional participation from Closed Loop Partners, True Global and Magnus Rausing, amongst others. The UK-based company will use the funding to expand its team and prepare for international expansion.
By Rotation was founded in 2019 by Eshita Kabra, a former investment manager who launched the company after wanting to borrow clothes for her honeymoon. The app, which has only been available in the UK, has grown to over 200,000 users.
Unlike businesses like Rent the Runway or Urban Outfitters’ Nuuly, By Rotation operates as a marketplace for lenders and renters, and takes a 30 percent commission. The app’s top brands are Rixo, Ganni, Zimmermann, Jacquemus and Gucci, and the average order value is £50. By Rotation’s annual recurring revenue is over £1 million, Kabra said.
By Rotation’s interface has also been built like a social network, which has attracted investors like Redrice Ventures. Users can follow each other to stay on top of rental activity, and can also browse each other’s closets — a feature that’s made resale marketplaces like Depop and Poshmark popular.
“People are proud of their profile and become mini stylists who can monetise their taste,” said Kabra. “And it’s quite democratic, where the community decides what’s cool.”
By Rotation will use its funding to expand into other markets in Europe, and will also launch in certain markets in the US later this year. Within the US, it will compete with fellow peer-to-peer rental startups like Tulerie and Wardrobe.
Investors of all sizes now have their eyes on rental. In December, UK-based rental company Hurr raised $5.4 million in funding, led by the European venture capital firm Octopus Ventures. Last June, Kering invested in handbag rental company Cocoon.
Still, the market is competitive, with Rent the Runway and Nuuly, as well as brands like Banana Republic, Vince and Scotch and Soda using rental platform CaaStle to power their rental services.
In February, fashion rental startup Seasons shuttered and founder Regy Perlera told BoF his startup was struggling with the high costs of buying inventory and managing logistics, despite having raised $5 million. Menswear rental subscription company The Rotation, which offered customers clothes from companies like Heron Preston and Alexander McQueen, also ceased operations last year.
Tom March, founder and managing partner of Redrice Ventures, said peer-to-peer businesses, by contrast, are attractive because of their low overhead.
“Other business models in rental that spend on dry cleaning or holding stock struggle, but if it’s peer-to-peer, you have a much lower cost base,” March said.
A slew of new companies offer fashion rentals from users' closets and say their business models are easier to manage. But are customers dedicated enough to ship out and clean their own items?
The recent shuttering of rental start-up Seasons highlights how logistics costs and uncertain cash flow have dimmed the prospects of a once-hot retail concept.
With the industry starting to use the technology for everything from campaign imagery to shopping assistants, it risks replicating biases based on race, body type, age and disability that it has spent years loudly claiming it wants to move past.
BoF’s Marc Bain and a group of panellists break down the state of web3 in fashion and where the technology is headed.
On Wednesday, Montanna became the first US state to ban the social video app TikTok.
Epic Games, creator of the video game megahit Fortnite, and the maker of Clo3D, a popular 3D fashion-design tool, are so aligned in their visions of digital fashion’s future that they bought shares in one another.