Rent the Runway is setting up drop boxes at 15 WeWork locations across the U.S. — the clothing subscription service’s attempt to bring high-end fashion to the office.
The drop boxes will be set up in six U.S. cities — New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, D.C. and Miami — allowing customers to more quickly return and order clothing, the companies announced Thursday. WeWork has 175,000 members, many of them small entrepreneurs, that share office space at 472 locations in 91 cities across the world.
Rent the Runway shoppers normally return items via a box in the mail, which slows down the turnaround time for new orders under the company’s monthly subscription plans. Customers can rent an unlimited number of outfits a month, with any four styles out at any one time, for $159 a month or they can rent just four pieces a month at $89.
“We knew there was a demand for creating these drop boxes in other convenient locations,” Rent the Runway COO Maureen Sullivan told CNBC. “There is a massive opportunity to not only grow our drop-box network … but also to grow mini stores within WeWork.”
WeWork’s customers and the general public will have access to the drop boxes, which open on Thursday. Rent the Runway also said it will have pop-up shops full of clothes to rent at a handful of WeWork locations around the launch of the boxes.
The move will help Rent the Runway, which currently has just five locations in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Topanga and D.C., expand via bricks and mortar without investing in additional stores. The company was started online in 2009 by Jenn Hyman and Jenny Fleiss. The latter joined Walmart in 2017 to help Jet.com founder Marc Lore roll out a new personal shopping start-up known as JetBlack.
Rent the Runway became popular for allowing women to rent designer dresses for special occasions online and receive them in the mail within a few days. More recently, the company’s subscription option — where shoppers pay a fee each month to be able to tap into an “endless wardrobe” — has become more popular.
“Our long-term vision is getting our clothing as close to the customer as possible,” Sullivan said. She wouldn’t count out Rent the Runway opening more of its own standalone stores down the road and said in the time being the company plans to expand on a much larger scale with WeWork.
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