The Extraordinary Entrepreneurs Series is supported by Diet Coke®. Now, the drink that helps you stay extraordinary brings you extraordinary people. Find Diet Coke® on Facebook for access to a whole lot of extraordinary.
Carrie Bradshaw made women jealous with her DVFs and Louboutins, but one startup is offering access to these high-price duds at a fraction of the cost. Now, aspirational fashion can be quite attainable, thanks to Rent the Runway.
After Jennifer Hyman watched her sister have a “closet-full-of-clothes-and-nothing-to-wear moment,” she and Jenny Fleiss put their heads together in late 2009 and came up with an idea — a rental service for luxurious threads. Now, Rent the Runway is a hot startup with 24,000 dresses and 12,000 accessories in store for women to rent for weddings or a night on the town. But the founders aren’t stopping at clothing — they envision Rent the Runway to be a full-service experience company.
Mashable spoke with Hyman and Fleiss about how they built the idea, how they got brands on board, and what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.
Names: Jennifer Hyman, 31, and Jenny Fleiss, 27
Company: Rent the Runway
Year Founded: 2009
Employees: 62 (70% female, 30% male)
Fun Fact: Hyman and Fleiss met on their first day at Harvard Business School in 2008.
What inspired you to start this business?
Hyman: For me, the idea was originated when I had an experience with my own sister who was having a closet-full-of-clothes-and-nothing-to-wear moment, and I saw how much she valued putting on brands that were aspirational to her and how that made her feel. Most of us who grew up in the U.S. were raised in a culture where you’re increasingly being taught at a very young age what a Louboutin shoe is, and 13-year-olds know what a Birkin Bag is — the world has been Kim Kardashian-ized. For better or worse, Rent the Runway enables people to access the brands and experiences they never dreamed they’d be able to have. This entire business is about giving people access to the life they dream today.
Fleiss: After Thanksgiving break in 2008, Jenn came back with this idea having witnessed her sister, and I knew it was great market timing because it was the peak of the recession, women were more conscious of cost per wear for outfits, and this whole “recessionista” culture was booming. Also, the flash sale sites were going up, and women were really proud to talk about bargains and deals they got. And then, designers were opening their minds to new marketing channels and new ways of getting their message across to new consumers.
In the initial [rental] trials, we’d watch girls from Harvard undergrad try on dresses — they’d put them on and twirl around in the mirror and say, “Look at me, can you imagine the look on so-and-so’s face when he sees me?!” and “I look hot, I feel great.” Actually seeing that they were so empowered by dressing up and feeling like Cinderella was inspiring. This is a concept that touches such an emotional feeling for a woman and really empowers her and gives her confidence. So that motivates and inspires me a lot of the time.
Rent the Runway has really taken off, so you two obviously are smart businesswomen. What makes you a great entrepreneur?
“This is not about dresses … it’s about exploring whatever it is that makes you feel awesome.”
Hyman: I think there has to be a semblance of humility in being an entrepreneur. Yes, you need conviction and strength of passion for your idea. That’s baseline — if you didn’t have passion for your idea, you wouldn’t even consider being an entrepreneur. But you need humility to be able to constantly change and tweak the idea, to understand that you don’t have all the answers, that you need to build a team around you. And I think it’s a constant sense of, how can we be improving? How can we become better leaders over time? How do we build the right mentorship networks for ourselves and other people in our organization so that the company continues to thrive? That’s what will continue to distinguish us an entrepreneurs going forward.
Fleiss: And this constant drive toward improvement is a huge part of our culture. We never had a business plan. Our whole approach is to test things out, see what works, and fail. Failure’s the quickest way to figure out what the right direction is, and you can change it and do it differently and do it better each time. You can’t be an entrepreneur if you’re not willing to fail.
This is a fashion-oriented business helmed by women — how did investors respond to your concept?
Hyman: One of the biggest issues we had in pitching the business originally is that there are two women that a typical investor would ask if Rent the Runway was a good idea: his wife and his administrative assistant. If you’re in VC, your wife can probably afford to buy whatever they’d like and she’s not really in our age demographic. We had to confront that from the get-go in our investor presentations by showcasing who our customer was — a 15 to 35-year-old woman — what emotional value she would receive by renting the runway and putting that customer experience front and center to potential investor groups so that they weren’t able to discount the idea before we even started pitching.
Fleiss: We’d show a video clip of women renting the dresses and twirling around in the mirror feeling awesome so people actually saw right away and said, “Oh, I get what this business is.”
While your business revolves around fashion, it’s very much a tech-based business with a lot of logistics. What drew you to you tech in the first place?
Fleiss: Neither of us had a background in technology before Rent the Runway. And I think the easy answer is, we were just thrown into it. Tech is such a necessary and important part of the business and really the backbone of our growth right now. Early on, we outsourced some of the development, and then we gradually built a team in-house. Because of that, Jenn and I got really involved with a lot of the technology and were doing a lot of the product management. We can’t code, but at this point, we can carry on a conversation about the tech of our site and we can interview and hire people effectively. … There’s just so much incremental stuff to be done with the tech components — the recommendation engines on the site, customizing everyone’s experience, providing social engagement opportunities. There’s a lot of work that we’re doing to get us to that next point of growth, so we’re really focused on technology right now.
Hyman: When you hear “tech company,” the image you have might be coders working furiously into the night in their garage, and you’re not thinking about all the components that actually build a tech organization. There is rockstar engineering talent, there’s product vision, there’s project management, there’s actual [quality assurance] (QA) of the site. Before finding Jonathan, our SVP of engineering, we had to divvy up a lot of the responsibilities on the tech team to non-tech people. So we’ve had the whole company doing and learning QA, creating wireframes and understanding how to create a product vision. And through that process, we realized that this isn’t another language. This is very important and shouldn’t be siphoned off to another sphere of the company. So it’s created far more of a collaborative culture at Rent the Runway between tech and every other division of our business.
You place a heavy premium on customer service — how important is your customer insights team?
“This is a concept that touches such an emotional feeling for a woman and really empowers her and gives her confidence.”
Fleiss: It’s the first group we really filled out in the company and a hugely important group. We view ourselves as an experience company and not a product company. Someone is coming to us for this aspirational feeling of being Cinderella for an evening out, and a lot of interactions they have with the customer insights reps help make that happen. They serve as stylists to these women — customers ask, “What do I wear to a daytime wedding in the middle of August?” “Is this going to be appropriate because I’m busty, but I have small hips?” They become trusted confidants and help guide people through these experiences, and it’s such a personal thing — these people are renting for a really important event in their life. You want to make sure that you got a dress that you love and that you look great in.
Hyman: It’s also about taking the intimidation factor out of an industry that has traditionally been extremely exclusive. We see Rent the Runway as a vehicle to let them test-drive new brands, to experiment with things that are slightly out of their comfort zone. This is not about dresses, it’s about empowerment, it’s about self-confidence and teaching women that you’re good enough to feel this way every night — you don’t have to wait for your birthday or New Year’s Eve. For $50, you can feel like a princess. We want that average 25-year-old girl who’s in the middle of the country to be able to wear Thakoon as well and to understand that she can feel just as beautiful as the girl on the pages of Vogue.
What advice do you have for other entrepreneurs?
Fleiss: It’s so important to test a concept — you can figure out ways to incrementally test your product and get it out there. Once you do that, your opportunity costs are pretty low — you’ve seen that it works for a given consumer, you’ve figured out how the initial concept might work, and if that’s feeling good to you, then you have to go for it.
Hyman: I think also entrepreneurship comes in all different forms. You can be an entrepreneur within a big corporation — in my first job at Starwood Hotels, I became and created a role for myself where I was an in-house entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship is just the implementation of creativity.
Number one, it doesn’t mean you have to start a company to be an entrepreneur.
Number two, be really honest with yourself about what you love and what you’re really passionate about. I’m fairly convinced that most peoples’ true passion comes from how they spend their time during the day. Do they like interacting with people or not? Do they like brainstorming? Do they like problem-solving? Do they like being super analytical? If you can structure a role for yourself in which you’re able to do these things that you’re interested in, I think you’ll end up being extremely successful.
The third piece of advice that I have is that far too few people just go for it. It’s very easy to make an excuse, but you’re never really going to learn the skills to be an entrepreneur — ever — until you just do it and make mistakes. There are far too few people who say, “I’m just going to do this now.” And then there are far too many people who think they have the wining idea. There are very few great ideas, but there are a lot of people who could be entrepreneurs in other ways that are just as, if not more, important. Are you going to be the person who actually implements it and gets it done? The person who builds it? The person who analyzes how to improve a business? Really understanding what your role should be within an entrepreneurial environment is super important.
Series Supported by Diet Coke®
The Extraordinary Entrepreneurs Series is supported by Diet Coke®. Now, the drink that helps you stay extraordinary brings you extraordinary people. Find Diet Coke® on Facebook for access to a whole lot of extraordinary.
More About: entrepreneurship, Extraordinary Entrepreneurs Series, rent the runwayFor more Startups coverage:Follow Mashable Startups on TwitterBecome a Fan on FacebookSubscribe to the Startups channelDownload our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad
Posted on Thu, 01 Sep 2011 17:38:40 +0000 at http://mashable.com/2011/09/01/rent-the-runway-interview/
Comments: http://mashable.com/2011/09/01/rent-the-runway-interview/#comments
Carrie Bradshaw made women jealous with her DVFs and Louboutins, but one startup is offering access to these high-price duds at a fraction of the cost. Now, aspirational fashion can be quite attainable, thanks to Rent the Runway.
After Jennifer Hyman watched her sister have a “closet-full-of-clothes-and-nothing-to-wear moment,” she and Jenny Fleiss put their heads together in late 2009 and came up with an idea — a rental service for luxurious threads. Now, Rent the Runway is a hot startup with 24,000 dresses and 12,000 accessories in store for women to rent for weddings or a night on the town. But the founders aren’t stopping at clothing — they envision Rent the Runway to be a full-service experience company.
Mashable spoke with Hyman and Fleiss about how they built the idea, how they got brands on board, and what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.
Names: Jennifer Hyman, 31, and Jenny Fleiss, 27
Company: Rent the Runway
Year Founded: 2009
Employees: 62 (70% female, 30% male)
Fun Fact: Hyman and Fleiss met on their first day at Harvard Business School in 2008.
What inspired you to start this business?
Hyman: For me, the idea was originated when I had an experience with my own sister who was having a closet-full-of-clothes-and-nothing-to-wear moment, and I saw how much she valued putting on brands that were aspirational to her and how that made her feel. Most of us who grew up in the U.S. were raised in a culture where you’re increasingly being taught at a very young age what a Louboutin shoe is, and 13-year-olds know what a Birkin Bag is — the world has been Kim Kardashian-ized. For better or worse, Rent the Runway enables people to access the brands and experiences they never dreamed they’d be able to have. This entire business is about giving people access to the life they dream today.
Fleiss: After Thanksgiving break in 2008, Jenn came back with this idea having witnessed her sister, and I knew it was great market timing because it was the peak of the recession, women were more conscious of cost per wear for outfits, and this whole “recessionista” culture was booming. Also, the flash sale sites were going up, and women were really proud to talk about bargains and deals they got. And then, designers were opening their minds to new marketing channels and new ways of getting their message across to new consumers.
In the initial [rental] trials, we’d watch girls from Harvard undergrad try on dresses — they’d put them on and twirl around in the mirror and say, “Look at me, can you imagine the look on so-and-so’s face when he sees me?!” and “I look hot, I feel great.” Actually seeing that they were so empowered by dressing up and feeling like Cinderella was inspiring. This is a concept that touches such an emotional feeling for a woman and really empowers her and gives her confidence. So that motivates and inspires me a lot of the time.
Rent the Runway has really taken off, so you two obviously are smart businesswomen. What makes you a great entrepreneur?
“This is not about dresses … it’s about exploring whatever it is that makes you feel awesome.”
Hyman: I think there has to be a semblance of humility in being an entrepreneur. Yes, you need conviction and strength of passion for your idea. That’s baseline — if you didn’t have passion for your idea, you wouldn’t even consider being an entrepreneur. But you need humility to be able to constantly change and tweak the idea, to understand that you don’t have all the answers, that you need to build a team around you. And I think it’s a constant sense of, how can we be improving? How can we become better leaders over time? How do we build the right mentorship networks for ourselves and other people in our organization so that the company continues to thrive? That’s what will continue to distinguish us an entrepreneurs going forward.
Fleiss: And this constant drive toward improvement is a huge part of our culture. We never had a business plan. Our whole approach is to test things out, see what works, and fail. Failure’s the quickest way to figure out what the right direction is, and you can change it and do it differently and do it better each time. You can’t be an entrepreneur if you’re not willing to fail.
This is a fashion-oriented business helmed by women — how did investors respond to your concept?
Hyman: One of the biggest issues we had in pitching the business originally is that there are two women that a typical investor would ask if Rent the Runway was a good idea: his wife and his administrative assistant. If you’re in VC, your wife can probably afford to buy whatever they’d like and she’s not really in our age demographic. We had to confront that from the get-go in our investor presentations by showcasing who our customer was — a 15 to 35-year-old woman — what emotional value she would receive by renting the runway and putting that customer experience front and center to potential investor groups so that they weren’t able to discount the idea before we even started pitching.
Fleiss: We’d show a video clip of women renting the dresses and twirling around in the mirror feeling awesome so people actually saw right away and said, “Oh, I get what this business is.”
While your business revolves around fashion, it’s very much a tech-based business with a lot of logistics. What drew you to you tech in the first place?
Fleiss: Neither of us had a background in technology before Rent the Runway. And I think the easy answer is, we were just thrown into it. Tech is such a necessary and important part of the business and really the backbone of our growth right now. Early on, we outsourced some of the development, and then we gradually built a team in-house. Because of that, Jenn and I got really involved with a lot of the technology and were doing a lot of the product management. We can’t code, but at this point, we can carry on a conversation about the tech of our site and we can interview and hire people effectively. … There’s just so much incremental stuff to be done with the tech components — the recommendation engines on the site, customizing everyone’s experience, providing social engagement opportunities. There’s a lot of work that we’re doing to get us to that next point of growth, so we’re really focused on technology right now.
Hyman: When you hear “tech company,” the image you have might be coders working furiously into the night in their garage, and you’re not thinking about all the components that actually build a tech organization. There is rockstar engineering talent, there’s product vision, there’s project management, there’s actual [quality assurance] (QA) of the site. Before finding Jonathan, our SVP of engineering, we had to divvy up a lot of the responsibilities on the tech team to non-tech people. So we’ve had the whole company doing and learning QA, creating wireframes and understanding how to create a product vision. And through that process, we realized that this isn’t another language. This is very important and shouldn’t be siphoned off to another sphere of the company. So it’s created far more of a collaborative culture at Rent the Runway between tech and every other division of our business.
You place a heavy premium on customer service — how important is your customer insights team?
“This is a concept that touches such an emotional feeling for a woman and really empowers her and gives her confidence.”
Fleiss: It’s the first group we really filled out in the company and a hugely important group. We view ourselves as an experience company and not a product company. Someone is coming to us for this aspirational feeling of being Cinderella for an evening out, and a lot of interactions they have with the customer insights reps help make that happen. They serve as stylists to these women — customers ask, “What do I wear to a daytime wedding in the middle of August?” “Is this going to be appropriate because I’m busty, but I have small hips?” They become trusted confidants and help guide people through these experiences, and it’s such a personal thing — these people are renting for a really important event in their life. You want to make sure that you got a dress that you love and that you look great in.
Hyman: It’s also about taking the intimidation factor out of an industry that has traditionally been extremely exclusive. We see Rent the Runway as a vehicle to let them test-drive new brands, to experiment with things that are slightly out of their comfort zone. This is not about dresses, it’s about empowerment, it’s about self-confidence and teaching women that you’re good enough to feel this way every night — you don’t have to wait for your birthday or New Year’s Eve. For $50, you can feel like a princess. We want that average 25-year-old girl who’s in the middle of the country to be able to wear Thakoon as well and to understand that she can feel just as beautiful as the girl on the pages of Vogue.
What advice do you have for other entrepreneurs?
Fleiss: It’s so important to test a concept — you can figure out ways to incrementally test your product and get it out there. Once you do that, your opportunity costs are pretty low — you’ve seen that it works for a given consumer, you’ve figured out how the initial concept might work, and if that’s feeling good to you, then you have to go for it.
Hyman: I think also entrepreneurship comes in all different forms. You can be an entrepreneur within a big corporation — in my first job at Starwood Hotels, I became and created a role for myself where I was an in-house entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship is just the implementation of creativity.
Number one, it doesn’t mean you have to start a company to be an entrepreneur.
Number two, be really honest with yourself about what you love and what you’re really passionate about. I’m fairly convinced that most peoples’ true passion comes from how they spend their time during the day. Do they like interacting with people or not? Do they like brainstorming? Do they like problem-solving? Do they like being super analytical? If you can structure a role for yourself in which you’re able to do these things that you’re interested in, I think you’ll end up being extremely successful.
The third piece of advice that I have is that far too few people just go for it. It’s very easy to make an excuse, but you’re never really going to learn the skills to be an entrepreneur — ever — until you just do it and make mistakes. There are far too few people who say, “I’m just going to do this now.” And then there are far too many people who think they have the wining idea. There are very few great ideas, but there are a lot of people who could be entrepreneurs in other ways that are just as, if not more, important. Are you going to be the person who actually implements it and gets it done? The person who builds it? The person who analyzes how to improve a business? Really understanding what your role should be within an entrepreneurial environment is super important.
Series Supported by Diet Coke®
The Extraordinary Entrepreneurs Series is supported by Diet Coke®. Now, the drink that helps you stay extraordinary brings you extraordinary people. Find Diet Coke® on Facebook for access to a whole lot of extraordinary.
More About: entrepreneurship, Extraordinary Entrepreneurs Series, rent the runwayFor more Startups coverage:Follow Mashable Startups on TwitterBecome a Fan on FacebookSubscribe to the Startups channelDownload our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad
Posted on Thu, 01 Sep 2011 17:38:40 +0000 at http://mashable.com/2011/09/01/rent-the-runway-interview/
Comments: http://mashable.com/2011/09/01/rent-the-runway-interview/#comments
