Rent the Runway

“That wasn't one investor, that was most. Let me talk to my wife, my daughter, or my admin. Those were the three, you know, target customers that we would hear.”

“And then this person decided to call one of my board members up on the phone and say, you know, Jen never responds to me. And I think that this is a real problem, and She's a really unresponsive CEO, and she's probably, if she's doing this to me, she's probabl…”

“Rent the Runway isn't just profitable. It's also become America's single largest dry cleaner.”

“I proceeded to tell everyone else on my board, as well as some key executives who were working with me at Rent the Runway at the time, and the board was unbelievably supportive, and we decided that we were not going to do business anymore with this individual …”

“I, through the process of building Rent the Runway, was sexually harassed by one individual, and I'm happy to share that experience. However, I will say that I've had interactions with dozens and dozens of venture capitalists at dozens of firms, and this was j…”

“I was always confident that I would turn Rent the Runway into a consumer behavior that millions of people did, and that I would build a, you know, I still believe we're going to build a multi-billion dollar company.”

“Both Jen and Jennifer each own 13% of the company, and it's put them on Forbes' list of the richest self-made women to watch.”

“I realized I was having a conversation with my sister about the experience of wearing an amazing dress, of walking into a party feeling self-confident and feeling beautiful, and that's what she cared about. And she didn't care about the actual ownership of the…”

“You know, Rent the Runway is primarily a technology and logistics company. We have 1200 employees. 10 employees are in my fashion department. And, you know, hundreds are in my logistics department. Hundreds are in my engineering department.”

“So because of hustling to get this story and the luck of ending up on the front page of the New York Times, we met our first year sales projections in three weeks”

“The initial idea, actually, which, you know, we've never really told, the initial idea was, what if we could rent the dresses that she is selling on her website, so what if we powered rental for her on DVF.com?”

“Yeah, so I'm here to build a hundred billion dollar company, and To change the way we get dressed every single day all over the world, and to democratize what I think is one of the most elite industries on earth, and one of the most wasteful industries on eart…”

“You can imagine we were renting current season designer inventory for five to 10% of the price at the exact same time that it was at Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus and Saks and Net-a-Porter for sale.”

“The closet would move into the cloud because people were valuing experiences over ownership, and that there would be a time where a portion of what we wore every single day would be comprised of things that we don't own forever.”

“Our average subscriber is using us a 120 days of the year.”

“And before Rent the Runway, I had managed all of 10 people. And now my company has 1500 people and will likely have 3000 people by the end of next year.”

“And because most investors are men, They were able to compare it to something they did, which was rent a tuxedo.”

“The theft rate, so the rent the runway rate at Macy's is only 35%, whereas at Neiman Marcus it's 70%, proving once and for all rich people steal more than poor people.”

“We believe it's in the world, but that, that's certainly a business that I never thought I would be in.”

“Like, to us, if you close down your warehouse, you're essentially, rent the runway wouldn't survive. And the work that we've been doing over the last 11 years to build the company would just disappear.”

“So much of our business is based around people leaving their homes. Whether you are going to work or you're hanging out with friends, you know, often the act of getting dressed is somewhat an external act. Where you're getting dressed for something, and we def…”

“We had to execute a small layoff, but a much larger furlough of our employee base across every single division of the company.”

“Coming into 2025, the vast majority of the inventory that we have on our platform, we don't pay for anymore. And we don't pay up front. We just revenue share with our designer partners because they view Rent the Runway as a significant part of their marketing.”

“We were the first company in history to go public with a female CEO, COO, and CFO.”

“Now, we didn't really have a structured idea. So, you know, we were kind of iterating the idea By pitching it.”

“I think sometimes people think that data has to be big data in order to matter. And I've found even at the size that we are, that sometimes it's the small data. It's the conversations with, you know, eight women at dinner. That give you better insight than the…”