We’re not a rental business.
The world is so black and white. As with everything, the circular fashion movement has been classified into Resale and Rental. We've created market sizes, based on crude surveys of consumer attitudes to second-hand and rental. Yet we've given little thought for alternative models which aren't so easily classified or limited because they're actually doing something NEW.
While rental is the perfect term for one-off clothing articles which are accessed by a person for a singular occasion. And is brilliantly executed by Hurr and Hirestreet among others. It just doesn't work for what we do. And (shock horror) we don't think that the future of kids clothing is 'renting' them (in the traditional sense at least)!
We took the problem of kids' clothing back to its basic tenets. Children need lots of clothes at any one time. But those needs are constantly shifting meaning they will rareley need any one item for more than a few months. Hence why buying clothes for them new makes NO sense.
But neither does renting them as most people understand the word. You can't dictate in advance how long something will be needed for. You can't limit them to 10 / 15 / 20 items of the same type when one month they'll need barely anything because of school uniform, and others they'll need a full Winter Outdoor set. And they rarely need one-off, occasion items.
What they need is an unlimited supply of items which they can access as and when they need them - a shared wardrobe if you like. It should look like this:
🌍 choose new if you like, or pre-worn when it's appropriate.
🌍 no limits on how often something can be put in and out of the closet (as long as we don't encourage unsustainable behaviour).
🌍 scale items up and down along with the needs of the child.
🌍 be charged for exactly what you use - no more, no less.
🌍 easy access to second-hand items to purchase for those occasions when an item will genuinely be worn for a longer period of time.
Clothing-as-a-Service is the way it's described in the US. We call it a Clothing Club. It requires tech. A new attitude. And great communication about how it works. It is truly designed for parents.
Most important of all, we think this makes it more accessible and appealing to a wider range of parents for whom rental might not resonate. The more people we can convince to share their clothes, the bigger the impact we can have.
Let us know what you think. Do you prefer the idea of a clothing club for kids clothes over rental? Does it make as much sense to you as it does to us? We'd love to know