Nuuly, URBN's Rental Service, Enters the Sharing Economy

URBN’s latest launch wants to help consumers with overflowing closets rent the runway, the boardroom, and the Bushwick commune.

Urban Outfitters’s parent company launched its first clothing rental service, Nuuly, yesterday with over 1,000 styles from over 100 brands. Customers can rent six items at a time per month; each month costs $88.

Nuuly isn’t reinventing the dressing rack. Rent the Runway has helped consumers ballgown on a budget since 2009. Taking a cue from RTR’s unicorn run, brands like American Eagle, Express, and Ann Taylor have used clothing rental service CaaStle to offer rental packages to customers.

Nuuly has an HQ advantage. As one of six brands in URBN’s portfolio (along with UO, Free People, Anthropologie, BHLDN, and Terrain), Nuuly can avoid the scaling problems other online rental companies have faced from the start.

• Nuuly dipped into the stockrooms at URBN's existing brands to fill its own racks, reducing overall inventory costs.
• To help smooth out Nuuly's early logistics wrinkles, URBN opened a 300,000-square-foot warehouse to house inventory and process returns.
• Nuuly doesn’t have to spend precious ad dollars for brand exposure. Its parent company has happily accepted teens’ allowances for decades.

Zoom out: Nuuly moves retail deeper into the sharing economy, which is expected to reach $335 billion in 2025. And closets are just the start. Furniture rental startups like Fernish and Everset are growing in coastal cities where young professionals want to move without baggage. Big box brands are getting in on it too—even Ikea is toying with furniture rentals.

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