Pocket Style

Have you ever spent hours sitting and staring at your wardrobe, paralyzed by indecision about what to wear? Or which outfit to choose for a special occasion?

With over 370,000 users in the UK and 10,000 in the US, the rental app was created to make your dressing dilemmas more manageable and promises to positively contribute to the fashion economy.

It is one of the most exciting clothing and accessories apps running today. Its users can browse and borrow designer pieces, all while supporting a more sustainable shopping experience.

Developed by an investment analyst turned founder, the app functions as a rental platform where users can buy and borrow clothes, shoes, and accessories for special events.

Founded by Eshita Kabra-Davies, By Rotation aims to offer a long-term solution to the growing problem of excessive consumption in the fashion industry, while helping create a new generation of conscious investors who can profit from their own wardrobes.

The founder mentioned in an interview that she never thought it would be just extra money, and that it would make fashion such a contemporary asset class.

For her, the platform has created a pragmatic audience of people who see fashion as something they are investing in and being smart about.

How did the idea for the platform 

It was founded as a side business while its founder worked full-time as an investment analyst and was planning her honeymoon in India.

While organizing her trip and thinking about all her holiday outfits and how she would love to borrow some designer clothes for the trip, she realized a real lack of options in the UK and even in Europe. It was a first-world problem and there was a genuine need to borrow clothes.

“It wasn't just during the honeymoon that I witnessed the amount of textile waste in India. There is a town called Dappar, like a suburban town, and that's where I'm from, and I was seeing textile waste everywhere. Rajasthan is known for being a textile hub, and growing up as a shopping addict in Singapore, I simply couldn't help but feel that I was part of this problem of the linear consumption model. With many clothes, when you donate them, 90% end up in landfills, mostly in African and Asian countries like India.” - Eshita Kabra

She got the idea for renting clothes after seeing how there was a gap in the market in the UK and was inspired by other resale platforms like Vestiaire Collective and Depop, but instead focused on lending because she only wanted something for a week or a weekend.

But it wasn't just that which led her to create the platform; it was the realization of how much fashion contributes to carbon emissions, something people outside the industry don't often consider.

We always think that emissions come from oil and gas industries or airlines. It's no secret that the love for trendy fashion is harming the planet. The industry is the second largest polluter in the world, consuming an astonishing 80 billion pieces of clothing every year.

By Rotation is not only a good idea for renting clothes, but it also has the potential to help reduce fashion consumption forever, making people share what they already have with each other.

With the pandemic in 2019 and more time spent at home, many people became more aware of their fashion consumption and started looking through their wardrobes, realizing they had accumulated many things they didn't actually use.

This led to incredible growth for the platform, with many people starting to list items on By Rotation.

Since then, By Rotation has strived not only to make clothing rental socially and economically inclusive but also a very economical solution for wearing new clothes.

"Zara, which is a very well-known brand on this side of the world, now sells dresses that cost 80 pounds. That's a lot of money. I remember that in university, ten years ago, Zara dresses cost much less. I think today they are very expensive. They are not really reducing the amount of production they are doing, or the number of styles they are pushing out every week, they are just really profiting from what they are creating and continuing to mass-produce." - Eshita Kabra

What the platform offers

On the By Rotation app, the average order value is around 55 pounds throughout the year, which is cheaper than some fast fashion, and they believe that people are truly gaining access to quality fashion.

The platform offers many tips and tricks on how to make the first rental and has a list of top lenders who are highly trusted, have incredible wardrobes, and a huge variety of items in their profiles, investing in high-quality pieces.

It's about experimenting and realizing that renting an outfit can be a smart and economical solution. It can be done for graduation day, a wedding, or even your birthday.

It can start as just for a special occasion, and after seeing how easy it is, the user can find people on the app who have the same style and wear the same size, also saving items they liked to rent later.

Additionally, the platform has been an excellent opportunity for those who want extra income each month and is becoming a big business.

They created a feature in the app called the Lender Activity Dashboard, which maps how much money the user has made on the app month by month and shows which brands are at the top of the listing.

It shows the return on investment and is a great way for women to start thinking about fashion consumption more in the context of investment pieces. It's about looking at fashion as something they are investing in.

The app shows real-time data and analytics based on how people are behaving on the platform and helps lenders by informing them of the most popular brands to invest in and which are doing well for rentals, specific dresses that are trending, and the colors. 

It shows how much money has been made, how much has been saved over the year, the most rented listing, and carbon emission savings.

Recently, they created a new opportunity. They received many requests from people who had rented items and liked them very much, wanting to know if they could buy them after renting, and in some cases, lenders were open to that. That’s when they introduced the try-before-you-buy system. If someone tries a style and realizes they really love it after renting, they can now buy it. It's also a good way to sell.

The app was officially launched recently in the US, starting in New York and now having lenders in over 28 different states. The focus is on ensuring that Americans in 50 different states can easily lend and rent from each other.

There is an expectation that the app could grow and develop in the next three to five years, which would result in over half a million listings in the UK. 

Anyone would be able to rent or borrow from someone living three streets away, perhaps on the same night. 

This would be faster than next-day delivery offered by retailers. Another aspect of convenience that comes with sharing instead of buying something new.

By jbanaggia