Last year, clothing rental company Nuuly repaired 1.7 million garments, removing 1.2 million stains, replacing 50,000 buttons, stitching 500,000 rips, and shaving more than 64,000 cubic inches of sweater fuzz—enough fuzz to fill a hot tub, for reference.
Those efforts allowed the company to keep more than 42,000 pounds of clothes in rotation on the platform, which is owned by Urban Outfitters, Free People, and Anthropologie parent URBN. The company enables its 300,000 subscribers to rent six styles a month from more than 300 brands for $98, reaching profitability in 2023.
Nuuly is “scratching that itch of wanting to have newness and trend in their life without the burden of the ownership,” Sky Pollard, Nuuly’s head of product, told Retail Brew, but in order to ensure that happens, it has to keep the products just like new. The company, whose net sales had grown 48.4% YoY as of November, opened a new 600,000-square-foot fulfillment and laundry center in Kansas City last year, joining its first facility located outside Philadelphia.
Nuuly does not charge any damage fees, unlike Rent the Runway, which has a stricter policy that covers only minor wear and tear, and encourages subscribers not to wash the items themselves. As such, about 25% of the clothes in its offerings today have received at least one repair and 9,000 items in its original assortment in 2019 remain in rotation. Pollard broke down Nuuly’s repair and cleaning process and life cycle of the company’s garments.
Washed up: When new items arrive at Nuuly’s distribution center, its team members test wash the clothes largely according to instructions, though they may tweak the cycle to be more gentle depending on the item and materials, Pollard said. They then assess for shrinking or damage before assigning one of more than a dozen different wash types to the item. These include wet washing in its custom-built (and brightly colored) washers or dry cleaning, as well as special instructions like washing in lingerie bags.
Then, items that need, say, a zipper replaced, lining fixed, or stain removed head to its repair team—the company trained 84 repair technicians last year—and are then re-inspected before rejoining the racks, Pollard said.
“A lot of garments fail that initial inspection, have to go back and get a little bit of love, and then can get put back into inventory,” she said. “It’s a pretty high percentage of the time that we’re giving it a second once-over.”
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Not only does this process help Nuuly make its merchandise last longer, but it also informs which garments are best suited for the platform from a durability standpoint going forward (denim is a winner, but loosely knit sweaters are much tougher), and Nuuly will give feedback to brands on its platform on how the materials are holding up, Pollard said. This also helps URBN determine what materials and production methods are the best choice for its brands, she noted.
Clean break: The average life cycle of a Nuuly product varies widely—a denim or wool item may last years, but a stubborn red wine stain could take a dress out of rotation after a single wear. Pollard said the company also looks at its product review for consumer feedback on how worn out an item is, and takes the life cycle into account when determining the lower-than-retail price at which consumers can purchase an item they’ve rented.
Once products are taken out of the rental rotation, they have a few different avenues they can take. Some are given a second life through Re_Nuuly, an upcycling effort that uses the materials to create new styles, often through designer collaborations, creating garments subscribers can also rent. Last year, 5,800 products were upcycled through Re_Nuuly. Retired garments can also be sold at Reclectic, a retail outlet concept from URBN with four locations along with a forthcoming Dallas store.
Last year, Nuuly also introduced The Thrift Shop, allowing subscribers to buy items not in their monthly rental at a discount as high as 80% off. Pollard said this further helps Nuuly winnow down its inventory, especially for out-of-season items, and allow for more new items to be brought into circulation.
+1: Of course, you can’t save them all, as was the case with a harrowing TikTok in December chronicling a subscriber’s pair of Nuuly cargo jeans that met an unfortunate fate on the NYC subway, garnering 10.8 million views. Nuuly used the opportunity to highlight its cleaning and repairs process—and customer service—with a TikTok of its own that’s been viewed 5.2 million times.
“Life happens when people are wearing their clothes and we never want Nuuly to become a source of stress at all,” said Pollard, who confirmed the jeans in question have, in fact, been tossed.