Marley Alles began out in accounting.
She thought that her dream was to work at a giant company. “After which once I got there, I used to be like ‘oh, that’s it,” she told TechCrunch.
Alles began fostering other passions and located herself interested in the world of startups. She would hearken to every podcast and browse each book, taking notes on topics that interested her.
She didn’t think much of it until one summer when so lots of her friends got married, that she found herself spending 1000’s of dollars on bridesmaid dresses and bachelorette looks. Sooner or later, someone approached her and asked to borrow one in every of her dresses. “I used to be like ‘yeah, needless to say, take it,’” she recalled. “After which I believed, ‘how can this be done on a bigger scale?’”
Alles had all these expensive dresses just sitting in her closet. She didn’t wish to sell it, but she knew she probably would never wear those gowns again. “That’s what led me, long story short, to create Rax,” she said.
Alles launched Rax earlier this 12 months as a peer-to-peer clothing rental company. It functions right away as a marketplace (it doesn’t own any clothing inventory), where users scroll through listings and connect with individuals who have clothing items they wish to rent.
She’s bootstrapped the corporate thus far, enough to totally code the app and officially launch it. The primary few customers were her family and friends, and the remainder got here by word of mouth. Alles said she leaned into the concept of “constructing in public,” where she posted online about her adventures creating this product in hopes of amassing an engaged audience of potential customers. She has about 5,000 users on the app right away.
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Rex is one in every of the primary of its kind to be launched in Toronto. It’s like Rent-the-Runway, or Recent York’s Pickle, or Europe’s ByRotation. The thought of renting clothes — much like buying secondhand —has been picking up steam because it is seen as a more environmentally sustainable strategy to devour fashion somewhat than buying latest items for every latest season.
“It’s driving the circularity of fashion,” Alles said.
But what makes Rex different from many others is that she offers long-term rentals. “On our platform, you’ll be able to rent as much as six months,” she said. “On competitor platforms, it’s every day rentals. So it gets really expensive if you need to rent for a pair week vacation. Or possibly you desire a winter jacket for the season.”
At TechCrunch Disrupt in October, Rex announced its first foray into the U.S. market. Alles said she had been an enormous fan of TechCrunch and applied for the Battlefield competition, where she later won the highest consumer pitch within the competition.
Alles said she was surprised to win. “There have been so many corporations that had like 1000’s or lots of of 1000’s of users; raised [like] $20 million in my category, and one [had] the lead actors from [the show] Silicon Valley,” she said.
Still, she found the experience “awesome.” Alles went as much as every startup booth to introduce herself to other founders, and also attended some sessions in addition to partook in networking. Actually, that was one in every of the most important lessons she’s said she’s learned as a founder — the importance of in-person interaction since it helps her connect with the community higher.
Now that Disrupt has passed, Alles said the corporate hopes to proceed its expansion across Recent York and begin constructing out a rental service platform to supply fashion designers and retailers seeking to offer rental clothing to consumers.
“We’ve the technology, now we have the audience,” she said, adding that brands are also taking a look at ways to develop into more sustainable, and corporations like Rex allow them to do it. “I feel things are recovering and persons are becoming more aware of their impact.”