Brief 1 Rent the Runway

Decision and Background: Jennifer Hyman and Jennifer Fleiss, positioned separately as CEO and president for Rent the Runway, should decide whether to raise a new funding round ahead of schedule as well as whether to expand their business in new direction, delivering women’s dreams instead of just value and convenience. The company is measured nearly breakeven in first year assuming to grow steadily. Based on feedbacks from customers, the demand is strong on styling advice as younger women, RTR’s target customer, tend to lack of confidence and still unfamiliar with the behavior to try new brands by renting. Rapidly increase inventory and expand other product range such as accessories and maternity wear can obtain more customers yet the business just launch no longer and the internal organizational structure isn’t completely. RTR is short of human resources, especially in technology, upgrading the website to be more interactive with customers.

Recommendation and Basis: Hyman and Fleiss should establish HR department to manage the principle of hiring and training employees. In order to improve the website more interactive, they should hire people who is good at programming. Since it is important to get feedback from customers, the customer insight team should breakdown the job into searching, analyzing, and solving. Adjust the operation process from previous searching suggestion and hire more people into logistic department to make the business more efficient. At the same time, they should reposition RTR as making women feel more confidence and beautiful instead of delivering value and convenience through dress rentals. Expand product lines to fulfill demands and feature its website to be a platform for people sharing experience. Let browsers get into the game, increasing conversion rate. In the same time, Hyman and Fleiss should raise more fund early to cover the cost that RTR will use to develop new direction.

Assumptions and Uncertainties: This assumes that