Confidence in Rental During Turbulent Times: Armoire Raises New Funding
2020 was an incredibly difficult year. But even in the darkest of times, there are bright spots. Today we’re proud to share that we raised a $7.4M Seed Extension round that includes $3.5M in new funding. This new funding will allow us to continue building the dream closet for our ever-growing community. With this announcement, we wanted to take a look back on the past year as well as share some of our plans for 2021 and beyond.
We believe clothes should complement the journey of a woman’s life: the ups-and-downs, the big moments, the little moments, and at times even chaos. Over the last year, we are proud to have been there for our members. As life as we knew it changed dramatically this year, our members relied on us to bring a sense of normalcy and joy through uncertain times. Our decision to start carrying “stay at home” wear is reflective of our primary motivation as a company: to help women find clothing that allows them to live their lives with a smile on their face and excitement in their closets, as conveniently as possible.
Armoire survived and thrived in the pandemic, unlike our competition, thanks to a hard-wired culture of listening to our customers. While Rent the Runway moved to eliminate their unlimited rental offering, we ran in the other direction, introducing an even more flexible 6-item unlimited plan that stands as the only truly unlimited offering in the market. Our customer-centric focus is reflected in the retention of our most loyal subscribers. Our tenured members have truly helped carry us through the pandemic. Since last March, our number of active subscribers with 9+ months of tenure has actually increased by 24%.
The decline of traditional retail has greatly accelerated over the past 10 months. We believe the evolution of shopping behavior will continue, and not just as a shift from physical retail to traditional ecommerce. The desire for simplification, personalization, and conscious consumption will drive consumers towards differentiated models like StitchFix and more importantly, rental. Armoire is positioned better than ever before to take advantage of the drastic changes in consumer needs and behavior we are currently experiencing.
The future of fashion is community and clothing. In July we launched Armoire 2.0, which included a first of its kind social component—The PWR Feed—inspired by our members sharing pictures in their Armoire outfits with each other in a private Facebook group. Upon launching The PWR Feed, nearly all our engagement metrics doubled overnight. Members were immediately posting looks, sharing positive comments, and renting styles their peers were wearing.
Our vision for Armoire is to enable a daily shopping habit. The clothing rental model paired with rich social functionality allows customers to experience the best aspects of fashion, as frequently as they want, without the cost and waste of traditional shopping. We want to enable this loop of inspiration, discovery, unboxing, sharing, and positive feedback through a single convenient platform. The daily shopping habit is independent of where our customer is going and what she’s doing. It’s the idea that every day she has a beautiful, positive community to go to that helps her build the perfect closet for her life.
Looking forward to 2021 and beyond we’re laser-focused on growing our community and delivering on this vision. As we realize this brand promise in new and exciting ways, our top four value propositions remain the same: simplify your life, spend wisely, experience joy, and consume consciously. We’re excited to continue on this journey and we can’t wait to see where the next year takes us!
Finally, we’re deeply thankful to the humans that brought us here. To the Armoire team: thank you for sticking together through these unprecedented times. When things are going great, startups are super fun. When things are tough, they are scary. It takes courage to persevere, and you did. We are so thankful for it. To our members: everything we do is in service of you, and we’re grateful to you for sticking by us when we needed it most. And to our investors, new and old: thank you for believing in us, and seeing us through. We will make you proud, and that’s a promise.
With Style,
Ambika + Tristan
