The startup is now renting out dresses made by in-house brands, telling customers they retail for hundreds of dollars despite never being sold in a store.
A dress from Slate & Willow flanked by others from Halston Heritage and ML Monique Lhuillier.
Rent the Runway / Via renttherunway.com
Rent the Runway has quietly added a new line of products to its online store for renting designer clothing: its own in-house fashion label, featured alongside offerings from big-name labels like Badgley Mischka, ML Monique Lhuillier and Nicole Miller.
Dresses from a brand called Slate & Willow are now being offered on Rent the Runway's site, priced similarly to other designer options. One, the "Copper Fleur Shift," says it retails for a whopping $595 and costs just $40 for a four-day rental.
Nowhere is it mentioned that Slate & Willow is a private brand created by Rent the Runway, or that despite advertising a "retail price," the brand isn't sold in any store. Instead of being based on store prices for the brand, the price is set by Rent the Runway "based on the cost of production," according to a spokesperson.
"Just like the items from the designer partners in our inventory — which are also not sold, just rented — we include the retail value to add context for our customers so they can make informed purchasing/renting decisions," the spokesperson told BuzzFeed News.
This Slate & Willow dress lists a retail price of $595 and rental price of $40. The retail price is calculated by Rent the Runway "based on the cost of production."
Rent the Runway / Via renttherunway.com
It's telling of the retail landscape today that even Rent the Runway, a startup built on the idea of renting out expensive designer dresses for a fraction of what they would cost in a store, has gotten into the more profitable private label business.
Bloomingdales did it with Aqua, and Nordstrom has in-house labels like Treasure&Bond and Halogen. But it's all the more fascinating given Rent the Runway's core business is all about providing affordable access to high-end, name-brand formalwear.
In addition to Slate & Willow for clothes, Rent the Runway has another in-house accessory brand called Ella Carter. With rental and retail prices in line with its designer goods, the items blend in seamlessly as authentic name-brand items. It isn't disclosed on Rent the Runway's product pages or elsewhere on the website that they're private.
The labels "fill the voids in the marketplace to better service our customers," Rent the Runway's spokesperson told BuzzFeed News in an email. "If there is something we know our customer gravitates towards or something our customers are requesting, we work with talented designers in our community to fill in the gaps."
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