Editor’s Note: Rent The Runway shares closed at $17. 25 on Friday, Oct. 29, down about 18% after 3 business days. Forbes estimates that Jennifer Hyman’s stake is now worth around $38 million and Jennifer Fleiss’s is worth $10 million.
Rent The Runway shares will debut on the Nasdaq on Wednesday at $21 each, the high end of their target. Great news for the CEO of the clothing rental and subscription company, Jennifer Hyman, whose 5. 1% stake is worth about $48. 9 million. Forbes estimates that, more than a decade after co-founding the company with former classmate Jennifer Fleiss, although Fleiss left the company in 2017, he still owns just under 1% of Rent The Runway’s capital, valued at about $12 million. The spokesperson responded to several requests for comment. )
Rent The Runway hopes that public procurement will return the company to unicorn status. In April 2020, the company made a $100 investment in the Series G that provided much-needed liquidity amid the Covid-19 collapse, but that fundraiser was valued at $800 million. Rent The Runway announces its recovery as the pandemic progresses, compared to the previous billion dollars, according to knowledge provider PitchBook. the balance of 2020.
Revenue for the year ended January 31, 2021 was $157. 5 million, down 39% from the year before the pandemic; the corporate recorded a net loss of $171. 1 million. Sales began this summer, with revenue of 39% for the quarter ended July 31 compared to the previous quarter ended April 31. However, the corporate still lost dinero. de $84. 7 million in the July quarter, just 4% less than the losses it posted in the quarter ending in July 2020, just months after the pandemic began.
But the company’s monthly subscription business, which accounts for 83% of sales, is picking up: after the number of active subscribers fell from 134,000 to 55,000 between January 2020 and January 2021, it returned to around 98,000 this summer.
While Hyman’s $50 million fortune is negligible, it puts her well below the threshold of Forbes’ 2021 annual rating of the world’s richest self-taught women. an estimated net worth of $255 million thanks to its Meaningful Beauty anti-aging skincare logo.
The IPO caps a roller coaster ride for Rent The Runway, which grew in its early years before experiencing problems. Hyman, 41, and Fleiss, 38, met as MBA fellows at Harvard Business School in 2007, and their high-end rental concept. Designer dresses online for special occasions took off temporarily. The duo temporarily increased the budget of venture capital heavyweights such as Bain Capital Ventures and Kleiner Perkins, and particularly expanded startup throughout the broader sharing economy.
In February 2020, Hyman brought the finishing touches to a sleek new Brooklyn office, where most of its workers would work. most of the business and grew at more than one hundred percent annually.
A month later, the pandemic arrived. The newly confined staff put on their sports pants with no more weddings, dances or offices to dress. In fiscal year 2020 (until January 31), Hyman laid off 33% of the staff, put another 37% of leave and cut salaries for 3 months for those who remained, the losses continue to accumulate.
“The recovery is much earlier and much more pronounced than we imagine,” Hyman told Forbes in June. “No one needs to use what they used in 2020. “
Rent The Runway shareholders will know if the recovery is as strong as Hyman describes.
I am a New York-based journalist on the Forbes Wealth team that covers the richest people in the world and tracks their wealth.
I am a New York-based journalist on the Forbes’ Wealth team that covers the other richest people in the world and tracks their wealth. I was in the past Associate Editor-in-Chief of the Money section