Exam 12: Rent the Runway: Entrepreneurs Expanding an Industry by Blending Tech with Fashion

Several have wondered how big sharing firms can get. Airbnb has more beds than any hotel chain and Uber dwarfs any taxi or car service firm, but ZipCar never grew as large as major car rental firms. To get a sense of the size of the firm, Rent the Runway has had over 5.5 million women as customers of their service.

Describe how technology related to return envelope scanning and order scheduling operates to keep Rent the Runway satisfying customers while minimizing costs.

Explain how Rent the Runway Unlimited subscription service works.

Describe the experiments Rent the Runway's founders conducted to verify their idea even before building out their website and operations model.

Rent the Runway shut down its Facebook presence because photos showing a dress on another (non-model) customer resulted in a dramatically lower than average rental percentage.

Which of the following did not help create demand for Rent the Runway?

The term _______________________ is often used in entrepreneurship and new product development and refers to a bare-bones offering that allows entrepreneurs and product developers to collect customer feedback and to validate concepts and assumptions that underlie a business idea.

The term ____________________ refers to when founders of a company alter their product offering, business model, or target market in hopes of crafting a more viable business.

What is Rent the Runway Unlimited?

_________________ is a software development approach where an organization's developers release products, features, and updates in shorter cycles, when ready, rather than wait for centrally-managed delivery schedules.

How is Rent the Runway working to encourage entrepreneurship among women?

What product types did Rent the Runway Unlimited start with? Why?

How can data analytics inform operations at Rent the Runway?

The term _________________________ is used in the business press to refer to startups valued at $1 billion or more.

Since product focus is so important for a startup, Rent the Runway has resisted the urge to offer anything other than high-end dress rental.

Determining product/market fit is often very expensive for entrepreneurs, since it amounts, essentially, to fully building out a firm's website and operational model.

Describe why CLV is especially difficult for new firms with new models to calculate.

________________________ refers to the value of future cash flows discounted into today's dollars (it is discounted because a dollar today should be worth more in the future assuming inflation or the potential to earn money on the dollar if it is invested).

Describe the advantages that Rent the Runway's physical stores offer the firm:

Creating a business often involves convincing suppliers to participate in your new offering. While Rent the Runway had proven customer interesting, some designers had initial concerns about Jenn Hyman and Jenny Fleiss's firm. Briefly describe supplier concern.