In conclusion, Rent the Runway has the hallmarks of a successful online business, but several wide-scale changes have to be made to ensure future growth. RTR needs to utilize its insights on customer demographics and appeal to develop innovative ways to improve conversion rates. It is difficult to get women to be comfortable renting dresses online without fittings, and brand ambassadors who have cultivated a sense of trust with their audience are the most optimal way to achieve that. Additionally, current marketing strategies have focused solely on PR without taking advantage of brand ambassadors, even though forty percent of their members come from word-of-mouth referrals. Despite their projected demographic, RTR is in heavy demand by women in their thirties and older, and the inventory needs more choices to meet their preferences. Technological deficit and inventory management are RTR’s most serious problems, but smaller issues could also be tackled to boost credibility. Efficient operations and logistics are among the most important facets of RTR’s business model and thus require a hired expert to meet future demand. Fleiss states that RTR needs to analyze customer rental patterns and develop algorithms to optimize inventory according to fashion trends and peak demand periods for different kinds of dresses. Fleiss recognizes that their warehouse is often chaotic, and directly after the launch, they were “scrambling” to meet demand because its processing system is “essentially manual” (Eisenmann & Wining, 2012, p. The rental process and distribution need to be optimized and error rates reduced to avoid delayed shipments, long waiting lists, and frustrated customers. RTR warehouses have to wait for dress returns and take them to be dry-cleaned or mended before shipping them off to the next customers. Secondly, RTR struggles with inefficient operational and logistical systems. If RTR wants to institute innovative measures, they need to pay attention to their technology deficit, hire an experienced CTO, and expand their engineering team. While the co-founders have a vision for the product and a customer experience geared towards online personalization, they cannot judge the web developers’ quality of work or identify missing skills in the engineering team. Even after finally deciding not to outsource website management, RTR suffers from poor site usability and a confusing checkout process resulting in a high rate of car abandonment. Before the launch, Fleiss and Hyman had already lost out on thousands of dollars because of their incapability to manage website development and dependence on bad recommendations from former classmates. RTR is primarily a technological service with a fashion component, and it requires an executive branch that reflects it. Firstly, Rent the Runway (RTR) has not reached its maximum efficiency because of the co-founders’ lack of technical expertise.
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