LONDON — Victoria Prew has raised 10 million pounds in total funding for her rental platform Hurr with help from venture capital firm Praetura Ventures and participation from existing investors including Octopus Ventures (early backers of Depop), Ascension and D4 Ventures.
The company is a community-led peer-to-peer marketplace, as well as working under a white label SaaS solution with brands such as Mulberry, Coperni, Ganni and retailers Matches, Selfridges, John Lewis and Flannels.
Since launching in 2019, Hurr has had more than 70,000 listings, with the top lenders on the platform making more than 50,000 pounds.
Hurr.com has been visited by more than 30 million users to date.
“Two percent of VC funding goes to females and it actually declined last year. Statistics aren’t in our favor, but the 10 million pound funding is going to accelerate our growth,” Prew said in an interview.
Hurr owns zero stock, but operates on behalf of 130 brands to sell their stock, which is equivalent to more than 30 million pounds.
The success of the rental platform has been in copy and pasting Hurr’s technology across to its retailers, as well as cross publishing the listed items onto Hurr.
Hurr’s contracts with the four retailers — Matches, Selfridges, John Lewis and Flannels — remains a “long-term” one because of the advanced complexity of the technology.
“We have proven off the back of this fundraiser that the most defensible and scalable model in rental is a hybrid one, which is our biggest unique selling point. We basically run three businesses under one roof, but it means that it’s almost impossible to replicate,” Prew said.
The proof is in the pudding for Hurr — when a brand’s item has been loaned, it’s 70 percent more likely that the user renting it will buy from the brand.
The platform is a place for new discovery; Prew said it’s where many young customers come to try out brands such as 16Arlington, Casablanca and Ganni, which teamed with Hurr in 2022, exposing the Danish brand to an even bigger community, and enabled it to push further into the U.K. market.
“I report to the CEOs of all the big brands and retailers, they all know that they have to change their buy-it once model in order to evolve. Sustainability credentials aside, what consumers are expecting is changing,” Prew said.
Last week, Net-a-porter teamed with Hurr and By Rotation on a rental edit launching soon featuring more than 100 partywear pieces across dresses and bags from luxury and contemporary designers, including Nina Ricci, Rebecca Vallance, Saloni, Victoria Beckham and Roksanda.
“Our first step into fashion rental brings an exciting opportunity to introduce Net-a-porter’s exceptional curation of partywear to new and broader audiences. The launch of our rental edit is key to enriching the global ambitions of our circular fashion offer,” said Vikki Kavanagh, managing director at Net-a-porter and Mr Porter.
Hurr has also been drip feeding its customers small edits of menswear.
“There’s absolutely a market for menswear rental, but it’s just much smaller. There’s two menswear customers, it’s either the tuxedo-based traditional rental, which will always exist, or the hype-street Gen Z collaborations, which is where the Selfridges rental product is focused,” said Prew, adding that her dream would be for sold out collaborations to be listed on Hurr.
Another robust category for the business is skiwear, which was booming through peer-to-peer last year.
Skiwear previously contributed 1 percent to Hurr’s revenue, but now it makes up 10 percent of the business just by capitalizing on the demand.
Dresses remain the biggest category for Hurr, followed by suiting. Occasion wear renting has been a success over the past four years, but Prew is firm that she’s not building an occasion wear-based business model.
“We are building rental for the elevated every day outside of gym kits, denim and sweatpants — we will rent you everything else, from a cool Khaite bag to statement Alighieri earrings. The focus for 2024 is about how you move rental into the everyday,” Prew said.
