Rent the Runway's Chief Merchant on Why the Subscription Closet Is the Most Underrated Data Asset in Fashion

The fashion industry has spent decades operating on a basic information gap. A brand sells a dress to a department store buyer. The buyer places it on a floor or a website. At some point it either sells or it does not. What the brand never learns is whether the customer loved it, where she wore it, how the fabric felt, or whether the fit ran small. All of that signal disappears at the point of sale.

“If you’re in a department store,” said Sarah Tam, Chief Merchant Officer at Rent the Runway, “all you get is a sell-through. That other information is a black box.”

At The Lead Summit 2026, Tam made the case that Rent the Runway has quietly built something the rest of the industry cannot easily copy: a live, continuous data layer on how real women interact with clothing. The results of that data, for the brands on the platform and for Rent the Runway itself, are reshaping how both sides think about product development and discovery.

The Closet Has Changed

Tam opened with a framing that gets to the heart of why rental has more commercial momentum than its critics have credited. The relationship between women and their wardrobes has shifted. Where a closet was once largely static, a museum of purchased items that may or may not get worn, it is now a dynamic system. Today, a consumer can buy new, buy resale, sell what she no longer wants, and borrow items she needs for a specific occasion. Rent the Runway sits inside that system as the flexible layer that removes the friction of getting dressed for any occasion without the commitment of a purchase.

The numbers Tam shared to illustrate this are specific. The average Rent the Runway customer discovers more than 45 brands in her first year on the platform. That discovery is not passive browsing. It is trial without financial risk. As a result, 80% of customers who try a brand through Rent the Runway go on to purchase that brand elsewhere, whether through the platform, the brand’s own site, or a retail store. In other words, the subscription model is functioning as a top-of-funnel conversion engine for the broader fashion industry, not just for Rent the Runway.

What the Data Actually Unlocks

The data advantage Rent the Runway holds over traditional retail is not simply about volume. It is about depth. When a department store sells a garment, the data it captures is transactional: which item sold, at what price, how many units moved. Rent the Runway captures something different. Where did the customer wear the item? How did it fit across different body types? What did the fabric feel like after repeated wear? Did she love it enough to rent it again?

Tam gave a clear example of what this data can do in practice. Designer Tanya Taylor had built her reputation around dresses when Rent the Runway began working with her. Tam sat down with her in a New York showroom and walked through platform data on what subscribers were looking for beyond Taylor’s core category. The data pointed clearly toward an opportunity to expand. Taylor wanted to test a plus-size line. Tam suggested putting it on the platform for two weeks and letting the customer respond in real time. The feedback came back quickly: fit notes, fabric preferences, honest observations from actual wearers. What started as a two-week test became 30% of Taylor’s business.

That example matters because it represents a feedback loop that does not exist in traditional wholesale or DTC. The customer is not reviewing a purchase she has already committed to. She is giving honest, post-wear feedback on something she rented. The friction of buyer’s remorse is absent. So the signal is cleaner.

Discovery as a Distribution Strategy

For emerging and international brands, Rent the Runway has become something closer to a market entry tool than a distribution channel. Tam described two European brands that approached the platform before launching in the United States. They did not yet know where to distribute, where to open stores, or how their product would land with an American consumer. Launching on Rent the Runway first gave them real-time data on which zip codes were renting their product, which cities indexed highest, and what their core US customer looked like. That gave them a consumer map before they spent a dollar on real estate.

Beyond distribution insight, the amplification effect compounds the value further. Tam noted that 78% of Rent the Runway customers post and share items they are wearing, generating organic reach that paid media cannot replicate. Brands on the platform have reported ten times more social media tags on listed items compared to the same items in traditional retail. Those tags drive search and in-store traffic that converts. As a result, the platform is functioning as a marketing channel that also generates revenue.

The Review Layer Brands Are Reading Every Day

One dimension of the Rent the Runway data model that Tam returned to repeatedly is the review system. The platform has built up millions of reviews written by subscribers reporting on the actual wearing experience, not the purchasing one. That distinction matters because the incentives are different. A customer who paid full price for a garment has a stake in having made a good decision. A subscriber who rented it for a week and returned it does not. Her review is therefore more honest.

Tam was direct about who reads those reviews. “I can guarantee you all of the designers are on there reading them every day.” The data is not just useful for Rent the Runway’s own buying decisions. It feeds back into the design process at the brand level, informing fabric choices, sizing decisions, and category expansions. Previously, that kind of insight would have required expensive consumer research panels to achieve.

Taken together, what Tam described inverts the standard information flow in fashion. Traditionally, the retailer holds the sell-through data and the brand is downstream of it. On Rent the Runway, the brand gets access to post-wear behavioral data that no sell-through report could ever contain. The brands using that data actively are building better products, expanding into categories with proven demand, and entering new markets with a consumer map already in hand. The ones treating Rent the Runway purely as a distribution decision are leaving most of the value on the table.