Marley Alles started out in accounting.
She thought that her dream was to work at a big company. “And then once I got there, I was like ‘oh, that’s it,” she told TechCrunch.
Alles began fostering other passions and found herself curious about the world of startups. She would listen to every podcast and read each book, taking notes on topics that interested her.
She didn’t think much of it until one summer when so many of her friends got married, that she found herself spending thousands of dollars on bridesmaid dresses and bachelorette looks. One day, someone approached her and asked to borrow one of her dresses. “I was like ‘yeah, for sure, take it,’” she recalled. “And then I thought, ‘how can this be done on a larger scale?’”
Alles had all these expensive dresses just sitting in her closet. She didn’t want to sell it, but she knew she probably would never wear those gowns again. “That’s what led me, long story short, to create Rax,” she said.
Alles launched Rax earlier this year as a peer-to-peer clothing rental company. It functions right now as a marketplace (it does not own any clothing inventory), where users scroll through listings and connect with people who have clothing items they want to rent.
She’s bootstrapped the company so far, enough to fully code the app and officially launch it. The first few customers were her friends and family, and the rest came by word of mouth. Alles said she leaned into the idea of “building in public,” where she posted online about her adventures creating this product in hopes of amassing an engaged audience of potential customers. She has about 5,000 users on the app right now.
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Rex is one of the first of its kind to be launched in Toronto. It’s like Rent-the-Runway, or New York’s Pickle, or Europe’s ByRotation. The idea of renting clothes — similar to buying secondhand —has been picking up steam as it is seen as a more environmentally sustainable way to consume fashion rather than buying new items for each new season.
“It’s driving the circularity of fashion,” Alles said.
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