This is staying connected with xfinity to make moving. Simple. Easy. Awesome. Stay connected while you move with the best wifi experience and twohour appointment windows. Click, call or visit a store today. Good morning. Coming up on your business. Clothing rentals. Christine, founder of begin i b finds out thats how well fill our closets. Terry crews adds business startup to his lineup. If youve used a public bathroom and the door wouldnt close, you want to see the elevator pitch. Will our shopify judges give it guy . We have information to run your business. Thats all coming up next on your business. Msnbc your business is sponsored by american express. Dont do business without it. Hi there everyone. Im jj ramberg and welcome to your business. The show dedicated to helping your growing companies. Christine hunsaker is one impressive ceo. She had a big idea to use data, k technology to apply it to any business. Didnt matter to her what business. That led her to the retail industry. A
a new revenue model. her thought? we rent so many other things, cars from uber, rooms through airbnb, why not clothing? when you launched this company, you said you can rent your clothes. what was the response? crickets were chirping. this wasn t a surprise. christine knew she d have to educate the consumer. that s why gwynnie bee existed. this company which she put millions of dollars into was a proof of concept. the first pitch step has a platform. it s going to take us a little while to get there. we will eventually get there sniept the platform is castle. it now takes up the bulk of christine s 400-plus person company. castle is a service that allows any retailer to enter into the new economy for apparel. it s the technology, the logistics, the front end consumer experience and even the customer service that allows any retailer to quickly offer a
company castle changing the face of clothing rental and making it a turnkey service for all. when christine hunsaker talks about the genesis of her clothing rental company, gwynnie bee. you hardly hear the word fashion. in spite of her product, her passion is not clothing. my nerdy thing are marketplaces and economic models. i get excited about that. not so much whatever industry you apply that to. after 17 years in technology and data startup, christine wanted to do something ambitious. as for the criteria, she was product agnostic. we came up with three core principles, long lasting institution, use data technology to disrupt and positively impact the end lives of customers. where she landed was retail. an industry in turmoil ripe for
this is not a replacement for ownership. this is a complement to ownership. i m buying black pants and i see this amazing big flowered shirt that i want to buy but don t want to spend money on it. now i ll rent that. yes. what the brands are seeing is that people are spending not only more time engaging in the brands but a significant amount of more money with the rent. christine and her partners have been quiet about castle. they wanted to make sure everything worked. with express, the launch was big. christine hunsaker says her platform helps retailers attract new customers and increase their spending. christine joins us now. after seven years, you feel like we re ready. we don t need to keep it quiet anymore. we can now start talking. america s got terry crews. that s what the brooklyn 99 star said when he was named the newest host for the hit nbc
which begs the question, why did she go through the trouble to create her own consumer brand when really she wanted to be the back end for others? it s incredibly expensive to build out this service. you have to understand what you have to figure out what matters from a metrics perspective. we made a lot of mistakes, but we did that on our dime with our consumers and our inventory. she thinks if she went to the retailers off the bat we would have been laughed out of the room. by the time she pitched them, she had seven years of running gwynnie bee under her belt and came with piles and piles of data. all the product, the warehouse, the customers, it s all part of the platform, part of castle. gwynnie bee is a tenant as express or new york and company or ann taylor. i think of myself as a consumer. i will buy anything that sequined in hot pink.