Q&A: By Rotation founder Eshita Kabra on transforming fashion consumption once and for all

Eshita Kabra launched the world’s first social rental platform in October 2019. Dubbed the Instagram of fashion rental, By Rotation now counts actress Dame Helen Mirren, singer Ellie Goulding and athlete Dina Asher-Smith among the famous faces currently using the app.

Having launched a partywear collection with Net-a-Porter and partnered with Lidl to offer a more sustainable way of sourcing Christmas jumpers at the end of last year, By Rotation is certainly making a name for itself in the ethical fashion space. 

With more than 400,000 users and over 100,000 listings, ranging from sizes four to 30, Kabra talks to Retail Week about the platform’s opportunities in the US, the importance of community in the world of rental and the benefits to retailers when using the app.

What inspired you to launch By Rotation?

“I founded By Rotation because of a first-world problem I was facing, which was that I wanted to wear nice, quality designer clothing for my honeymoon. I thought it would be great if I could rent something from all these fashionable people we see on social media who never seem to repeat their outfits. 

“I then started thinking about fashion rental and how the UK in particular didn’t have the solution; there was no digital solution like other countries had. I started doing market research and in the global landscape there seemed to be Rent the Runway in the US, Flyrobe in India, Ycloset in China and Style Theory in Singapore, where I grew up.

“It became very evident to me that all of them had a very inventory-heavy approach to fashion rental; they had the world’s largest dry-cleaning facility and warehouses rather than community-orientated solutions. 

“London, as we know, is the world’s fashion capital and people here are very style-conscious, so I thought about this idea of sharing clothes and wondered why it couldn’t be taken a step further by creating a sharing economy for fashion.”

How does By Rotation differ from the other rental players?

“We’re completely peer-to-peer, which is great because essentially it is about getting people to use what they already have and share it with each other – 50% of what we have in our wardrobe hasn’t been worn in the past 12 months and that’s a shocking statistic. It’s about giving power to the average consumer, the one who buys fast fashion and doesn’t quite realise how bad it is for the planet.

“We are live in both the UK and the US, and these 100,000-plus designer listings are worth more than £50m. We have retailers, brands, influencers, bankers, lawyers – a really wide range of people using the app. It would take a lot of time for anyone to catch up and build the community, brand and reputation that we’ve built.  

“Social economic inclusivity is really big for us. When it comes to fashion, people talk about the ads never featuring people of a different ethnicity or size, but we care about both of those things. People don’t buy fast fashion because they love horribly made clothes – they buy it because it’s all they can afford.

“It is a big part of our mission to economically empower people and make them much more environmentally aware of their footprint, but doing this in a nudging, friendly way, rather than scolding people for shopping fast fashion.”

What’s next for the platform?

“A majority of the money that we’re investing really goes into our product development and building our platform. We’ve built the platform and made it into a social network with a team of only five engineers and my team, and I hold a high proportion of equity in the business. 

“There’s a huge graveyard of other fashion rental and resale companies out there because they have been running very expensive business models. We want to keep it very much focused on people using the app and making it user-friendly, more gamified and more engaging – that’s what we’ve really invested in. 

“We are expanding our geographic footprint so a lot of my focus moving forward will be in the US market while continuing to be the largest and fastest-growing platform in the UK. We believe the US is eight times as large as the UK market. The other thing we’re really excited about is that By Rotation doesn’t need to be limited to just clothing, so watch this space.”

How could retailers benefit from joining By Rotation?

“I think there’s going to be a world where a lot of brands who have extra stock, sample stock or are experimenting to see what products perform best will start experimenting with rental on our app directly.

“They’ll make their own business account, in the same way you would make an Instagram account, and start lending things out. We do a very interesting report at the end of every year called By Rotation Unwrapped and I think the insights on savings, the most rented brands, colours and categories are very invaluable insights for retailers who want to know what people are really wearing.”