This 32-year-old couple is redressing the multibillion-dollar fashion…
When husband and wife Chris Halim and Raena Lim saw an opportunity to redress sustainability issues in the fashion industry, they wanted to do so in style.
And the duo behind clothes rental app Style Theory certainly don’t do things by halves.
“We did put in like $40,000,” the couple, who quit their jobs to take their start-up full time, told CNBC Make It.
“Honestly, we don’t know whether we are foolish or brave.”
Finding the right fit
Lim and Halim are the co-founders of Style Theory, a Singaporean fashion rental platform that allows subscribers to loan unlimited items for a flat monthly fee.
The SoftBank-backed start-up today boasts more than 200,000 registered users across Singapore and Indonesia and offers an inventory of 50,000 clothes and more than 2,000 bags.
But when ex-Goldman Sachs banker Lim and consultant husband Halim got the idea for the company back in 2016, it was in response to a very common conundrum — having nothing to wear.
Raena Lim and Chris Halim, the husband-and-wife duo behind Singaporean clothes rental platform Style Theory.Style Theory
“The ‘aha’ moment came when Chris actually questioned me and he’s like ‘why is it you have so many clothes and you’re always complaining that you have nothing to wear?’,” recalled chief operations officer Lim.
“For someone who came from a finance background, using logic and mathematics, it just suddenly felt like wow, that’s really a very illogical response that I have to fashion,” she said.
Styling it out
Having spent her early career working for a non-profit in Kenya, Lim was keen to start a project that allowed her to do good. And with the environmental damage of fast fashion coming to the fore, the opportunity was clear.
Textile production is one of the world’s largest polluters, generating global emissions equivalent to 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year — more than all international flights and shipping combined.
That inefficiency has spawned a host of new clothing rental platforms seeking to satisfy conscious consumers with a guilt-free alternative to fast fashion.
Pioneered in 2009 by U.S. platform Rent The Runway, the circular fashion industry has bloomed over the past decade, inspiring other brands such as My Wardrobe HQ in the U.K. and GlamCorner in Australia. Yet, the logistical challenges of Southeast Asia made it a tough market to crack. That led newbie entrepreneurs Lim and Halim to adopt a test-first strategy.
“We started with a waitlist first, so we had enough number of clothes and enough capacity for customers,” said chief executive Halim. “As the customers come in, we are either proven right or proven wrong and then we continuously iterate from there.”
Adopting a data-driven approach
The couple’s data-driven approach saw them switch from owning all the inventory in-house to a consignment model in 2019.
Under the new structure, Style Theory holds stock on behalf of designers and individuals, paying them each time an item is rented. The company then takes a cut of the $95 unlimited monthly subscription fee for the management, courier and cleaning of goods.
