Rent the Runway COO on 2019's supply-chain crisis: 'You can't promise perfection if you're disrupting at the level that we are'

Business Insider

Rent the Runway COO Anushka Salinas spoke at Business Insider's IGNITION: Redefining Retail conference on Tuesday.

• Rent the Runway COO Anushka Salinas spoke at Business Insider's IGNITION: Redefining Retail conference on Tuesday about how rental is disrupting the retail industry.
• Salinas spoke about Rent the Runway's ambitious growth plans - and the customers it has left behind in the past.
• In 2019, the company faced some backlash after its transition to a new warehouse software system left many customers with late or unfulfilled orders.
• "You can't promise perfection if you're disrupting at the level we are," Salinas said when asked about Rent the Runway's supply-chain crisis.
• Sign up for Business Insider's retail newsletter, The Drive-Thru, to get more stories like this in your inbox.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

In 2019, Rent the Runway was given a $1 billion valuation after raising $125 million in its Series F funding round. And, the company is still hungry for growth.

Anushka Salinas, chief operating officer at Rent the Runway, spoke at Business Insider's IGNITION: Redefining Retail conference Tuesday about the rental company's ambitions to disrupt people's ideas around ownership.

"We have fundamentally disrupted a core human behavior," Salinas said. "We are one of the only companies that's telling consumers, 'buy less stuff,' instead of 'consume more.' Twenty percent of what the global fashion industry produces every year gets thrown away."

Salinas addressed the supply-chain crisis the company faced in 2019, during which a shift to a new warehouse software system resulted in late deliveries and furious customers.

"It's only been 10 years," Salinas said. "When you're a disruptor like us, you're not going to get it right 100% of the time. You can't promise perfection if you're disrupting at the level that we are."

CEO Jennifer Hyman explained some of the changes the company was making to its systems in an email to customers. The company had told Business Insider in early July that it was doubling the size of its customer service team and making other updates to its customer experience following a flood of complaints.

"If we're going to get it wrong, which we have in the past, we always want to make sure we're always doing right by our customers, and sometimes that just means telling them exactly what's going on," Salinas said.

Watch IGNITION: Redefining Retail here.

NOW WATCH: Starbucks is giving away free drinks for the rest of 2019. It's one of the 5 sneaky tactics the coffee chain uses to get you to spend more money.