SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Le Tote, the on-demand fashion rental service providing members with unlimited clothing and accessories delivered directly to their door, today announced a $15 million Series B funding round led by AITV with participation from existing investors Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Azure Capital, Simon Venture Group, Epic Ventures and Funders Club. The investment will enable Le Tote to continue strategically building its executive team, make further investments in technology and accelerate overall company growth.
Le Tote’s data-driven fashion subscription service introduced a new way for consumers to gain unlimited, on-demand access to the latest trends and fashions for a flat monthly fee when the company launched in 2012. In 2015, Le Tote is on track to deliver more than two million items to customers, achieve 500 percent year-over-year revenue growth for the second year running and quadruple its workforce.
“We’ve been helping empower women and improving their lives by making fashion affordable and accessible to every woman in America everyday while also rethinking how people interact with their closets and the retail industry as a whole,” said Rakesh Tondon, CEO and Co-Founder at Le Tote. “We’ve built up a top-notch leadership team over the past year that is already helping us more effectively analyze and share data with brands and customers, and we’re ready to do so much more with the continued support of our investors.”
Le Tote has made a number of strategic executive hires in the past several months. Their combined decades of experience in merchandising, marketing, data science and operations have significantly contributed to the success of the business. New Le Tote executives include Ruth Hartman, Chief Merchandising Officer. Ruth was the former SVP and General Merchandise Manager for DSW and Macy’s. Vijay Khare joined as VP of Operations & Customer Experience. Prior to Le Tote, he was the Senior Director of Global Supply Chain at Levi Strauss & Co. Lauren Miller is Le Tote’s VP of Marketing. Lauren is the former Senior Director of Marketing & Business Development for ThredUp and also held senior marketing positions at Google and AOL. Notably, Le Tote is also giving women significant opportunities within tech by building out an overall team consisting of more than 80 percent women.
Le Tote also collects an unprecedented amount of data at every point of brand partner and customer interaction. From the customer onboarding survey on fit and style preference, to the millions of individual product reviews and tens of millions of items added to customer wishlists, to the size and fit measurements of the hundreds of thousands of items available to Le Tote customers, data helps inform decisions made by the company across all areas of operations. This includes buying and merchandising, feedback provided to brands, and allows the company to personalize 100 percent of the boxes that are sent to customers. By leveraging this data, Le Tote is armed with the information and feedback necessary to anticipate demand and deliver the best possible customer experience in an extremely personalized way.
“We’ve watched Le Tote fuel its growth by innovating quickly based on data and customer feedback, and we couldn’t be more pleased to continue our investment in the company, technology and team,” said Bill Malloy, General Partner at AITV and Le Tote board member. “More than ever, customers are demanding instant gratification from the brands they interact with, and Le Tote has been able to rise to the occasion with product enhancements like the ability to customize shipments ahead of delivery and the introduction of its mobile app, which is the best way to use the service on the go.”
About Le Tote
San Francisco-based Le Tote was founded in 2012 by Brett Northart and Rakesh Tondon, who aimed to replicate the offline behavior of swapping and sharing clothes through a national, online service. The on-demand fashion service allows customers to borrow unlimited clothing and accessories for $49/month and maternity clothing for $59/month. Each shipment includes three pieces of clothing and two accessories, curated using Le Tote’s proprietary fit algorithm. Customers can choose to swap items ahead of delivery and then keep the items as long as they like, with an option to purchase items for 20-50 percent off retail price. Le Tote partners with more than 80 brands including Free People, BCBGeneration, House of Harlow, French Connection, Vince Camuto and more. The Y Combinator backed company has also raised venture funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, Azure Capital Partners, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Simon Venture Group, AITV, Epic Ventures, Arsenal Venture Partners and Funders Club. For more information, visit http://www.letote.com/static/press or download its iPhone app.