How to build a marketplace for clothing rental business?

Are you thinking of starting your clothing rental business? If yes, then this blog is for you. The clothing rental business market is an unexplored potential and can be a successful business idea if well executed.

The clothing rental marketplace helps people to rent dresses from brands and designers. It also allows dress owners to rent their clothes that are hanging idly in the wardrobe.

Now, to start your clothing rental business, one needs to build a marketplace platform to reach customers and dress owners.

This blog will be a simple guide to build a marketplace platform for your clothing rental business.

Let’s begin.

Market value

According to Statista, the value of the apparel rental market in the USA was approximately 1 billion U.S. dollars in 2018. They forecasted it to reach a value of around 4.4 billion U.S. dollars by 2028.

From this data, we can infer that the value of the clothing rental industry is rising every year, and the business is considered much valuable in the USA.

If we view the global market of clothing rental, it is estimated to be USD 1,123.5 Million in 2018 and is expected to attain a market value of USD 2,817.8 Million by the end of 2027, according to the report published in the Research And Markets website.

We can say the rise in business value is due to the increased preference for designer clothes and fast-changing fashion trends.

Target market

The target audience of your clothing rental business are,

1.Fashion enthusiasts: These people dress by the latest trends and always strive to bring a new style.

2.Students: High school students who want to rent a suit for their graduation or prom.

3.Working men and women: They might need a dress for a one-time occasion like a wedding, office party, meeting, or interviews, etc.

4.People who don’t afford to own an expensive dress or designer clothes show an interest to rent a dress.

How does the clothing rental business work?

The marketplace platform involves dress owners and renters. The dress owners who want to rent their expensive or unused dresses can sign up into the platform and list their dress.

The renters who want to rent clothing for a short time can browse the listings on the platform and choose the one they like.

Here is how the booking process goes,

1.The renter signs into the platform and browses for the dresses they want to rent.

2.They choose the one and send a booking request to the dress owner. Also, they pay for the dress.

3.The dress owner can either accept or decline the request depending upon availability.

4.If the request gets accepted, the dress owners ship the dress to the renter’s address.

5.If they decline the request, the renter gets their payment.

Platform owners

The platform owners have the ability to oversee and manage all the rental operations from a simplified dashboard.

They can view all the information of the dress owner and customer, view and manage reservations that happen on the platform and also fix service fees for the platform.

How online clothing rental business generates revenue?

The revenue of the business depends on the service fee. The business owner charges a service fee for using the platform to rent the dress.

The platform charges service fee from dress owners and renters as a fixed amount or percentage.

The service fee is charged from each reservation for both dress owners and renters.

The business owners take their share of income from the renter’s payment and transfer the remaining amount to the dress owners.

Four stages of developing a marketplace platform

There are mainly four stages of developing a marketplace platform.

1.Requirement gathering and analysis – The first step is researching and gathering the requirements. Each requirement is analyzed whether it serves the purpose of the business goals and needs.

2.Development – After finalizing the requirement, the development process begins. The developers start developing the whole product.

3.Testing – After the development, the quality assurance team tests the product for bugs with various test cases and testing techniques.

4.Launch – After developing the platform with no bugs or issues, launch the platform successfully into the market.

Here is a must-have features for your clothing rental platform

To build a marketplace platform for your clothing rental business, you need to identify the crucial features to include for easy registration and smooth booking process.

1.Seasonal pricing calendar for dress owners

This feature enables dress owners to change the rental price based on high and low demand. All they need to do is select the days and enter a new price.

2.iCal integration

This feature helps dress owners to export and import their booking calendar to other similar platforms for avoiding over-booking.

3.Search page with advanced filters

The search page helps renters to search for their needed dress more quickly. With advanced filters, renters can narrow down the search results and find their looking items.

4.Wishlist for renters

Wishlist helps Renters to save their favorite items for booking later.

5.Paypal + Stripe payment gateway

Integrate your platform with popular payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe for quick and secure payment.

6.Offering secure payment transaction

Secure payment transactions are essential in an online business to keep the customers’ bank details safe. Platforms can harbor safety measures to keep it secure by integrating Stripe SCA and Stripe Connect.

7.Multi-currency & language

Platform owners enable renters and dress owners to choose their preferred language and currency when using the platform. This multi-language feature helps people to use the platform in their comfortable language. The multi-language allows tourists and business travellers to pay the rental in the currency they feel convenient.

8.Instant book & request to book

The marketplace platform can offer two types of booking options to renters – instant book and request to book.

The Instant book option helps customers to book a dress immediately without sending a booking request to the dress owner.

The ‘Request to Book’ option sends a booking request to the dress owner before confirming the booking.

9.Automated image compression

It compresses the large size images without compromising the quality of an image.

This feature helps dress owners to upload high-definition pictures of their items without having to worry about the loading speed.

It’s time to build your marketplace platform.

I hope this blog gives an idea of how to build a marketplace platform for your clothing rental business.

If you are interested in building a clothing rental marketplace, you can customize RentALL to build your platform.

RentALL is a readymade and customizable rental marketplace platform. It is built having all the essential features to make the business function efficiently. You can build a website like Airbnb using RentALL.

For more information on RentALL, ping us at [email protected].