Fashion — and its supply chain — is the largest polluting industry after food and construction. Moreover, the fashion industry is responsible for 10% of annual global carbon emissions. By Rotation is a global social network for peer-to-peer rental, providing its community with access to premium items at affordable prices. Sie Ventures is excited to invest in By Rotation and support Eshita and the team on their mission to challenge and transform overconsumption habits.
What’s wrong with the fashion industry?
Fashion and its supply chain is the third largest polluting industry, after food and construction. The fashion industry is responsible for 10% of annual global carbon emissions. According to UNEP, it takes 3,781 litres of water to manufacture a pair of jeans, from the production of the cotton to the delivery of the final product to the store. That equates to the emission of around 33.4 kilograms of carbon which is equivalent to a domestic flight, covering a distance of around 1,207 kilometres.
Every year the fashion industry uses 93 billion cubic metres of water — enough to meet the consumption needs of five million people (World Bank). If current demographic and lifestyle patterns continue, global consumption of apparel will rise from 62 million metric tons in 2019 to 102 million tons by 2029. Every year a half a million tons of plastic microfibers are dumped into the ocean, the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles. Microfibers cannot be extracted from water and as a result, spread into our food chain.
How is By Rotation improving sustainability in fashion?
By Rotation is a global social network for peer-to-peer rental, providing its community with access to premium items at affordable prices. The platform was created to transform the way we consume fashion by challenging overconsumption habits and encouraging users to adopt more environment-friendly habits. It is entirely built on sustainability: they do not purchase any stock or inventory as this would only add new items into circulation and eventually landfill. Additionally, they are making sustainable fashion more accessible and prolonging the life-cycle of high quality items already in circulation.
In 2019, By Rotation was awarded the Eco-Age Brandmark “in recognition of championing the sharing economy with the UK’s first peer-to-peer fashion rental service, discouraging over-consumption and encouraging us to love the garments in our wardrobes”. In 2020, they were recognised as “Ones to Watch” by Draper’s Sustainable Fashion Awards and they have also been named Apple’s App of the Day three times. The likes of Dame Helen Mirren, Ellie Goulding and Net A Porter are all lenders on the platform. They now have over 100k peer-to-peer listings and over a million downloads.
Why Sie Ventures invested in By Rotation?
Sustainability is one of the main pillars of our thesis at Sie Ventures. Whilst By Rotation have proven their peer-to-peer approach reduces waste and increases an item’s lifespan, it is their light operational structure — which further strengthens their sustainability claims — that most attracted us to the investment opportunity. We believe that this is their key differentiator from other rental services, which often have high operational requirements and the need to manage retail spaces and large quantities of stock.
By Rotation’s solo founder, Eshita Kabra, is a Cass Business School graduate, with a breadth of investment experience. She lives and breathes the By Rotation mission and her commitment to changing consumer behaviour for the better is contagious! Eshita has also been recognised in Forbes 30 under 30, Drapers 30 under 30 and served on the board of Sharing Economy UK, the trade body representing the UK’s sharing economy businesses.
We believe the user experience (gamification and personalisation) and social network aspect is driving By Rotation’s competitive edge, high customer loyalty and vast organic growth. The product successfully fosters community through seamless in-app messaging, trusted peer reviews and the opportunity to filter items by location and much more. The team has a deep understanding of their customers and they are quick to respond to consumer behaviour. These are just a handful of the features, retaining existing users and generating huge volumes of organic traffic.
Additionally, top lenders are generating meaningful income in-app. Some are making over £4,000 a month from their “side hustle” of renting out their belongings to others. As it stands, By Rotation features 100,000 designer listings worth over £50m and we have no doubt these numbers will grow as part of this next stage of growth.
By Rotation is backed by Redrice Ventures, Closed Loop Partners, True Global and strong angels such as Riccardo Pozzoli, Magnus Rausing and Bill Holroyd CBE. We are very excited to join as investors to change the way we consume fashion.
