The successful clothes rental business that was started in a front room
RENTING your clothes has been on the rise over the past few years as we look to make our wardrobes more eco-friendly.
During the pandemic, fashion rental platforms saw an increase in the number of people using them.
Fashion rental website and app By Rotation, for instance, saw a 600% increase in rentals.
It’s a similar story for Hannah May Jones, who started a business from her mum’s living room in 2019.
Now, she’s taken her mum on board as an employee and her business – Minnie May Closet – sends hundreds of clothes across the UK.
“Growing up, [my friends and I] always circulated our outfits and, as social media was on the rise, more and more people were seeing these outfits and just saying, ‘Where did you get that from?’ and ‘Could we borrow it?’,” said Hannah, adding that she and a friend saw a gap in the market.
“It was as simple as that, really. It was a bit of an idea and we kind of went with it.”
In 2019, Hannah and her friends put together some outfits from clothes in their wardrobe and began hiring them out to people in the local area at a fraction of the retail price.
“We basically thought there were a few outfits in our wardrobe which had some retail value, so we didn’t particularly want to throw them out or anything. So we thought, ‘I wonder if people would rent them out?’.”
Minnie May Closet started with about 20 outfits to rent and, with Hannah and her business partner at the time both working alongside running the business, they invested any profits back into buying more clothes.
Within five months, they had 150 outfits they were hiring out.
Hannah believes the business is one of a kind in Wales, and hopes to make it as popular as other fashion rental websites and apps.
“I saw the value in kind of rotating clothes. I’ve always been one to pick up things second-hand if I can anyway, just purely because of the affordability factor, but I also don’t see the point in just wearing things once and then hanging them in the wardrobe,” she said.
“Once I launched the business, I realised that actually everybody is on the same wavelength.”
“It started in my mother’s front room,” Hannah, who is from Bridgend, said. “It was really funny – we took over my mum’s house because we were living at home at the time.”
After Hannah’s friend moved on from the business after six months, she decided to take on running it herself.
Initially, Minnie May Closet, was run as a “pick-up and drop-off” service for people locally.
At the time, Hannah had just started a job with PwC as a chartered accountant – a job she continues to do alongside running the business.
Having just finished her training contract and waiting to start her new job, Hannah had a gap where she was able to run the business.
“It’s a bit of a challenge. I’m really quite strict with my time if I’m honest,” said Hannah, who has recently become a mother.
“I just focus on one thing at a time, if that makes sense. I try to just balance my time between it all and I am very well supported.”
Just before the pandemic hit, Hannah had negotiated a wholesale contract with a brand to rent out more clothes, spending much of the profits that the business had made.
In order to ensure the business survived, she expanded into selling and renting loungewear and jewellery.
“Obviously, there were no events but people kind of reacted to the demand. We also sold a lot of preloved stuff and that kept us alive.”
In recent years, an increasing number of people have started to look beyond fast fashion and buy their clothes second-hand, whether it’s from their local charity shop or through apps and websites like Depop, Vinted and eBay.
They have become part of the “circular economy” – a system of reusing and recycling items.
Between 2016 and 2022, the apparel resale market grew by a whopping 149%, with menswear the fastest-growing sector, according to analysts at GlobalData.
Celebrities have also started to join the rented fashion revolution, from Holly Willoughby to Stacey Dooley.
With events now able to take place again, Hannah says the business has taken off.
“When events picked back up, we just had a massive influx of rentals last year,” she said. “In the meantime, I’d been able to build some infrastructure around it – a website with a booking order system. We just had a bit of a boom last year.”
Now Hannah wants to take the business further and is hoping to secure funding to develop an app where people can list their own items to rent.
The business is now in a position where Hannah has been able to take on two employees – including her mum, who helps run it parttime.
“It’s hard to put a true value on the business because of the time that’s gone in to it, which has been charitable from my mum,” she said.
“I wouldn’t have been able to do it without her. She’s been able to manage the whole thing from start to end.
“Before we even managed to get electronic calendars in place, my mum has been there trying to track everybody’s ins and outs of dresses, returns, damages, arranged all the cleaning.
“She’s been the backbone, to be honest.”
Now retired from her job, Hannah’s mum is able to work closely with her daughter.
However, Minnie May Closet is no longer based in her living room. After operating as a pop-up in her and her partner’s garden throughout 2021, Hannah has been able to move the business to a unit in Pyle.
“I do think it is important, the impact we’ve got on our world, with how much we can just make an impact by slowing down what we buy,” Hannah said.
“I also appreciate things can’t happen overnight and it is much easier for consumers to buy an outfit.
“It is a lot more effort involved with with renting an outfit because you’ve got to wear it, send it back, look after it.”
Hannah hopes that customers who buy clothes from Minnie May Closet will transition into renting them instead.
“If they’re just buying it once – why are you buying it once? Why can’t you just come and rent it?”
Hannah also says she has changed her own shopping habits.
“I’ve always been one where, if I wear something, I can’t wear it again, which obviously leads you to buying lots of different clothes,” she said.
“But I’ve completely flipped my mind and I’ll buy something second-hand now or rent an outfit. I definitely changed my mindset and shifted towards more sustainable ways of wearing stuff.”
Hannah’s career as an accountant also gave her an insight into supply chains.
“When you look into things about supply chains, I can see why we are trying to improve and force big brands to comment on how they produce or get their goods,” she said.
“The turnover has shot up after Covid and especially at Christmas. I think Kate Middleton wore a [rented] dress and then we had about 22 rentals to England,” she said.
Hannah’s business has not just expanded to renters from across the bridge, however.
People have used Minnie May Closet to rent clothes in Ireland and Glasgow, and Hannah says requests to rent outfits have even come from as far as America.
“We offer a try-on service as well, so we get people travelling from everywhere to come down and try on some outfits,” she said.
“I’m excited for the future of it and I think I do think it’s going to be the way to go, with all the sustainable fashion drive, people only wanting to wear things once and wear expensive things for a fraction of the price.”