Our investment in HURR

Resources

24 Feb 2022

By Matt Chandler

Investment thesis

HURR aims to reinvent what ownership means for consumers by offering the first full-stack fashion rental solution.

The fashion industry is responsible for 10% of humanity’s carbon emissions and fashion executives cite sustainability as the single biggest challenge and opportunity for the industry. On average, US consumers buy 68 articles of clothing per year. Elsewhere, research suggests 40% of adults have discarded a new garment after only wearing it once.

Consumers are shifting away from fast fashion toward new ownership models driven by growing consumer desire for variety, sustainability, and affordability.

Their growing community is hugely passionate and environmentally aware, but importantly, still want to access amazing clothing items that they may not otherwise have access to. In this sense, HURR enables their community to look and feel great in a more sustainable way.

HURR is powering the fashion rental movement by providing a peer-to-peer rental platform, as well as a turnkey solution that enables other brands and retailers to introduce rental into their business model as a white label service or as a managed service on the HURR marketplace (HURRENTERPRISE).

HURR has a zero-inventory model, meaning that the brands and retailers provide the stock and HURR handles the complex, ‘boring’ bits – such as returns, washing, dry cleaning, repairing, reshipping, and customer support.

Who are the pioneers

Victoria Prew is the visionary behind HURR. Over the years she’s become an expert in sustainability and circulation in fashion. We first met Victoria in the summer of 2020 and she has executed beyond expectations – shifting to a hybrid business model and securing valuable, high-quality partnerships. Most importantly, she’s managed to assemble a world-class leadership team hailing from the likes of Selfridges, Amazon, Farfetch and more.

Why us

Steering consumers away from overconsumption is something we care deeply about at Octopus Ventures. It is why we were early backers of Depop, the community fashion marketplace which recently exited to Etsy for $1.6 billion, and of Cazoo, the used car marketplace which IPO’d recently at a $7 billion valuation. We believe HURR are on mission to inspire a new generation, through their community-centric ecosystem that’s building a better future for fashion. We hope to apply our learnings from the likes of Maria Raga and Alex Chesterman to help Victoria and the HURR team reinvent how consumers view fashion.