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Six years ago, Christchurch entrepreneur Izzy Shearer was squeezing a dress-hire side business into her room in the university halls.
Today she has turned it into a full-time business with 16,000 Instagram followers.
Her Rent with Iz business gives customers access to designer dresses for balls, weddings and special occasions.
Shearer never imagined the venture would grow beyond a student side hustle, let alone become her career.
In 2020, she was a first-year economics and human geography student living in a university hall in Dunedin.
“We had 450 in the hall so people would come to me (to hire dresses) for balls and dinners,” she said.
“It was all dresses I had since high school, I had maybe 10 or so.”
What started as a part-time job to support Shearer through her studies quickly took off.
“In that third year of my studies it was not part-time, I was doing full-time work alongside being a student,” she said.
By then, Shearer was renting out an average of 84 dresses a week.
After graduation, she moved back to Christchurch and set up shop.
During school formal season, she was hiring out 100 to 150 dresses a week.
“It can get pretty hectic,” she said.
However, it was Cup Week that set a new record, with 365 dresses rented out in a single week.
Dress rentals from Rent with Iz cost between $25 and $90.
Despite the growth of the business, Shearer said there was a lot of work behind the scenes.
“It involves hours of cleaning dresses, repairs, a lot of customer service replying to emails, a lot of ironing and steaming and then packing up orders and sending them off,” she said.
The dresses cost between $100 and $600 to buy and were sourced from online retailers.
Shearer said damaged or missing garments were the biggest cost to her business.
“(I had) one particularly bad case where someone stole $2000 worth of stock which hurt quite a lot,” she said.
Shearer said she had established a loyal customer base but believed the dress-rental market was becoming oversaturated.
There are currently more than 20 dress-rental businesses in Christchurch alone, with hundreds nationwide.
“My heart goes out to the girls who are starting. It’s really hard to find a niche, whereas I’ve been doing it for so much longer it’s a lot easier,” said Shearer.
The Designer Collection dress-rental owner Milly Collins also kick-started her business while at university.
“I now do it as a full-time business, but it takes a while to invest in yourself,” she said.
“There is a lot more to it than I first thought . . . building the website from scratch, logistics, shipping, cleaning and all of those things.”
She has seen other operators start up thinking the rental business is “really easy”.
“But not every business succeeds. You definitely see some popping up and then closing quite quickly,” said Collins.
Canterbury University student Annabelle Baigent is a self-proclaimed “expert dress renter”.
She has attended more than 10 21st birthday gatherings so far this year and rented a dress every time.
“The demand is there for these rental businesses, but sometimes it can get quite overwhelming choosing what business to support as they can sometimes all blur into one,” she said.
“It seems like it is probably quite an easy job to get into as everyone seems to be doing it.”
Baigent said she could see why starting a dress-rental business was so appealing to students.
“Well, I mean if you have a lot of dresses and friends who are going to 21sts each weekend and let your friends borrow them anyway, then (you) may as well.”
- Find out more at https://rentwithiz.com