Rent the Runway Works to Swap Red for Black

When Brian Donato became chief supply chain officer at Rent the Runway Inc., the 2019 holidays were winding down and women across the U.S. were packing up the gowns and designer jackets they’d gotten from the company for galas, seasonal soirees, and office parties. Then, about a month after he showed up at Rent the Runway’s New Jersey warehouse for his first day on the job, the country went into lockdown and events from high school proms to the Met Gala were called off. “The business paused,” says Donato, 50, a veteran of Amazon.com Inc. who oversaw the online shopping giant’s grocery fulfillment operations.

Donato took advantage of that pause to revamp the way Rent the Runway tracks its garments, from brands such as Ralph Lauren, Nanushka, Jason Wu, and Lululemon. He had radio frequency identification (RFID) tags sewn into 1.5 million items. He installed scanners that register when garments leave or enter the company’s warehouses. And he added machines that automatically sort the clothes for various wash cycles. “I said, ‘Hey, let’s turn this into something,’ ” Donato says while showing off the technology at the company’s bustling fulfillment center in Secaucus, N.J., just a few miles from Manhattan and Newark Liberty International Airport.