How Nuuly is shaping the future of fashion rental

Kim Gallagher will be celebrated at the NRF Foundation Honors as one of the dynamic leaders on The List of People Shaping Retail’s Future 2027.

Fashion rental is changing how consumers think about their closets, and Nuuly has been helping shape that shift since launching in 2019. Kim Gallagher, executive director of marketing and customer success at Nuuly, discusses the origins of the rental business, the importance of staying close to customers, and why moving quickly and decisively matters in retail. She also shares her approach to leadership and what changing consumer behaviors could mean for the future of the industry.

Finding an opportunity in rental

Before Nuuly existed, Gallagher was part of a strategy team at URBN studying disruption across retail. Direct-to-consumer brands and subscription services were gaining traction, and the sharing economy was already reshaping industries like transportation and hospitality. Rental stood out. Consumer adoption was still relatively low, but interest was high.

“Why not fashion?” Gallagher says. “What’s wrong with renting clothes? But it just hadn’t fully taken off yet, so we felt like there was a nice white space there.”

That opportunity ultimately led Gallagher and her colleagues to help build what became Nuuly. Since then, the company has remained focused on its core rental business and improving the experience rather than chasing every potential avenue for expansion.

Putting customer success at the center

Customer success has been part of Nuuly’s strategy from the beginning. Because subscribers receive clothing from a shared closet each month, Gallagher says the team knew frequent customer interactions would be inevitable. Rather than treating customer service solely as a cost center, Nuuly made customer success a key source of insights and an important driver of retention. That means combining everyday customer interactions with qualitative and quantitative research, analytics and plenty of interpretation.

Nuuly takes those customer insights and develops solutions that work for both the customer and the business.

Moving fast and leading collaboratively

Gallagher, who was recently named to the NRF Foundation's List of People Shaping Retail's Future, centers her leadership philosophy on making decisions without waiting for perfect information.

“You need to be 70% sure, and then you need to commit, and you need to take accountability for it,” Gallagher says. Moving too slowly in pursuit of perfection can mean that by the time something reaches the customer, “what you create feels too late, too stale.”

Speed does not mean working in isolation. Gallagher says URBN’s entrepreneurial culture places an emphasis on building consensus, sharing ideas and getting feedback from colleagues. Nuuly’s leadership team stays in frequent contact, and ideas become stronger as more people contribute to them.

Rethinking what consumers need to own

Gallagher sees rental as one piece of a broader change in consumers’ relationship with ownership. Once customers become comfortable renting everyday clothing, she says, they may begin questioning why everything in their wardrobe needs to be purchased.

“There are certainly things you should own, but there are certain things that maybe are more trend-driven or more specific, or just like a new silhouette you want to try, that it makes much more sense to rent.”

Rental and resale could become increasingly important as younger consumers approach ownership differently. Gallagher also believes retailers need to continue shifting from a product-first mindset toward a customer-first one, beginning with how customers actually live and then building assortments around those needs.

Episode chapters

(00:00:00) From the service industry to retail

• How an early job helped shape Gallagher’s approach to work

• The career path that sparked an interest in data and customer behavior

• How an internship opened the door to a career at URBN

(00:05:35) Building Nuuly around the customer

• How disruption in retail led URBN to explore a new opportunity

• Why fashion rental stood out in the growing sharing economy

• The role customer success plays in Nuuly

(00:13:25) Taking risks and leading through change

• How a career risk opened the door to new opportunities

• Why moving quickly and decisively matters in retail

• The role collaboration and consensus play in Gallagher’s leadership style

(00:23:20) Keeping up with changing customer behavior

• How Gallagher stays tuned into emerging consumer trends

• Why understanding the target customer requires looking beyond the data

• The value of getting out and observing trends firsthand

Resources:

• Get ready for NRF 2027: Retail’s Big Show in NYC

• Become an NRF member and join the world’s largest retail trade association

• Learn about the NRF Foundation’s List of People Shaping Retail’s Future

• Find more episodes at retailgetsreal.com