the total amount of investment in the fast-growing business to $1 million.  As part of the deal, PixelForce is building a Shopify app that will enable designer fashion brands to show customers exactly how much they could earn if they rented out items on Designerex after purchasing them.  Customers will be able to create accounts and list items for rent directly from the online checkout pages of participating brands, helping Designerex reach new customers and increase its inventory.  The app is expected to launch in October, and Kore, co-CEO of Designerex, said she is talking to “some pretty big Australian designer brands” about integrating the technology into their websites.  “Brands don’t need to get involved in renting. All they need to do is download the app and it will appear on their checkout page, and we’ll bring data back to the brand,” Kore told Inside Retail. “We’ll get insights on all those renters that aren’t necessarily buying the brand, but might be falling in love with it through rental, and we’ll feed that back to the brand.”  In addition to the data element, Kore believes brands will benefit from better conversion rates and increased loyalty, since customers will be incentivised to buy products that have a high return on investment. Some popular items can be rented dozens of times on Designerex, earning their owners thousands of dollars.  “Someone is making two grand from a $400 dress,” Kore said. “It’s something brands need to take note of.”  One-hour delivery  Designerex’s latest investment round comes after a strong six months. The platform is doing triple the volume it did in 2019, its last normal trading year that wasn’t affected by Covid-19 lockdowns.  Its gross transaction value is in the millions, and it offers more than 30,000 dresses for rent from over 900 designer brands, such as Zimmermann, Aje, Gucci and Isabel Marant – to name a few. That’s more than David Jones or The Iconic.  Recent improvements to the customer experience, including the ability for lenders to generate shipping labels with Australia Post, and the launch of three-hour delivery for last-minute rentals, have been key to its growth. And they’re only the beginning.  Designerex has just teamed up with Uber to launch one-hour delivery via Uber Direct in Australia. It is the first online marketplace in the country to do so.   “We don’t look at anyone around us, we look at what our customers need, and we innovate wherever we can,” said Kore, who came in 30th in Inside Retail’s 2022 Top 50 People in E-Commerce. Next on the list of innovations is a consumer-facing app, which PixelForce will help build. Kore said she and Koulis made a strategic decision to launch Designerex as a web-based business, but now, an app makes a lot of sense.  “Before someone puts a booking through, they might send 12 messages about styling and sizing, but messaging over the web can be cumbersome. With an app, we can utilise notifications instead of SMS or email every time a message is sent,” she said.  “It’s going to improve our retention and conversion rates big time and enable us to scale globally a lot more easily.” The Airbnb of rental  Unlike some of the early movers in the fashion rental space, such as Rent the Runway and GlamCorner, Designerex doesn’t own any of the inventory or handle any of the logistics itself. Instead, it’s a platform that connects renters and lenders. This makes the business highly scalable.  Kore frequently describes Designerex as the Airbnb of fashion rental. While it is based in Sydney, it entered the US market in 2019, and it plans to expand into the UK and Europe next year.  “It has always been part of the plan, and now’s the right time,” Kore explained. “The appetite from consumers is there globally, and brands, retailers and even governments are wanting everyone to consume sustainably. That’s why we’re launching [into new markets] as quickly as possible.” According to research commissioned by Designerex, renting clothes generates fewer carbon emissions than either buying new or secondhand, since it enables garments to be worn by multiple people, rather than just one or two.  “The more we scale, the more impact we have, the more we’re repurposing fashion, the less fast fashion is consumed, the less landfill,” Kore said. “We’re basically incentivising consumers to buy better.”