The Glossy 50 honors the year’s biggest changemakers across fashion and beauty. More from the series →
This year, URBN-owned Nuuly announced its first profitable year, at just six years old. And, as of the second quarter, the clothing rental company had surpassed 380,000 active subscribers, marking a 48% year-over-year increase.
Kim Gallagher, its executive director of marketing and customer success, attributed this growth, in part, to word-of-mouth — which, she said, is “every marketer’s dream,” but also “doesn’t happen without strategy.”
In 2025, that strategy included the brand’s largest-ever media spend and two seasonal brand campaigns — one in the spring and one in the fall, which are Nuuly’s biggest growth seasons, as customers are often looking to refresh their wardrobes.
These campaigns relied heavily on clever copy to raise brand awareness and education on the concept of renting. Each leveraged the tagline, “Buying is normal; renting is Nuuly.”
For its spring campaign, the brand showed a version of its fulfillment center, positioning it as a “shared closet for all of our customers,” Gallagher said. The concept “called out pain points around getting dressed — like having a full closet of clothes, but feeling like you have nothing to wear, and frustration with having to do laundry,” she said. The campaign ran across connected TV via Hulu, Peacock and Netflix, as well as YouTube, Meta and TikTok, and OOH in select markets. The result was a spike in brand awareness, which Nuuly confirmed via its biannual brand awareness survey. Following this campaign, Nuuly saw its largest spike in aided brand awareness, which refers to the brand being chosen when a survey provides a list of brands and asks respondents to select those they’ve heard of.
For fall, the brand worked with influencer Brianna Morales of @areyouokayshow (498,000 Instagram followers) to create interview-style vignettes showcasing how Nuuly could address these pain points. “It was a humorous way [to say], ‘You could deal with this problem, or you could rent from Nuuly,'” Gallagher said. The campaign ran on CTV, paid social and OOH placements across seven key markets, including Kansas City, Chicago, Dallas Fort Worth and San Diego.
Also for fall, Nuuly invested in billboards with impactful copy. For example, one featured a Nuuly bag alongside the text, “We don’t own this billboard, we just rented it for the month.” “It was the first time we all held hands and said, ‘You know what? Sometimes we can do things that don’t feature clothes,” Gallagher said. “We’re selling a change to how you get dressed — it’s really a mindset shift and a service. And yes, that involves a lot of clothes, but it’s not about a single look or a single outfit. So we took a different approach.”
2025 has also has also been about building community, a key pillar of brands succeeding with Gen Z as they seek more IRL experiences. Nuuly has done this at soccer games, as a sponsor of the Kansas City Current, and through its Club Nuuly ambassador program, which this year has allocated funds to allow micro-influencers to host their own events on behalf of the brand.
“Our primary target is [aged] 25-35, so every year, that becomes a little bit more Gen Z,” Gallagher said. “Gen Z has entered into the life stage where Nuuly is the perfect solution. They’re beginning to go to weddings, bachelorette parties, showers and dates, and are dressing for their jobs. … They’re growing up.”
