and hit a record high in April after it changed its subscription model.
In March, the company permanently added an extra item to every shipment to improve its value proposition to customers, and as of April 8, the company marked 141,205 active subscribers, the highest active subscriber count the company has seen since its inception in 2009. Active subscribers excludes those with paused memberships.
"That launch delivered 25% more value to our consumers with minimal impact to our gross margins. So we were able to deliver value while, you know, keeping these really financially healthy, gross margins," Rent the Runway co-founder and chief executive Jennifer Hyman told CNBC. "And we're seeing a few different benefits. We're seeing first, improvements in loyalty across the customer base. We're seeing improvements in rejoin rates, so people that had churned in the past are coming back to the business, and we're seeing improvements in pause reactivations, so people who had formerly been in a state of pause are reactivating."
At the end of the fiscal year, Rent the Runway had 126,712 active subscribers, a 10% increase compared to the year-ago period. In total, the company counted 171,998 subscribers, which includes people with paused subscriptions. That's an 8% year-over-year increase from the end of fiscal 2021.