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Operator
Welcome to the Rent the Runway's first quarter 2023 earnings results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would like now to turn this call over to Rent the Runway's General Counsel, Cara Seenbury. Thank you.
Cara Seenbury
You may begin. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us to discuss Rent the Runway's first quarter 2023 results. Joining me today to discuss our results are CEO and co-founder Jennifer Hyman and CFO Sid Thacker. During this call, we will make references to our Q123 earnings presentation, which can be found in the events and presentation section of our investor relations website. Before we begin, we would like to remind you that this call will include forward-looking statements. These statements include our future expectations regarding financial results, guidance and targets, market opportunities, and our growth. These statements are subject to various risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that could cause our actual results to differ materially. These risks, uncertainties, and assumptions are detailed in this afternoon's press release, as well as our filings with the SEC, including our Form 10-Q that will be filed in the next few days. We have no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements or information except as required by law. During this call, we will also reference certain non-GAAP financial information. The presentation of this non-GAAP financial information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for financial information that's presented in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliations of gap to non-gap measures can be found in our press release slide presentation posted on our investor website in our SEC filing. And with that, I'll turn it over to Jen.
Jennifer Hyman
Thanks, Kara, and thanks, everyone, for joining. As I shared on our last call, our 2023 growth strategy is focused on improving our customer experience. To do that, we are focused on delivering more value to customers quarter over quarter in the areas that matter to them most. It's an exciting time for Rent the Runway. We're delivering tangible momentum in executing against our customer-centric vision as evidenced by our strong Q1 results. We delivered a new record active subscriber count of 145,220, representing 15% growth quarter over quarter, while posting a beat on the top and bottom line. Revenue came in at 74.2 million, a 10% increase year over year. We continue to hold our gross margin above 40% at 42.3% and posted a strong adjusted EBITDA margin of 6.1%, well above guidance. I'm particularly proud of the progress on profitability metrics paired with strong subscriber growth because I believe that it demonstrates our ability to manage costs effectively while making important investments into the customer experience. We have conviction that our subscriber growth and margins in Q1 provide a strong foundation towards the goals we shared last quarter, which we are reiterating now. Growing ending active subscribers by over 25% and reducing cash consumption by almost 50% in fiscal 2023. We have confidence in these goals because of the laser focus we're maintaining on our customer. Our team has demonstrated agility. and is focused on execution. Our customers are beginning to feel a real difference, and we're going to spend much of this call detailing some of the key improvements we've made so far this year. Having said that, I also want to emphasize that transforming our customer experience is not a one quarter endeavor. We will be updating you on impact over the next several quarters. Our goal is to maximize customer love and retention, and we'll do that by making their experience easier, more valuable, and more fun. We'll know that we're successful if we inspire more women to buy less clothes and rent instead. We see that the market for fashion rental is growing all over the world and believe our opportunity has never been greater. Now I want to talk to you about what our team has already accomplished related to our three customer-centric strategic pillars, which are, one, getting her the inventory she wants when she wants it, two, providing an efficient and easy-to-use experience And three, offering best-in-class product discovery. These pillars are key due to the frequency with which our subscribers use Rent the Runway. And this is what we have to get more and more right over time. As a reminder, the majority of our team is focused on customer-facing initiatives this year. We kicked off the year by permanently adding an extra item to every shipment of our subscription programs. And we've been happy with the results of our launches since then. One, on inventory she wants when she wants it. In support of getting her the inventory she wants when she wants it, inventory availability continues to be a top priority. We know our customer is here for the fashion, and her ability to access it is one of the key ways she evaluates the value of her subscription. We've expanded and grown an ongoing strategy to acquire more of the styles our customers are telling us they want in real time. Because of real-time data signals we get on actual and unmet demand, we are one of the few retailers that is structured to chase and refresh inventory mid-season. This gives our buying team significant leverage on pricing. We believe the next step in this effort will be felt deeply by our customers in the back half of the year as we are focused on significantly increasing depth in the key styles and trends we know our customers want. Next, I want to share some of the actions we've taken in Q1 to make Rent the Runway easier to use for our customers. In early May, we launched a luxury-style concierge service to help new subscribers onboard with Rent the Runway more seamlessly. Rent the Runway concierge provides free, one-on-one interaction via text with our customer service team to help new subscribers get the most out of their memberships. from building their first shipment to styling tips or solving a fit or shipping issue. We believe this program has the potential to be an important retention driver. Our customers have incredibly busy lives. 90% of them work, a third have kids, and 85% socialize more than twice a week. So the easier we make the experience, the more it can be cemented into her life. As we've shared previously, we've enjoyed strong, long-term customer loyalty. but we also know that the majority of subscribers who churn do so in their first 90 days. By providing a concierge experience in her early months of membership, we aim to delight her with an effortless introduction to rental. We think this will improve retention and make her a loyal customer sooner. You'll see us integrate this offering more deeply into our product experience in the quarters to come. Next, we're making our site and app faster. As an example, we drove a 48% improvement in average load time on a key entry point into our conversion funnel, which resulted in an 89% lift in conversion on that page. Last, we made two improvements to our delivery and returns experience that directly speak to the premium level of service Rent the Runway offers. One, we launched a new tool to drive further adoption of at-home pickup, which has led to an increase in in-market adoption of the service, by nearly four percentage points from the end of Q4 22 to the end of Q1 23. Second, last week, we launched Saturday delivery to more than half of our subscribers, a big unlock for customers who can now receive their deliveries on the weekend. We plan to continue to enhance all aspects of our experience to make it as easy as possible for customers to navigate their subscription. Finally, I'm going to share recent accomplishments related to our strategic pillar on best-in-class product discovery, where our goal is to be even better than a typical retailer in how our customers find the inventory they love. First, we shared during our last call that we launched Rent the Look and similar items in late March to enable customers to easily find a complete outfit or a visually similar option based on the styling we provide on our product display pages. The introduction of these features has increased member engagement, particularly when members landed on pages with unavailable styles. Now she's served similar substitute items through this feature directly on the product display page, leading to a 34% increase in engagement with substitute items among members. Last, and something I'm personally very passionate about, we're excited to announce that in the coming weeks, we plan to launch an AI-driven search beta. This will allow customers to search common fashion terms or use cases, and it's intended to make searching our site more intuitive and natural. For example, she will be able to write Miami vibe, clam bacon Nantucket, or tropical motif, and our AI-powered discovery engine will serve her relevant inventories. We see this as a first and important step in Rent the Runway using AI models to improve our product experience. And we expect to build on this launch in the months and quarters to come. We believe that AI has the potential to directly support our 2023 strategy of delivering more value to the customer and leapfrog ahead of the experience that we deliver today. Fashion as an industry serves to benefit from AI to narrow the endless aisle problem of e-commerce. but we believe that Rental Runway is uniquely positioned to be a significant beneficiary of AI because of one, the frequency with which she interacts with our product, and two, our unique and rich data catalog, which includes her frequent site behavior and all of the data we gathered from her on fit, inventory quality, occasion, and more every time she rents. The majority of subscribers are reviewing 10 plus items per month This data set gives us a head start on any future innovation we'll endeavor in the AI space. We also believe that our opportunity in AI is bigger than product discovery. We are exploring how it can impact our concierge experience and onboarding to deliver an even more personalized experience to enhance customer loyalty. And we have the team to do this. We've been harnessing machine learning for a decade employing data to power personalization within our consumer experience, our operation, and across our business. So we're looking forward to continuing to build this muscle at Rent the Runway. I'm truly energized about the progress we've made so far this year and everything that lies ahead. Most of all, I'm looking forward to continuing to deliver for our customers. And with that, I'll turn it over to Sid.
Kara
Thanks, Jen. And thanks again, everyone, for joining us. Since our 2021 IPO, investors have asked us two key questions. First, can Renta Runway grow? Second, how profitable can the company be? Our first quarter results demonstrate solid progress on both fronts. As Jen outlined, we believe deeply that the customer experience improvements we are making are key to driving improved retention and faster growth. At just over 145,000 ending active subscribers at the end of Q1, we are making progress to 25% plus active subscriber growth in fiscal 2023. Our path to profitability is focused on free cash flow. Last quarter, we outlined the almost 50% reduction in cash consumption we expect for fiscal 23. We believe that our margins in Q1 provide a strong foundation for progress towards that goal. Let me now review our Q1 23 results. We ended Q1 with 145,220 ending active subscribers, up 7.6% year over year. Average active subscribers during the quarter were 135,966 versus 125,119, an increase of 8.7% year over year. Total revenue for the quarter was $74.2 million, up 10.6% year over year. Subscription and reserve rental revenue was $66.8 million versus $61.4 million last year, an increase of 8.8%. As we discussed last quarter, we did see weakness in our reserve business in Q1. Subscription ARPU for the quarter was slightly higher year over year, primarily due to the impact of the April 22 price increase, partially offset by changes in program mix and add-on rates. Other revenue was $7.4 million, versus $5.7 million last year, growing 29.8% year-over-year due primarily to increased purchases of rental products. Note that the timing of these purchases can vary from quarter to quarter, depending on the assortment available for sale. Other revenue represented approximately 10% of revenue versus 8.5% of revenue in Q1-22. Fulfillment costs were $21.9 million in Q1-23 versus $22.9 million in Q1-22. Fulfillment cost is the percentage of revenue improved from 34.1% of revenue in Q1-22 to 29.5% of revenue in Q1-23. As a reminder, Q1-22 results did not benefit from an April 22 price increase. We were able to offset the impact of higher ship units per order on account of a five-item launch with efficiencies in both processing and transportation costs. Growth margins were 42.3% in Q123 versus 33.5% in Q122. Q123 growth margins reflect the impact of the April 22 price increase, the fulfillment cost improvements discussed above, as well as lower product appreciation due to the continued impact of product acquisition mix changes towards more efficient channels. As expected, growth margins were lower than Q422 levels due to seasonally higher product acquisition we typically see in Q1 and Q3. Operating expenses were 5% lower year-over-year and about 13% lower year-over-year before SOC-based compensation, primarily due to the favorable impact of our 2022 restructuring plan. We continue to expect about $25 million in restructuring-related savings in fiscal 23 compared to the Q2-22 run rate. Total operating expenses, including technology, marketing, G&A, and stock-based compensation, were 66% of revenue versus 77% of revenue last year. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $4.5 million, or 6.1% of revenue, versus negative $8.8 million and negative 13.1% of revenue in the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA margins reflected strong cost discipline that allowed us to offset investments made to improve customer experience. Free cash flow was negative $12 million in Q123 versus negative $28 million in Q122. We continue to expect significant improvement in cash consumption in fiscal 23. Let's turn to guidance. For the full year, we continue to expect revenue of between $320 to $330 million and ending active subscriber growth in excess of 25%. We are also reiterating a full year adjusted EBITDA margin guidance of 7 to 8% of revenues. Our guidance on cash flow remains unchanged, and we expect to reduce cash consumption by almost 50% to below $50 million. We are updating a fiscal 2023 product spend expectation to $74 to $76 million from $69 to $72 million, as we are seeing increased opportunities to purchase high-quality styles from top brands at deep discounts. Finally, there is no change to our expectation for growth margins to be slightly lower on a year-over-year basis. We expect Q2 revenue to be between $77 and $79 million. This represents about 5% growth sequentially versus Q1-23 and approximately 2% growth versus Q2-22 at the midpoint of the guidance range. Let me talk about the factors affecting Q2. First, as some of you may have noticed, we are experimenting with being less promotional with our new customer offer pricing. We think this will improve retention and allow us to invest in improving the customer experience. We do expect these experiments to reduce acquisitions in the short term, especially in our lower price program. As a result, we expect lower ending active subscribers in Q2 versus Q1. We think these are the right decisions for our customers and have factored these changes into our full year guidance of 25% plus subscriber growth. Second, both sequential and year-over-year growth are expected to be negatively impacted by the decline in the reserve business. Finally, we also expect other revenue to be relatively flat quarter-over-quarter due to higher units sold in the first quarter of this year. Q2 23 adjusted EBITDA margins are expected to be between 7% to 8% of revenue as we expect the higher revenue base versus Q1 to improve leverage on a fixed cost base. I'd like to end by saying that we remain confident in the trajectory of our business, and we have a very clear sense of how to improve the customer experience. The second half of fiscal 23 should see us make significant progress across inventory, onboarding, and product initiatives. We believe these changes will be noticeable to our customers and make it easier for them to find and experience our inventory and product, in a more seamless manner. With that, we are happy to open it up for questions.
Operator
Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. So that we may address questions from as many participants as possible, we ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you have additional questions, you may recue, and time permitting, those questions will be addressed. One moment, please, while we poll for questions.
spk22
Thank you.
Operator
Our first question comes from Rick Patel with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.
Rick Patel
Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. I have a question on getting better at giving customers what they want when they want it. How do we think about this from an inventory management perspective? Does it mean that You'll be buying more inventory as you get a read on fashion. Does it mean that you'll be leaning more on your share by RTR partners? Just curious how to think about the mechanics of chasing high demand products. And as a follow-up, what are the financial ramifications from ramping up this initiative on gross margins and working capital?
Jennifer Hyman
I think there's two main ways we're addressing it. And you've seen us really deploy one of the ways thus far in Q1 and early Q2. So the first way is we get these real-time data signals in season on what's doing well, what's highly demanded. And number one, we're able to respond to them in season, get competitive pricing, reorder pretty aggressively against top styles. And that's kind of because of both the real-time data that we get, but it's also because it's a business model that we have where we can continue to monetize inventory over three plus years, as opposed to being held to kind of a traditional retailer, 12-week of full-price selling kind of calendar. So that's number one. The second aspect of this is really focusing on depth. We know that our customers come to Rent the Runway, they heart styles that they love, And we want to give them more ability to get those products that they heart way more frequently and way more often. So we are making significant changes to the depth of the styles that we acquire from our partners. And that's going to really start to show up in the second half of this year. And we think that it will make a noticeable impact on customer experience. We have great data on what she wants. I think that we're solidly in now this post-COVID world where she's really using us again for workwear, for weekends, and for special occasions. And so we're able to increase the depth across the styles that matter to her most.
Kara
Yeah, Rick, and thanks for the question. I think in terms of the financial impact of this move, look, it's obviously number one factor into the guidance that we have provided for product spend this year, but more importantly, I would say we always face this trade-off, right? How many styles do we want to buy? And then how many units of each style do we want to buy? So there is no additional dollars that are required to optimize for depth. I mean, we have a tremendous amount of data when we look at how easy it is for a customer to find items on our site. What is the impact of depth going to do to those metrics? And part of the reason we feel very optimistic about the 25% subscriber growth guidance is we know we have very significant improvements in the customer experience coming as it relates to inventory because of these optimizations on depth and breadth that Jen mentioned.
Rick
Thanks very much. All the best.
spk22
Thank you.
Operator
Our next question comes from Andrew Booney with JMP Securities. Please proceed with your question.
Andrew Booney
Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. I'd like to talk about the guide for 2023. Just given the guidance for 2Q and thinking about the back half of the year, can you talk about your confidence in the reacceleration of subscriber growth to hit that 25% plus number?
Kara
Sure. Look, I think we had to go back a little bit. This year was always supposed to be a year of two halves, right? So when we provided guidance last quarter, we said revenue growth in the back half of the year was supposed to be significantly stronger than the first half of the year, right? So we still believe... that's going to be the case. But I think fundamentally what underpins our confidence on the growth for this year is of course, number one, we've had a strong start to the year, but secondly, it's our confidence in the data that we have behind all of the key initiatives that we have lined up for the backup, right? So we think, number one, the inventory changes are going to be significant because ultimately people come, customers visit Rent the Runway to rent the products they love, right? And if we make it very easy or much easier to find those products to interact with our website very easily, I mean, that is going to pay dividends in terms of the retention and the loyalty customers have, right? The other very significant change that we, or the improvement that we've made to the site is this, personalized onboarding and RTR concierge service, right? So 55% of all subscribers who leave us do so within the first 90 days. So we think it's been, it's quite critical to address the pain points those first 90 days. And here we are providing a very personal SMS based, you know, it's almost like your personal stylist and we're seeing very encouraging results from customers. I think, you know, fundamentally, we have very significant product improvements that we always had planned for this year that give us a lot of confidence that we're going to get to 25% subscriber growth.
Jennifer Hyman
Yeah, I think our results in Q1 show that these strategic pillars that we outlined this year are working, and they are being felt by the customer. And I think more importantly, what you're seeing across the organization is you're seeing an agile organization that has an execution orientation. So we've actually done a lot over the first four months of the year. We've launched a lot. We've iterated a lot. And this was within a plan where we knew that the majority of the transformative product experiences would really be showing up in the back half of the year. So we already feel good about how the customers experiencing Run the Runway differently to date. And we know that we have some really exciting things lined up over the next few months.
Andrew Booney
Jen, I wanted to ask specifically about AI to that last thing that you said. I think you talked about AI as a first step. Can you talk about the vision in terms of how AI can be incorporated more broadly across the platform, just a little bit more beyond search? Thanks so much.
Jennifer Hyman
Yeah. So first, I just want to talk about AI and what it can do to the fashion industry in general. I think that fashion e-commerce is one of the most cumbersome customer experiences that exist. You are searching through pages and pages and pages of content to find the items that you like. And no one likes doing this. And so, first of all, as an industry that still is selling physical products, AI is going to be, fashion is going to be a major beneficiary as an industry. Now, Why is Rent the Runway like uniquely positioned here? Rent the Runway is different than traditional fashion in two ways. Number one is she's using us all the time. So making the experience much easier for her is even more important for us to do than a retailer that you're going to once or twice a year where you'll slog through the experience as a customer and kind of put up with it. At Rent the Runway, if we can make this a seamless experience because we're a utility, it'll be appreciated even more. And second, because of how frequently she uses us, we have real-time information on what she's doing tomorrow, on how she liked or disliked the item she received yesterday, on fit, on how exactly she wants to dress this weekend. And therefore, the data set that we have, we think is highly unique in terms of how we could power against AI. Now, if we are utilizing AI appropriately over the next few years, I see no reason why someone even has to come to our website. We talked about the fact that she's already texting one-on-one with someone from Concierge. That's really today about her onboarding experience. We talked about a beta launching over the next few weeks around AI search, which would be fundamentally about new ways that you could discover product on the site. The more medium to long-term vision is really the marriage of these two things. that there can be through any modality, however you want to communicate to Rent the Runway, a way for you to constantly access a stylist that can help you with everything from picking out new inventory to you, to solving problems, to answering questions. And you can do it asynchronously when it makes sense for you on your own time. So we're really excited about the progress that we've made towards this beta that will go live over the next few weeks. It's really interesting because I think that across all fashion sites, you know, all over the world, the way that people are searching for product is fairly vanilla. It's fairly functional, right? You can go to a site and search for a T-shirt. You can go to a site and search for a black tie gown. The fact that we are going to be able to enable our customers to search how they actually want to use this closet in the cloud. to search for items to wear to my beach bonfire this weekend, that is a completely different way to search. And I think that it really brings out the value proposition of what a closet in the cloud is all about. So we're really excited by this.
spk20
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Ike Borchow with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question.
Ike Borchow
Yeah, hi. Good evening, everyone. This is Kaydon for Ike. Congratulations in the improvements in Q1. I guess just first, Jen, you know, we're now, you know, three months post the extra items announcement. You guys obviously had a lot of initiatives in place to improve the customer experience. I am curious with this, you know, latest cohort If you can share any more color numbers behind what you are seeing from a retention basis, you know, out of that tranche of consumers. And then, Sid, you know, you noted your confidence in the active subs accelerating into the back half. Just from a seasonality perspective, you know, just looking back the last few years, you guys have tended to lose active subs quarter over quarter in Q4. You know, just anything we should consider between 3Q and 4Q, you know, especially as you're more confident behind some of these initiatives around subscriber growth. Thank you.
Jennifer Hyman
Yes, so to address the first part of the question, through Q1, we saw better churn, better rejoin rates, and better conversion rates. And as we get further away from the launch, it's harder to say what's related to 5-item versus other experience improvements that we're making across the board. but we feel really great about what we saw in Q1.
Kara
Yeah, and in terms of active jobs, look, you're 100% right. Last year, we did see a decline in Q4. I mean, if I look at the pacing of product improvement and the inventory bill that we have this year, I feel very optimistic that the entirety of the second half is going to be positively affected by that, right? So I'm not going to sit there and guide necessarily to what Q4 is going to look like relative to Q3, except to say that, you know, we've already provided confidence, you know, a confident outlook in terms of plus 25% subscriber growth. So we'll leave it at that. But that's what we expect to hit. And I think we feel, given the product improvements we have, you know, very confident in that outlook.
Q4
Great. Thanks very much.
spk22
Thank you.
Operator
Our next question comes from Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.
Eric Sheridan
Thanks so much for taking the question. I wonder if we could maybe just talk about the broader environment that you're operating in generally. We've talked in the past about return to work, the return of big events, elements of possible rationalization of spend by the consumer and shift into a model like yours and away from a purchase model. Can you just give us a sense of where we can level set in terms of thinking around the headwinds and tailwinds you face in the business as we go deeper into 2023 across those themes that we've talked about before and how those might impact elements of pause subscribers or net ads or purchasing behavior? Thanks.
spk10
Yeah, so...
Jennifer Hyman
First, we're not seeing evidence based on our acquisition numbers that we were impacted by the macro environment in Q1. So we're confident that we know what we need to do with this business. The strategic pillars are in line with things that our customers care about. We made huge progress in Q1 and clearly we're reiterating our guidance for the year. So some things that we are seeing that could be very positive for Rent the Runway is we're seeing demand for workwear is continuing to increase and demand over penetrates into workwear relative to active units on our site. Very similar to pre-COVID for, you know, the first time since COVID has occurred. And so we think that because of the macro environment as CEOs are calling their workforce back into offices and demanding more that they're there, that this is a very positive tailwind for our business. And it feels great to see Workwear back up to similar utilization than we saw pre-COVID.
Kara
And I think that it's helpful, I think, when you go into What about the macro? We're obviously in an uncertain environment and so on, but why do we still feel good, right? And I think probably the biggest reason why we feel good are number one, we're addressing these problems that customers have told us they care about. And number two, we actually have data behind the impact of the decisions we're making, right? So for instance, we're rolling out the concierge service as we speak. We see real-time data on how many people have signed up, what impact did that improvement have on our customers. So you're seeing, now it's just a question of how many customers can we get signed up? How long will that take? And really, it's just a continuation of the data that we're already seeing reflecting the improvements that we are making to that customer's experience. Take inventory, another very important factor this year. Once we actually optimize the breadth and depth and the actions we're taking, we know what a customer is likely to feel in terms of what's available to her when she visits the site. Now, we also know based on historical data and evidence how that customer is likely to react. How loyal is that customer going to be because she sees that item more available? It's much more pleasurable and easier to interact with that site. So again, these are all of these improvements This is not something that we're making an improvement, no idea how it's going to play out. We actually have relatively concrete data. It's really just a matter of executing properly and essentially reaching the benefits of the actions that we know our customers care about.
Jennifer Hyman
We just see this as a market that's growing. We think that rental continues to offer tremendous financial value, whether you're renting or a car or you're subscribing. And our goal is to focus on making our customer experience as positive as it can possibly be and to continuously improve it quarter over quarter in a market where there are more customers who are considering rental than ever before.
spk12
Great. Thank you for the color.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Ashley Hilgens with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.
Ashley Hilgens
Hey, thanks for taking our question. Anything you can tell us on the composition of subscriber growth trends? Are you activating more reserve users or seeing new subscribers coming to the platform? Thanks so much.
Kara
Yeah, I mean, obviously, look, we've called out the weakness of the reserve business. We've talked about that is affecting performance this year. So what that implies is we're clearly seeing activation across We're clearly seeing activations across new customers. I mean, this goes back a little bit to two things that are going on, right? The first thing is customers are embracing rental, right? So with that, you know, you are seeing new customers sign up, and that's a very positive thing. trend in the business. And then the second thing you're seeing is really this impact of loyalty, right? I mean, that's been a pretty strong driver for Q1. And given all of the changes we're making for the rest of the year, should continue to be a pretty strong driver for the rest of the year, right? So I think those are the two. It's really a combination of certainly acquisitions and new customers given, you know, people embracing rental, but also really strong retention that we had in Q1 and expected.
Q4
Thanks.
spk22
Thank you.
Operator
Our next question comes from Lauren Scenic with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.
spk02
Hey, this is Nathan Featheron for Lauren. Two quick ones for me. So first, how is inventory utilization trending with the launch of the five-item plan? And do you feel you have the right mix of inventory or anywhere you see a material gap that you're trying to fix? Thank you.
Jennifer Hyman
So as expected, inventory utilization is higher because of the launch of five items. We do feel that we're seeing an opportunity in workwear. We're actually increasing purchases in workwear this year 50% versus last year. But utilization is in line with where we assumed it would be before five items. We're also seeing really nice utilization in weekend wear, in accessories. And all of these areas were the areas that we really looked to where we deployed kind of our reorder dollars and accessed more style.
spk48
Great, thanks. And then good to hear they actually saw some proofing turn and retrain rates.
spk02
I guess just thinking about the split between existing and new cohorts, was there any big divergence in trends between those two?
Kara
Look, I mean, ultimately, the way we think about our business is retention is very, very important to us in terms of ensuring the long-term growth of this business. You've got to remember, 80% of all our customers come to us because they come to us organically, right? And 60%... All our customers come to us because they heard about us from somebody they know. Fundamentally, all our strategies are geared to improve that customer's experience so that they are delighted and they talk about us. Obviously, that has a very mathematical impact on growing subscribers this year, but Over time, that feeds through, right? We will get our share of growth in organic acquisition simply because most customers come out and tell others they had a great experience. I mean, that is fundamentally the core to the experience. And the nice thing about loyalty and the initiative is that we've got a lot of data behind what we're doing.
spk21
Great. Thank you.
spk22
Thank you.
Operator
Our next question comes from Ross Sandler with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.
Ross Sandler
Hey, guys.
spk46
How do we feel about where we are with the kind of super high demand in season kind of skew depth and availability? Is that at this point fully optimized and fully built out? Or Sid, you mentioned second half investments around that, but when do we think that will be in the right place to kind of match the size of the subscriber business with your inventory? It's kind of related to that, but the second part would be, how does AI kind of improve discovery of, like, hot items that maybe, you know, aren't being personalized to the user today and help, like, solve some of that availability issue? Thanks a lot.
Jennifer Hyman
Yeah. So I think the cover is going to start to feel a major difference as it relates to inventory availability starting in August. Because we've made a significant change in our depth strategies for the second half of the year.
spk13
So that's when she's going to feel that she's getting more of her parts.
Jennifer Hyman
She's finding that more of the items are in stock for her, and we're going to make it more profitable for her experience. In terms of AI, you know, you're correctly pointing out that AI for us helps to even further leverage the long tail. If you think about, you know, what I mentioned, how cumbersome any e-commerce experience is of just tapping through many, many pages of results. And on Rent the Runway, there's no... hundreds of pages for search results that you could see for if you clicked in dresses, if you clicked in new blazers, et cetera. And so to be able to actually have a query that's related to something you have going on in your life, like what we're to the University of Michigan tailgate this weekend. You're going to see this long tail of files that might have taken you many pages of looking at hundreds and hundreds of products to see otherwise. So I think that this will help in product coverage.
spk22
Thank you.
Operator
Our next question comes from Ed Ehren with Piper Sandler. Please proceed with your question.
Ed Ehren
Hey, good afternoon, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. I guess first, on reserve. Just want to click down on that a little bit more. I know you guys are facing some tough compares there. Has inventory been an issue there? I know it was through part of last year. And then I guess just kind of stepping back and maybe as I follow on the AI question, I guess how do we think about the rate by which you can bring some of these innovations to the market? I know you indicated you're going to have a soft launch in a couple weeks, but should we think about this as being kind of a couple quarter phenomenon, or do you think you can implement some of these AI search functions relatively quickly?
spk26
Thank you.
Jennifer Hyman
So, in terms of AI, I think that whatever we do launch will be in beta, and then we'll continue to iterate and improve it over time. I think AI is so new to everyone, and I think that what I'm excited about is how quickly we've been able to leverage our data here and create a product that we think is going to make a nice difference in product discovery. And we'll just continue to make that better over time.
Kara
Yeah. And on the reservedness, I think, look, look, it's a fascinating question, right? So in the last quarter, we've been very focused on driving our subscription business. So, you know, everything we've done on marketing, on brand messaging, all reflecting that focus on subscription, particularly with the recent five item launch in Q1, right? But having said that, we think internally there's a real opportunity to grow our reserve business over time. They're not mutually exclusive businesses, right? So we're working on plans that involve both inventory and product to re-energize this offering. And obviously none of that factored into the guidance and the expectations for this year, and we've just reflected a continuation of trends. But over time, we feel pretty optimistic about our ability to re-energize that business and have it continue to serve us
Q4
Thank you.
spk22
Thank you.
Operator
There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the floor back over to Manigit for closing comments.
Jennifer Hyman
Thanks so much for joining us today. I'm really excited about our plans to accelerate our profitability and the long runway for growth ahead. We look forward to continuing to update you on our progress on our Q2 2023 call in September. And thanks again for joining us.
Operator
This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
spk17
Goodbye.
spk18
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. © transcript Emily Beynon do
Operator
Welcome to the Rent the Runways first quarter 2023 earnings results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would like now to turn this call over to Rent the Runway's General Counsel, Cara Seenbreed. Thank you.
Cara Seenbury
You may begin. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us to discuss Rent the Runway's first quarter 2023 results. Joining me today to discuss our results are CEO and co-founder Jennifer Hyman and CFO Sid Thacker. During this call, we will make references to our Q123 earnings presentation, which can be found in the events and presentation section of our investor relations website. Before we begin, we would like to remind you that this call will include forward-looking statements. These statements include our future expectations regarding financial results, guidance and targets, market opportunities, and our growth. These statements are subject to various risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that could cause our actual results to differ materially. These risks, uncertainties, and assumptions are detailed in this afternoon's press release, as well as our filings with the SEC, including our Form 10-Q that will be filed in the next few days. We have no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements or information except as required by law. During this call, we will also reference certain non-GAAP financial information. The presentation of this non-GAAP financial information is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for financial information that's presented in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliations of gap to non-gap measures can be found in our press release slide presentation posted on our investor website in our SEC filing. And with that, I'll turn it over to Jen.
Jennifer Hyman
Thanks, Kara, and thanks, everyone, for joining. As I shared on our last call, our 2023 growth strategy is focused on improving our customer experience. To do that, we are focused on delivering more value to customers quarter over quarter in the areas that matter to them most. It's an exciting time for Rent the Runway. We're delivering tangible momentum in executing against our customer-centric vision as evidenced by our strong Q1 results. We delivered a new record active subscriber count of 145,220, representing 15% growth quarter over quarter, while posting a beat on the top and bottom line. Revenue came in at 74.2 million, a 10% increase year over year. We continue to hold our gross margin above 40% at 42.3% and posted a strong adjusted EBITDA margin of 6.1%, well above guidance. I'm particularly proud of the progress on profitability metrics paired with strong subscriber growth because I believe that it demonstrates our ability to manage costs effectively while making important investments into the customer experience. We have conviction that our subscriber growth and margins in Q1 provide a strong foundation towards the goals we shared last quarter, which we are reiterating now. Growing ending active subscribers by over 25% and reducing cash consumption by almost 50% in fiscal 2023. We have confidence in these goals because of the laser focus we're maintaining on our customer. Our team has demonstrated agility. and is focused on execution. Our customers are beginning to feel a real difference, and we're going to spend much of this call detailing some of the key improvements we've made so far this year. Having said that, I also want to emphasize that transforming our customer experience is not a one-quarter endeavor. We will be updating you on impact over the next several quarters. Our goal is to maximize customer love and retention, and we'll do that by making their experience easier, more valuable, and more fun. We'll know that we're successful if we inspire more women to buy less clothes and rent instead. We see that the market for fashion rental is growing all over the world and believe our opportunity has never been greater. Now I want to talk to you about what our team has already accomplished related to our three customer-centric strategic pillars, which are, one, getting her the inventory she wants when she wants it, two, providing an efficient and easy-to-use experience And three, offering best-in-class product discovery. These pillars are key due to the frequency with which our subscribers use Rent the Runway. And this is what we have to get more and more right over time. As a reminder, the majority of our team is focused on customer-facing initiatives this year. We kicked off the year by permanently adding an extra item to every shipment of our subscription programs. And we've been happy with the results of our launches since then. One, on inventory she wants when she wants it. In support of getting her the inventory she wants when she wants it, inventory availability continues to be a top priority. We know our customer is here for the fashion, and her ability to access it is one of the key ways she evaluates the value of her subscription. We've expanded and grown an ongoing strategy to acquire more of the styles our customers are telling us they want in real time. Because of real-time data signals we get on actual and unmet demand, we are one of the few retailers that is structured to chase and refresh inventory mid-season. This gives our buying team significant leverage on pricing. We believe the next step in this effort will be felt deeply by our customers in the back half of the year as we are focused on significantly increasing depth in the key styles and trends we know our customers want. Next, I want to share some of the actions we've taken in Q1 to make Rent the Runway easier to use for our customers. In early May, we launched a luxury-style concierge service to help new subscribers onboard with Rent the Runway more seamlessly. Rent the Runway concierge provides free, one-on-one interaction via text with our customer service team to help new subscribers get the most out of their memberships. from building their first shipment to styling tips or solving a fit or shipping issue. We believe this program has the potential to be an important retention driver. Our customers have incredibly busy lives. 90% of them work, a third have kids, and 85% socialize more than twice a week. So the easier we make the experience, the more it can be cemented into her life. As we've shared previously, we've enjoyed strong, long-term customer loyalty. but we also know that the majority of subscribers who churn do so in their first 90 days. By providing a concierge experience in her early months of membership, we aim to delight her with an effortless introduction to rental. We think this will improve retention and make her a loyal customer sooner. You'll see us integrate this offering more deeply into our product experience in the quarters to come. Next, we're making our site and app faster. As an example, we drove a 48% improvement in average load time on a key entry point into our conversion funnel, which resulted in an 89% lift in conversion on that page. Last, we made two improvements to our delivery and returns experience that directly speak to the premium level of service Rent the Runway offers. One, we launched a new tool to drive further adoption of at-home pickup, which has led to an increase in in-market adoption of the service, by nearly four percentage points from the end of Q4 22 to the end of Q1 23. Second, last week we launched Saturday delivery to more than half of our subscribers, a big unlock for customers who can now receive their deliveries on the weekend. We plan to continue to enhance all aspects of our experience to make it as easy as possible for customers to navigate their subscription. Finally, I'm going to share recent accomplishments related to our strategic pillar on best-in-class product discovery, where our goal is to be even better than a typical retailer in how our customers find the inventory they love. First, we shared during our last call that we launched Rent the Look and similar items in late March to enable customers to easily find a complete outfit or a visually similar option based on the styling we provide on our product display pages. The introduction of these features has increased member engagement, particularly when members landed on pages with unavailable styles. Now she's served similar substitute items through this feature directly on the product display page, leading to a 34% increase in engagement with substitute items among members. Last, and something I'm personally very passionate about, we're excited to announce that in the coming weeks, we plan to launch an AI-driven search beta. This will allow customers to search common fashion terms or use cases, and it's intended to make searching our site more intuitive and natural. For example, she will be able to write Miami vibe, clam bacon Nantucket, or tropical motif, and our AI-powered discovery engine will serve her relevant inventory. We see this as a first and important step in Rent the Runway using AI models to improve our product experience. And we expect to build on this launch in the months and quarters to come. We believe that AI has the potential to directly support our 2023 strategy of delivering more value to the customer and leapfrog ahead of the experience that we deliver today. Fashion as an industry serves to benefit from AI to narrow the endless aisle problem of e-commerce. But we believe that Renzo Runway is uniquely positioned to be a significant beneficiary of AI because of, one, the frequency with which she interacts with our product, and two, our unique and rich data catalog, which includes her frequent site behavior and all of the data we gather from her on fit, inventory quality, occasion, and more every time she rents. The majority of subscribers are reviewing 10-plus items per month, This data set gives us a head start on any future innovation we'll endeavor in the AI space. We also believe that our opportunity in AI is bigger than product discovery. We are exploring how it can impact our concierge experience and onboarding to deliver an even more personalized experience to enhance customer loyalty. And we have the team to do this. We've been harnessing machine learning for a decade employing data to power personalization within our consumer experience, our operation, and across our business. So we're looking forward to continuing to build this muscle at Rent the Runway. I'm truly energized about the progress we've made so far this year and everything that lies ahead. Most of all, I'm looking forward to continuing to deliver for our customers. And with that, I'll turn it over to Sid.
Kara
Thanks, Jen. And thanks again, everyone, for joining us. Since our 2021 IPO, investors have asked us two key questions. First, can Renta Runway grow? Second, how profitable can the company be? Our first quarter results demonstrate solid progress on both fronts. As Jen outlined, we believe deeply that the customer experience improvements we are making are key to driving improved retention and faster growth. At just over 145,000 ending active subscribers at the end of Q1, we are making progress to 25% plus active subscriber growth in fiscal 2023. Our path to profitability is focused on free cash flow. Last quarter, we outlined the almost 50% reduction in cash consumption we expect for fiscal 23. We believe that our margins in Q1 provide a strong foundation for progress towards that goal. Let me now review our Q1 23 results. We ended Q1 with 145,220 ending active subscribers, up 7.6% year-over-year. Average active subscribers during the quarter were 135,966 versus 125,119, an increase of 8.7% year-over-year. Total revenue for the quarter was $74.2 million, up 10.6% year-over-year. Subscription and reserve rental revenue was $66.8 million versus $61.4 million last year, an increase of 8.8%. As we discussed last quarter, we did see weakness in our reserve business in Q1. Subscription ARPU for the quarter was slightly higher year over year, primarily due to the impact of the April 22 price increase, partially offset by changes in program mix and add-on rates. Other revenue was $7.4 million, versus $5.7 million last year, growing 29.8% year-over-year due primarily to increased purchases of rental products. Note that the timing of these purchases can vary from quarter to quarter, depending on the assortment available for sale. Other revenue represented approximately 10% of revenue versus 8.5% of revenue in Q1-22. Fulfillment costs were $21.9 million in Q1-23 versus $22.9 million in Q1-22. Fulfillment costs as a percentage of revenue improved from 34.1% of revenue in Q1-22 to 29.5% of revenue in Q1-23. As a reminder, Q1-22 results did not benefit from an April 22 price increase. We were able to offset the impact of higher ship units per order on account of a five-item launch with efficiencies in both processing and transportation costs. Growth margins were 42.3% in Q123 versus 33.5% in Q122. Q123 growth margins reflect the impact of the April 22 price increase, the fulfillment cost improvements discussed above, as well as lower product appreciation due to the continued impact of product acquisition mix changes towards more efficient channels. As expected, growth margins were lower than Q422 levels due to seasonally higher product acquisition we typically see in Q1 and Q3. Operating expenses were 5% lower year-over-year and about 13% lower year-over-year before stock-based compensation, primarily due to the favorable impact of our 2022 restructuring plan. We continue to expect about $25 million in restructuring-related savings in fiscal 23 compared to the Q2-22 run rate. Total operating expenses, including technology, marketing, G&A, and stock-based compensation, were 66% of revenue versus 77% of revenue last year. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $4.5 million, or 6.1% of revenue, versus negative $8.8 million and negative 13.1% of revenue in the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA margins reflected strong cost discipline that allowed us to offset investments made to improve customer experience. Free cash flow was negative $12 million in Q123 versus negative $28 million in Q122. We continue to expect significant improvement in cash consumption in fiscal 23. Let's turn to guidance. For the full year, we continue to expect revenue of between $320 to $330 million and ending active subscriber growth in excess of 25%. We are also reiterating a full-year adjusted EBITDA margin guidance of 7 to 8% of revenues. Our guidance on cash flow remains unchanged, and we expect to reduce cash consumption by almost 50% to below $50 million. We are updating our fiscal 2023 product spend expectations to $74 to $76 million from $69 to $72 million, as we are seeing increased opportunities to purchase high-quality styles from top brands at deep discounts. Finally, there is no change to our expectation for growth margins to be slightly lower on a year-over-year basis. We expect Q2 revenue to be between $77 and $79 million. This represents about 5% growth sequentially versus Q1-23 and approximately 2% growth versus Q2-22 at the midpoint of the guidance range. Let me talk about the factors affecting Q2. First, as some of you may have noticed, we are experimenting with being less promotional with our new customer offer pricing. We think this will improve retention and allow us to invest in improving the customer experience. We do expect these experiments to reduce acquisitions in the short term, especially in our lower price program. As a result, we expect lower ending active subscribers in Q2 versus Q1. We think these are the right decisions for our customers and have factored these changes into our full year guidance of 25% plus subscriber growth. Second, both sequential and year-over-year growth are expected to be negatively impacted by the decline in the reserve business. Finally, we also expect other revenues to be relatively flat quarter-over-quarter due to higher units sold in the first quarter of this year. Q2 23 adjusted EBITDA margins are expected to be between 7% to 8% of revenue as we expect the higher revenue base versus Q1 to improve leverage on a fixed cost base. I'd like to end by saying that we remain confident in the trajectory of our business, and we have a very clear sense of how to improve the customer experience. The second half of fiscal 23 should see us make significant progress across inventory, onboarding, and product initiatives. We believe these changes will be noticeable to our customers and make it easier for them to find and experience our inventory and product, in a more seamless manner. With that, we are happy to open it up for questions.
Operator
Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. So that we may address questions from as many participants as possible, we ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you have additional questions, you may recue, and time permitting, those questions will be addressed.
spk22
One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Thank you.
Operator
Our first question comes from Rick Patel with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.
Rick Patel
Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. I have a question on getting better at giving customers what they want when they want it. How do we think about this from an inventory management perspective? Does it mean that You'll be buying more inventory as you get a read on fashion. Does it mean that you'll be leaning more on your share by RTR partners? Just curious how to think about the mechanics of chasing high demand products. And as a follow-up, what are the financial ramifications from ramping up this initiative on gross margins and working capital?
Jennifer Hyman
I think there's two main ways we're addressing it. And you've seen us really deploy one of the ways thus far in Q1 and early Q2. So the first way is we get these real-time data signals in season on what's doing well, what's highly demanded. And number one, we're able to respond to them in season, get competitive pricing, reorder pretty aggressively against top styles. And that's kind of because of both the real-time data that we get, but it's also because it's a business model that we have where we can continue to monetize inventory over three plus years, as opposed to being held to kind of a traditional retailer, 12-week of full-price selling kind of calendar. So that's number one. The second aspect of this is really focusing on depth. We know that our customers come to Rent the Runway, they heart styles that they love, And we want to give them more ability to get those products that they heart way more frequently and way more often. So we are making significant changes to the depth of the styles that we acquire from our partners. And that's going to really start to show up in the second half of this year. And we think that it will make a noticeable impact on customer experience. We have great data on what she wants. I think that we're solidly in now this post-COVID world where she's really using us again for workwear, for weekends, and for special occasions. And so we're able to increase the depth across the styles that matter to her most.
Kara
Yeah, Rick, and thanks for the question. I think in terms of the financial impact of this move, look, it's obviously the number one factor into the guidance that we have provided for product spend this year, but more importantly, I would say we always face this trade-off, right? How many styles do we want to buy? And then how many units of each style do we want to buy? So there is no additional dollars that are required to optimize for depth. I mean, we have a tremendous amount of data when we look at how easy it is for a customer to find items on our site. What is the impact of depth going to do to those metrics? And part of the reason we feel very optimistic about the 25% subscriber growth guidance is we know we have very significant improvements in the customer experience coming as it relates to inventory because of these optimizations on depth and breadth that Jen mentioned.
Rick
Thanks very much. All the best.
spk22
Thank you.
Operator
Our next question comes from Andrew Booney with JMP Securities. Please proceed with your question.
Andrew Booney
Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. I'd like to talk about the guide for 2023. just given the guidance for 2Q and thinking about the back half of the year, can you talk about your confidence in the re-acceleration of subscriber growth to hit that 25% plus number?
Kara
Sure. Look, I think we had, to go back a little bit, we always, this year was always supposed to be a year of two halves, right? So when we provided guidance last quarter, we said revenue growth in the back half of the year was supposed to be significantly stronger than the first half of the year, right? So we still believe that's going to be the case. But I think fundamentally, what underpins our confidence on the growth for this year is, of course, number one, we've had a strong start to the year. But secondly, it's our confidence in the data that we have behind all of the key initiatives that we have lined up for the backup, right? So we think, number one, the inventory changes are going to be significant because ultimately people come, customers visit Rent the Runway to rent the products they love, right? And if we make it very easy or much easier to find those products to interact with our website very easily, I mean, that is going to pay dividends in terms of the retention and the loyalty customers have, right? The other very significant change that we, or the improvement that we've made to the site is this, personalized onboarding and RTR concierge service, right? So 55% of all subscribers who leave us do so within the first 90 days. So we think it's been, it's quite critical to address the pain points those first 90 days. And here we are providing a very personal SMS-based, you know, it's almost like your personal stylist and we're seeing very encouraging results from customers. I think, you know, fundamentally, we have very significant product improvements that we always had planned for this year that give us a lot of confidence that we're going to get to 25% subscriber growth.
Jennifer Hyman
Yeah, I think our results in Q1 show that these strategic pillars that we outlined this year are working, and they are being felt by the customer. And I think more importantly, what you're seeing across the organization is you're seeing an agile organization that has an execution orientation. So we've actually done a lot over the first four months of the year. We've launched a lot. We've iterated a lot. And this was within a plan where we knew that the majority of the transformative product experiences would really be showing up in the back half of the year. So we already feel good about how the customers experiencing Run the Runway differently to date. And we know that we have some really exciting things lined up over the next few months.
Andrew Booney
Jen, I wanted to ask specifically about AI to that last thing that you said. I think you talked about AI as a first step. Can you talk about the vision in terms of how AI can be incorporated more broadly across the platform, just a little bit more beyond search? Thanks so much.
Jennifer Hyman
Yeah. So first, I just want to talk about AI and what it can do to the fashion industry in general. I think that fashion e-commerce is one of the most cumbersome customer experiences that exist. You are searching through pages and pages and pages of content to find the items that you like. And no one likes doing this. And so, first of all, as an industry that still is selling physical products, AI is going to be, fashion is going to be a major beneficiary as an industry. Now, Why is Rent the Runway like uniquely positioned here? Rent the Runway is different than traditional fashion in two ways. Number one is she's using us all the time. So making the experience much easier for her is even more important for us to do than a retailer that you're going to once or twice a year where you'll slog through the experience as a customer and kind of put up with it. At Rent the Runway, if we can make this a seamless experience because we're a utility, it'll be appreciated even more. And second, because of how frequently she uses us, we have real-time information on what she's doing tomorrow, on how she liked or disliked the item she received yesterday, on fit, on how exactly she wants to dress this weekend. And therefore, the data set that we have, we think is highly unique in terms of how we could power against AI. Now, if we are utilizing AI appropriately over the next few years, I see no reason why someone even has to come to our website. We talked about the fact that she's already texting one-on-one with someone from Concierge. That's really today about her onboarding experience. We talked about a beta launching over the next few weeks around AI search, which would be fundamentally about new ways that you could discover product on the site. The more medium to long-term vision is really the marriage of these two things. that there can be through any modality, however you want to communicate to Rent the Runway, a way for you to constantly access a stylist that can help you with everything from picking out new inventory to you, to solving problems, to answering questions. And you can do it asynchronously when it makes sense for you on your own time. So we're really excited about the progress that we've made towards this beta that will go live over the next few weeks. It's really interesting because I think that across all fashion sites, you know, all over the world, the way that people are searching for product is fairly vanilla, fairly functional, right? You can go to a site and search for a t-shirt. You can go to a site and search for a black tie gown. The fact that we're going to be able to enable our customers to search how they actually want to use this closet in the cloud. to search for items to wear to my beach bonfire this weekend, that is a completely different way to search. And I think that it really brings out the value proposition of what a closet in the cloud is all about. So we're really excited by this.
spk20
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Ike Borchow with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question.
Ike Borchow
Yeah, hi. Good evening, everyone. This is Kaydon for Ike. Congratulations in the improvements in Q1. I guess just first, Jen, you know, we're now, you know, three months post the extra items announcement. You guys obviously had a lot of initiatives in place to improve the customer experience. I am curious with this, you know, latest cohort If you can share any more color numbers behind what you are seeing from a retention basis, you know, out of that tranche of consumers. And then, Sid, you know, you noted your confidence in the active subs accelerating into the back half. Just from a seasonality perspective, you know, just looking back the last few years, you guys have tended to lose active subs quarter over quarter in Q4. You know, just anything we should consider between 3Q and 4Q, you know, especially as you're more confident behind some of these initiatives around subscriber growth. Thank you.
Jennifer Hyman
So, to address the first part of the question, through Q1, we saw better churn, better rejoin rates, and better conversion rates. And as we get further away from the launch, it's harder to say what's related to 5 item versus other experience improvements that we're making across the board. but we feel really great about what we saw in Q1.
Kara
Yeah, and in terms of active jobs, look, you're 100% right. Last year, we did see a decline in Q4. I mean, if I look at the pacing of product improvement and the inventory bill that we have this year, I feel very optimistic that the entirety of the second half is going to be positively affected by that, right? So I'm not going to sit there and guide necessarily to what Q4 is going to look like relative to Q3, except to say that, you know, we've already provided confidence, you know, a confident outlook in terms of plus 25% subscriber growth. So we'll leave it at that. But that's what we expect to hit. And I think we feel, given the product improvements we have, you know, very confident in that outlook.
Q4
Great. Thanks very much.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.
Eric Sheridan
Thanks so much for taking the question. I wonder if we could maybe just talk about the broader environment that you're operating in generally. We've talked in the past about return to work, the return of big events, elements of possible rationalization of spend by the consumer and shift into a model like yours and away from a purchase model. Can you just give us a sense of where we can level set in terms of thinking around the headwinds and tailwinds you face in the business as we go deeper into 2023 across those themes that we've talked about before and how those might impact elements of pause subscribers or net ads or purchasing behavior? Thanks.
spk10
Yeah, so...
Jennifer Hyman
First, we're not seeing evidence based on our acquisition numbers that we were impacted by the macro environment in Q1. So we're confident that we know what we need to do with this business. The strategic pillars are in line with things that our customers care about. We made huge progress in Q1 and clearly we're reiterating our guidance for the year. So some things that we are seeing that could be very positive for Run the Runway is we're seeing demand for workwear is continuing to increase and demand over penetrates into workwear relative to active units on our site. Very similar to pre-COVID for, you know, the first time since COVID has occurred. And so we think that because of the macro environment as CEOs are calling their workforce back into offices and demanding more that they're there, that this is a very positive tailwind for our business. And it feels great to see Workwear back up to, you know, similar utilization than we saw pre-COVID.
Kara
And I think that, you know, it's helpful, I think, when you go into What about the macro? We're obviously in an uncertain environment and so on, but why do we still feel good, right? And I think probably the biggest reason why we feel good are number one, we're addressing these problems that customers have told us they care about. And number two, we actually have data behind the impact of the decisions we're making, right? So for instance, we're rolling out the concierge service as we speak. We see real-time data on how many people have signed up, what impact did that improvement have on our customers. So you're seeing, now it's just a question of how many customers can we get signed up? How long will that take? And really, it's just a continuation of the data that we're already seeing reflecting the improvements that we are making to that customer's experience. Take inventory, another very important factor this year. Once we actually optimize the breadth and depth and the actions we're taking, we know what a customer is likely to feel in terms of what's available to her when she visits the site. Now, we also know based on historical data and evidence how that customer is likely to react. How loyal is that customer going to be because she sees that item more available? It's much more pleasurable and easier to interact with that site. So again, these are all of these improvements This is not something that we're making an improvement, no idea how it's going to play out. We actually have relatively concrete data. It's really just a matter of executing properly and essentially reaping the benefits of the actions that we know our customers care about.
Jennifer Hyman
We just see this as a market that's growing. We think that rental continues to offer tremendous financial value, whether you're renting or a cart or you're subscribing. And our goal is to focus on making our customer experience as positive as it can possibly be and to continuously improve it quarter over quarter in a market where there are more customers who are considering rental than ever before.
spk12
Great. Thank you for the color.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Ashley Hilgens with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.
Ashley Hilgens
Hey, thanks for taking our question. Anything you can tell us on the composition of subscriber growth trends? Are you activating more reserve users or seeing new subscribers coming to the platform? Thanks so much.
Kara
Yeah, I mean, obviously, look, we've called out the weakness of the reserve business. We've talked about that is affecting performance this year. So what that implies is we're clearly seeing activation across We're clearly seeing activations across new customers. I mean, this goes back a little bit to two things that are going on. The first thing is customers are embracing rental. So with that, you are seeing new customers sign up, and that's a very positive thing. trend in the business. And then the second thing you're seeing is really this impact of loyalty, right? I mean, that's been a pretty strong driver for Q1. And given all of the changes we're making for the rest of the year, should continue to be a pretty strong driver for the rest of the year, right? So I think those are the two. It's really a combination of certainly acquisitions and new customers given, you know, people embracing rental, but also really strong retention that we had in Q1 and expected.
Q4
Thanks.
spk22
Thank you.
Operator
Our next question comes from Lauren Scenic with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.
spk02
Hey, this is Nathan Featheron for Lauren. Two quick ones for me. So first, how is inventory utilization trending with the launch of the five-item plan? And do you feel you have the right mix of inventory or anywhere you see a material gap that you're trying to fix? Thank you.
Jennifer Hyman
So as expected, inventory utilization is higher because of the launch of five items. We do feel that we're seeing an opportunity in workwear. We're actually increasing purchases in workwear this year 50% versus last year. But utilization is in line with where we assumed it would be before five items. We're also seeing really nice utilization in weekend wear, in accessories. And all of these areas were the areas that we really looked to where we deployed kind of our reorder dollars and accessed more style.
spk48
Great, thanks. And then good to hear they actually thought of improving turn and retrain rates.
spk02
I guess just thinking about the split between existing and new cohorts, was there any big divergence in trends between those two?
Kara
Look, I mean, ultimately, the way we think about our business is intention is very, very important to us in terms of ensuring the long-term growth of this business. You've got to remember, 80% of all our customers come to us because it comes out organically, right? And 60%... all our customers come to us because they heard about us from somebody they know. Fundamentally, all our strategies are geared to improve that customer's experience so that they are delighted and they talk about us. Obviously, that has a very mathematical impact on growing subscribers this year, but Over time, that feeds through, right? We will get our share of growth in organic acquisition simply because our customers brought in and tell others they had a great experience. I mean, that is fundamentally the core to the experience. And the nice thing about loyalty and the initiative is that we've got a lot of data behind what we're doing.
spk21
Great. Thank you.
spk22
Thank you.
Operator
Our next question comes from Ross Sandler with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.
Ross Sandler
Hey, guys.
spk46
How do we feel about where we are with the kind of super high demand in season kind of skew depth and availability? Is that at this point fully optimized and fully built out? Or Sid, you mentioned second half investments around that, but when do we think that will be in the right place to kind of match the size of the subscriber business with your inventory? It's kind of related to that, but the second part would be, how does AI kind of improve discovery of, like, hot items that maybe, you know, aren't being personalized to the user today and help, like, solve some of that availability issue? Thanks a lot.
Jennifer Hyman
Yeah. So I think the customer is going to start to feel a major difference as it relates to inventory availability starting in August. Because we've made a significant change in our desk strategies for the second half of the year.
spk13
So that's when she's going to feel that she's getting more of her parts.
Jennifer Hyman
She's finding that more of the items are in stock for her and we're going to make it more profitable for her experience. In terms of AI, you know, you're correctly pointing out that AI for us helps to even further leverage the long tail. If you think about, you know, what I mentioned, how cumbersome any e-commerce experience is of just tapping through many, many pages of results. And on Rent the Runway, there's no... hundreds of pages for search results that you could see for if you clicked in dresses, if you clicked in new blazers, et cetera. And so to be able to actually have a query that's related to something you have going on in your life, like what did you wear to the University of Michigan tailgate this weekend? You're going to see this long tail of style that might have taken you many pages of looking at hundreds and hundreds of products to see otherwise. So I think that this will help in product discovery.
spk22
Thank you.
Operator
Our next question comes from Ed Ehren with Piper Sandler. Please proceed with your question.
Ed Ehren
Hey, good afternoon, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. I guess first, on reserve. Just want to click down on that a little bit more. I know you guys are facing some tough compares there. Has inventory been an issue there? I know it was through part of last year. And then I guess just kind of stepping back and maybe as I follow on the AI question, I guess how do we think about the rate by which you can bring some of these innovations to the market? I know you indicated you're going to have kind of a soft launch in a couple weeks, but should we think about this as being kind of a couple quarter phenomenon, or do you think you can implement some of these AI search functions relatively quickly?
spk26
Thank you.
Jennifer Hyman
So, in terms of AI, I think that whatever we do launch will be in beta, and then we'll continue to iterate and improve it over time. I think AI is so new to everyone, and I think that what I'm excited about is how quickly we've been able to leverage our data here and create a product that we think is going to make a nice difference in product discovery. And we'll just continue to make that better over time.
Kara
Yeah. And on the reservedness, I think, look, look, it's a fascinating question, right? So in the last quarter, we've been very focused on driving our subscription business. So, you know, everything we've done on marketing, on brand messaging, all reflecting that focus on subscription, particularly with the recent five item launch in Q1, right? But having said that, we think internally there's a real opportunity to grow our reserve business over time. We think they're not mutually exclusive businesses, right? So we're working on plans that involve both inventory and product to re-energize this offering. And obviously none of that factored into the guidance and the expectations for this year, and we've just reflected a continuation of trends. But over time, we feel pretty optimistic about our ability to re-energize that business and have it continue to serve us
spk26
Thank you.
spk22
Thank you.
Operator
There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the floor back over to Manigit for closing comments.
Jennifer Hyman
Thanks so much for joining us today. I'm really excited about our plans to accelerate our profitability and the long runway for growth ahead. We look forward to continuing to update you on our progress on our Q2 2023 call in September. And thanks again for joining us.
Operator
This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
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