RentTheRunway filed confidentially for IPO in July. Seriously I feel bad for these folks.

The bottom line is the confidential part of the IPO tells me all I need to know.

The idea is conceptually great - don't buy new stuff all the time, but get great lightly used items for your next event.

• They raise $100M at a $1B valuation in 2019. Then another round at a $750M valuation. Down rounds happen, but let's be honest, the business went down significantly last year.

• They tried retail stores and had to shutter them because people weren't doing discovery there, just picking up their subscriptions. That means not a lot of new customers to justify the expense. Plus, well, the pandemic.

Then in what seemed like a margin play, they decided to try resale from their site. I expect this would be quite profitable particularly for pre-rented items. Challenge is the "rent" branding. Who even knows to go there to buy?

Post-pandemic RentTheRunway I expect to rebrand, with an acquisition, as a large fashion marketplace, except Etsy just acquired Gen-Z based dePop in what looks like an extremely smart move right about now. Can't grow without more inventory and a marketplace is the most efficient way to acquire inventory.

So the question: does the industry still need RentTheRunway?