Rental platform Onloan goes on hiatus

The founders of UK rental platform Onloan have announced the company will be taking a break after it struggled to fundraise during the midst of the pandemic.

In a post shared to Instagram, the company said: “We built a pioneering rental service we are so proud of but the timings of the pandemic, plus some nuts HMRC legislation around leasing had made it super tricky for us to fundraise and grow Onloan to the next level.”

The company, co-founded by friends Natalie-Anne Hasseck and Tamsin Chislett, will use this time to find new investment opportunities.

The post elaborated that, with many of its best pieces always out of stock, it struggled to finance the clothes to help the company grow.

With operations on “pause”, customers are no longer able to rent clothing for now while the company takes a break to reevaluate itself and reflect before moving forward.

It further announced that all of its pre-used clothing will be available to buy until March via a dedicated website.

A conclusion by the company read: “The plan was always to tackle fast fashion addiction but nothing prepared us for the seismic shift in shopping habits, of which we - and you - played a key role.”