Rent the Runway appoints new logistics execs to leadership, board

By

Jennifer Braun

Published
Feb 14, 2020

Rent the Runway announced on Thursday a series of senior leadership appointments, to primarily help sort out its supply chain challenges. The move follows a year where the apparel rental giant failed to meet customer deliveries and temporarily stopped taking new orders all together.

First off, the clothing rental start-up has appointed Brian Donato as chief supply chain officer, effective March 16, 2020. 

In his new role, Donato will oversee Rent the Runway’s customer fulfillment operation, including reverse logistics, customer service, warehousing, inventory restoration, transportation, operational excellence and distribution network expansion. 

Donato joins Rent the Runway from Bowery Farming, where he most recently built the operations team for the New York based start-up. Prior to joining Bowery, he spent seven years at Amazon, where he held several senior operational roles including most recently director of operations, Amazon Home Services. 

He will report to co-founder and chief executive officer, Jennifer Hyman.

“As the pioneer of rental and leader in reverse logistics, operational transformation to enhance our customer experience is one of our highest priorities,” said Hyman, in a news statement. 

“Brian’s leadership and experience in operations and logistics will be a valuable asset to the company as we continue to advance our end-to-end differentiated operational capabilities to capitalize on our future growth opportunities.”

In addition, Rent the Runway named Mike Indresano as senior transportation executive. 

Most recently, Indresano served as the SVP for Walmart E-Commerce Transportation, where he led the implementation of next day delivery service for Walmart.com customers. Prior to Walmart, Mike held roles as vice president of Amazon Transportation Services and vice president of operations for FedEx SmartPost. 

At Amazon, Mike led teams that launched seven-day delivery, built sortation infrastructure to unlock USPS final mile, acquired the first planes for Prime Air and introduced the first trailers for in-house surface transportation.

Finally, the company also said that Mike Roth, former VP of Amazon’s global customer fulfillment operations & transportation, joined its board in January. 

Rent the Runway’s newest board member was a key leader at Amazon from July 1999 until June 2019. He is credited as one of the senior leaders and architects of Amazon's transportation and operational prowess over the past 20 years.

“I’ve always been wowed by how Amazon has innovated the customer experience of retail over the past few decades, and thereby disrupted the way we shop,” said Hyman.

“Much of Amazon’s success is clearly due to its leadership and forward thinking in operations and transportation and much of that is due to Mike Roth. To have a leader of Mike Roth’s stature, experience and knowledge join Rent the Runway’s Board at this point of our growth trajectory is an absolute honor and gives me even more confidence in the continued innovation of our closet in the cloud."