By Will Hunter, Founder of Rent with Thred • Updated August 2026 • Thred proprietary rental analysis
Retail sales tell you what someone bought once. Rental can show something different: what people repeatedly choose to wear when they are allowed to move across brands, return items, try again and change their minds.
We analyzed Rent with Thred’s fall/winter rental activity across two seasonal windows to understand which premium menswear brands were not just popular, but efficient relative to how much inventory was available.
The dataset: 2,217 fall/winter orders in the earlier window, 2,827 in the later window, plus 22 months of inventory-exposure data for a high-confidence matched subset of fall/winter-relevant products. That is 5,044 orders across the two comparison windows.
What We Measured
Raw rental volume is useful, but it can be misleading. A brand with twice as much inventory can generate more rentals simply because it has more chances to be chosen.
So the analysis looked at six dimensions instead of just counting orders:
- Demand scale: total rental volume in the later fall/winter window.
- Demand efficiency: rentals per unit-month of inventory exposure.
- Customer engagement: unique customers choosing the brand.
- Breadth: number of different styles rented.
- Loyalty: repeat-customer rate.
- Growth momentum: change in rental demand versus the earlier fall/winter window.
We combined those dimensions into a relative brand score. The weighting was 25% demand scale, 25% demand efficiency, 15% customer engagement, 10% breadth, 15% loyalty and 10% growth.
The Best-Performing Brands in the Fall/Winter Rental Data
| Brand | Composite Score | Investment Read |
|---|---|---|
| Todd Snyder | 84 | Buy deeper |
| Alex Mill | 82 | Buy deeper |
| Corridor | 81 | Buy deeper |
| Faherty | 78 | Buy deeper |
| Nudie Jeans | 74 | Targeted bets |
| Marine Layer | 68 | Buy solidly |
| Alex Crane | 63 | Buy solidly |
| Buck Mason | 61 | Buy solidly |
| Filson | 53 | Proceed cautiously |
| Ottway the Label | 41 | Proceed cautiously |
1. Todd Snyder, Alex Mill, Corridor and Faherty Were the Strongest Overall
Those four brands landed in the top tier because they combined demand with efficiency. That distinction matters. High demand is attractive, but the best inventory investment is a brand that also performs well relative to the amount of inventory sitting available.
In other words, the question is not simply “What rented the most?” It is “Where did each unit of inventory work hardest while still attracting meaningful customer demand?”
2. Inventory Efficiency Changed the Ranking
One of the clearest lessons from the analysis was that raw volume can flatter brands with a lot of inventory exposure. Once rentals were normalized by unit-months of available inventory, the picture changed.
That is why the model treated demand efficiency as equally important as demand scale. A smaller brand with fewer units can be more attractive to buy deeper if customers consistently choose what is available.
3. Some Individual Styles Were Extremely Efficient
The highest rentals-per-unit-month examples in the analyzed subset included:
| Brand / Style | Rentals per Unit-Month |
|---|---|
| Nudie Jeans — Lean Dean | 2.45 |
| Todd Snyder — Dylan Shirt | 2.18 |
| Corridor — Carpenter Jean | 2.07 |
| Faherty — Bondi Jacket | 1.84 |
| Faherty — Range Down Vest | 1.74 |
These numbers are useful because they identify the silhouettes that deserve deeper size and color coverage rather than simply telling us which brand name is popular overall.
4. A Brand Can Be Popular and Still Be a Weak Inventory Investment
The analysis explicitly penalized situations where high rental volume appeared to be driven mainly by large inventory exposure. That is important in rental because inventory is capital.
A brand can look successful on total orders while still producing less demand per available unit than another brand. If you only track volume, you risk buying more of the thing you already have too much of.
5. Repeat Behavior Matters More Than a One-Time Purchase
Retail usually records the transaction. Rental can add more context: whether a customer chooses the brand again, how long a piece stays in rotation, whether an item gets exchanged quickly and whether a rental eventually becomes a purchase.
That is especially useful in menswear, where brand loyalty can be heavily influenced by fit. A man who discovers that one brand consistently works may return to it repeatedly.
What This Means for How We Buy Inventory
The analysis did not tell us to buy every popular brand equally. It produced four different actions.
| Tier | Brands | What It Means |
|---|---|---|
| Buy deeper | Todd Snyder, Alex Mill, Corridor, Faherty | Increase depth in proven silhouettes and expand color/size coverage. |
| Buy solidly | Marine Layer, Alex Crane, Buck Mason | Grow selectively and expand proven winners. |
| Targeted bets | Nudie Jeans | Concentrate on the styles showing unusually strong efficiency. |
| Proceed cautiously | Filson, Ottway the Label | Do not assume raw volume alone justifies more inventory. |
Why Rental Data Can Tell Brands Something Sales Data Cannot
A sale captures a moment. A rental platform can observe a sequence: selection, hold time, exchange, repeat rental, buyout and return.
That does not make rental data automatically better than sales data. It makes it different. A brand can learn whether a product attracted initial interest, whether customers actually kept wearing it, whether fit caused rejection and whether the customer came back to the brand later.
For retailers and brands, that creates a more behavioral view of demand than a one-time sell-through number.
Methodology and Limitations
This analysis compared two fall/winter order windows, with 2,217 orders in the earlier period and 2,827 in the later period. Inventory exposure covered 22 months and used a high-confidence matched subset of fall/winter-relevant products rather than 100% of the catalog.
The composite score is a relative index, not a universal measure of brand quality. It was designed for one practical question: where should Rent with Thred put the next inventory dollar based on observed demand, efficiency, breadth, loyalty and growth?
Results can change as the member base, inventory depth, season and assortment change. We expect to re-run the analysis seasonally.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a rental per unit-month?
It is a simple efficiency measure: rentals generated relative to the amount of inventory available over time. It helps distinguish true demand efficiency from volume created by simply stocking more units.
Why not rank brands by total rentals?
Because total rentals favor brands with more inventory. A useful buying decision has to consider both demand and how much inventory was required to create that demand.
What does repeat-customer rate tell you?
It helps distinguish one-time trial from repeated brand demand. In rental, returning to the same brand can be a meaningful signal that fit, style or product quality is working.
Will you publish more rental data?
Yes. Future analyses can look at jackets, fit and size behavior, repeat rentals, category performance and how individual brands compare.
The Bottom Line
The most useful question is not which menswear brand looks biggest on a sales chart. It is which brands customers repeatedly choose when they can move across a multi-brand wardrobe and which products earn the most demand relative to the inventory required to support them.
In this fall/winter analysis, Todd Snyder, Alex Mill, Corridor and Faherty stood out most clearly on that combined test.