Jewelry Rental Website Up for Sale

New York--The owners of jewelry rental website Adorn are looking for someone else to take the reins of the company and continue its growth.

Bert Stouffer founded Adorn in 2006, a time when the “sharing economy” still had a ways to go, especially when it came to high-ticket items like fine jewelry.

Now, with sites like Rent the Runway and various others helping pave the way for rentals of all kinds of accessories and clothing, Adorn has found its place in the market with its fine jewelry rentals.

The current owners of Adorn acquired all the assets in February 2011, after Stouffer decided to move on, but have decided to look for new owners for the business as they step away, in hopes that a new partner would be able to build it to the next level.

Though they are not disclosing their asking price, the sale includes the business, websites, goodwill and domain names--including Adorn.com, AdornBrides.com and several other Adorn-related domains--as well as the jewelry inventory.

The owners also indicated that they will provide consulting and transition services for a period to help ease the transition.

Ideally, they said, the new owner would be a manufacturer to take over operations, especially one that can add more inventory to give shoppers a more diverse selection of jewelry.

“We are excited to see this in the hands of someone with passion and strong marketing background to push Adorn to new heights. The business has made it through the skepticism of renting jewelry online,” said Director of Operations Derek Zaun, who can be reached at dzaun@adorn.com.

Adorn currently only ships to customers based in the United States, with most of the rental business being wedding related--80 percent of jewelry rented is related to the big day, the owners said, such as wedding-day jewelry for the bride, bridal party or mother-of-the-bride.

The site also sees a 5 percent repeat rate from consumers, according to Zaun.

Though they have a contracted jeweler to fix damaged pieces and inspect the jewelry when it comes in or before it goes back out, as well as an insurance policy to cover the inventory, Zaun said their cost of maintaining inventory is low since it’s not often that pieces come back damaged.

In addition to renting jewelry on the site, consumers also can purchase the pieces at Adorn’s retail shop online, which means that the business