Business Model Design and Learning

Building and Leveraging Customer Relationships

Unlike Netflix, RTR irrefutably incorporates customers into its business model. The firm strives to build an ongoing relationship with young women, from high school prom days through college and beyond and to provide them with an introduction to Alice & Olivia, D&G, ­Missoni, Diane von Furstenberg, Trina Turk, and other designers, who will assist them on the way.20 It places a heavy emphasis on marketing to college campuses and a few elite prep schools, which comprise about 25 percent of the company’s business, and are a big source of its growth.21

A key process related to building customer relationships involves recruiting a network of approximately 150 “runway representatives” at 50 college campuses ...