Rental fashion platform Designerex has been snapped up by the Sarai family based in Queensland.
This comes after a year of financial difficulties following a legal dispute with its technology developer, resulting in delayed payments to lenders and ultimately entering voluntary administration in March 2025.
Designerex was founded in 2016 by Kirsten Kore and Costa Koulis, established to allow lenders - from boutiques to individuals - to share and rent over 50,000 designer dresses, reportedly generating millions of dollars in revenue for its dress lenders.
Documents tabled to ASIC and obtained by Ragtrader earlier this year show that the business owed just over $238,000 to around 2,000 members who had rented out dresses on the platform when Designerex entered administration.
With the Sarai family taking on leadership of the business, including Nick Sarai as chair, the family is planning to settle all outstanding debts owed to customers.
“During our due diligence of Designerex, we spoke with a number of lenders impacted by delayed payments; those conversations were not easy,” Daisy Sarai, representing the Sarai family, said.
“We are thrilled that payments will be resolved via this acquisition, and those customers can once again benefit from this leading fashion technology.”
The family is three days into taking over Designerex, with the top task of working on structure, including making further appointments across the business.
In a media release to this publication, the Sarai family's recent ventures include scaling a European events firm that has so far raised over $50 million for cancer research, as well as Australian professional services start-up Infrastructure Nation, which partnered with private equity in 2021 to create a consolidated group of organisations called APP Group, now involved with billions of dollars in infrastructure projects throughout Australia. Up until his recent appointment at Designerex, Nick Sarai had been the head of transport projects at APP.
Daisy Sarai, who led the acquisition deal, said Designerex was the first peer-to-peer luxury dress-sharing platform to scale in Australia.
“Thousands of women earn income from their dresses on the platform, with some generating tens of thousands of dollars annually," she said.
“We are fully committed to settling all outstanding debts to lenders as quickly as possible and relaunching with the exceptional service Designerex was known for.”
Globally, the online clothing rental market was valued at $3.7 billion in 2024 and is projected to more than double to $7.6 billion by 2033, according to IMARC Group.\