The Washington Post - 29.08.2019

(Joyce) #1

the washington post


.

thursday, august


29


,


2019


DC


4


BY HELEN CAREFOOT


Receiving mail can be a plea-
sure, especially when it’s a
monthly delivery of cosmetics
samples to test out or a rented
designer dress. Since Warby Park-
er shook up the eyeglasses indus-
try back in 2010, numerous di-
rect-to-consumer (DTC) compa-
nies have cropped up. Many send
items in beautiful boxes and en-
velopes that eliminate the need
for you to do anything more than
peel yourself off the couch and
walk to the mailbox.
But would you be just as excit-
ed to open a box of cleaning
supplies, razors or toothbrush
heads? A crop of companies, in-
cluding Quip (electric tooth-
brushes), Billie (razors), Grove
Collaborative (cleaning prod-
ucts), Skura Style (kitchen spong-
es) and Chewy (pet supplies),
deliver the more mundane neces-
sities to your home.
Several come in colorful but
minimalist packaging seemingly
inspired by Glossier, the makeup
and skin-care company whose
simple aesthetic is often seen as
the paragon of millennial-target-
ed advertising. The companies
advertise on Instagram and pod-
casts popular with one of the
global economy’s most valuable
customer groups. Research from
Accenture projects that spending
by people between ages 20 and 40
will reach $1.4 trillion annually
and will represent 30 percent of
all retail sales in the United States
by 2020. So what speaks to this
demographic?
Some of the popular boxes are
curated to suit the customer’s
needs, while some — such as
Quip, Skura Style and Billie —
replenish items that need to be
replaced regularly. (The Ameri-
can Dental Association recom-
mends replacing toothbrushes
and t oothbrush heads every three
to four months; the American
Academy of Dermatology advises
people change razor blades after
five to seven shaves.)
Liz Cadman, founder of sub-
scription box review company My
Subscription Addiction, has seen
an increase in the number of
replenishment boxes on the mar-
ket. Her team of reviewers as-
signs ratings to boxes of products
ranging from underwear to
cleaning supplies, based on fac-
tors such as price and ease of
delivery. She says the boxes that
typically draw high marks from
reviewers and customers deliver
these variables plus something
extra.
“Customers want a good value,
a brand they can trust, quality
products, and some element of
delight,” s he said in an email. For

example, Billie eliminates the
“pink tax,” an added cost in some
states to women’s care products
such as tampons and razors, and
Grove Collaborative sells only
sustainably produced cleaning
products with plant-based ingre-
dients.
However, Sucharita Kodali, an
analyst at research firm Forrest-
er, says that for products to sur-
vive competition, they generally
have to perform as well as or
better than the main competitors
in their category at a similar price
point. “Ultimately I think the
challenge with these products are
the same problem that Diane von
Furstenberg had with her wrap
dress. Everyone just starts to copy
it,” s he says. “Target or Walgreens
can easily mimic the style attri-
butes of these DTC companies in
their private label offerings if
they want to.”
Companies in the home indus-
try have to overcome a major
hurdle: Many of their products
are similar in price and quality to
their competitors, Kodali says.
“The pool of people who are in
the market for toothbrushes is
much bigger than the pool of
people who are in the market for
luggage at any point in time,” s he
says. “However, the challenge is,
do you have a pain point right
now that you’re experiencing in
your soap or your toothbrush or
any of these commodity purchas-
es that demands that you go to

this particular product?”
She adds that because most
products in the home category
are impulse purchases in physical
stores, brands generally need to
deliver extras such as free ship-
ping, admirable company values
or appealing packaging to initial-
ly entice customers. Because
these items tend to be relatively
cheap compared with other con-
sumer goods, consumers might
feel more at ease trying them.
“It’s the whole package of their
offerings,” Kodali says. “People
like to try new things and they
often like the story, the quality of
the product is decent, they have
good customer service, they allow
returns, so they take a lot of the
friction out of buying. But are
they the only brand that you will

buy in that category again?”
Some brands have expanded
into traditional retail stores. Ala-
na Bracken, a 24-year-old writer
who lives in Manhattan, heard
about Quip through advertise-
ments on social media but pur-
chased her electric toothbrush
when she saw it at Target for $30.
She’d been using a manual tooth-
brush before and now gets refills
from Quip delivered to her house
every three months for about $5.
For Bracken, price is a major
factor that influences her sub-
scription choices. When she was
in college, she received a Birch-
box subscription as a gift, but she
canceled it after about six months
because she couldn’t justify the
price point and “didn’t feel like it
was improving my quality of life.”
She’s had her Quip for nine
months and said she will prob-
ably continue using it barring a
major increase in price. “It’s
frankly a great toothbrush and I
feel like it cleans your mouth a
little better than a manual, and I
really like having two minutes
counted out because I’m not go-
ing to sit there with a timer on my
phone.”
She doesn’t see herself sub-
scribing to a box for cleaning
supplies, however, because it’s
easy for her to run to the store
when she needs to buy more.
“Even if you’re barely adulting,
you can go down to the drugstore
and pick up a bottle of Windex

when you run out,” she says.
“With a toothbrush, you’re not
keeping track on your calender
when the three months is up and
it keeps me accountable to my
oral health — whereas I don’t see
the value for me with cleaning
supplies.”
Shumaisa Ahmed, a 23-year-
old consultant who lives in the
District, subscribes to Billie. She
wasn’t tied to a specific razor
brand previously and would sort
through the options at Target a nd
CVS mostly based on what ap-
peared to be high quality at a
good price. She says she’d spend
between $10 and $15 but wasn’t
replacing her razors often and
sometimes had trouble matching
the reusable blades to the han-
dles.
She signed up to get a refill
every three months and has so far
only received one round, but she’s
happy with the product. “I like it
and I think it’s a good razor, but I
don’t think it’s revolutionary or
anything,” s he says. Although she
heard about the product on a
podcast, she says the company’s
advertisements aren’t the main
factor that drove her purchase
and that she is aware of the
brand’s marketing tactics. “I do
think these are all part of a bucket
of digitally-native brands that
target millennials and I don’t
want to be manipulated by them,”
she says. “Mainly I like it because
it’s a good razor, it ships to me and
it looks nice in my shower.”
Heather Comeau values the
convenience services that brands
such as Chewy provide. The 48-
year-old Alexandria resident pays
$49 every two or three months to
get cat litter delivered to her door
(she adds other items such as cat
food to reach the $49 minimum
for free shipping). She pays about
$9 for 20 pounds of Tidy Cats
litter through Chewy — about the
same as store price. Before be-
coming a Chewy customer, she
bought litter for her two cats,
Billy and Chirpy, mostly at Harris
Te eter but had trouble lugging
the bags up to her third-floor
apartment. Now the delivery per-
son does it. She says she wouldn’t
continue the service if the compa-
ny stopped delivering right to her
door. She also likes a side benefit:
“The box becomes a toy for the
cats,” s he says.
In many cases, Kodali says,
what drives consumers to pur-
chase goods comes back to the
price. “There needs to be some-
thing that gives you a compelling
reason to try it and that it’s at
least priced similarly to what
you’d get otherwise, or you at
least get some feature like more
refills that could be valuable.”
[email protected]

Are subscription services for household products worth it?


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“Customers want a


good value, a brand


they can trust, quality


products, and some


element of delight.”
Liz Cadman, founder of subscription
box review company
My Subscription Addiction
Free download pdf