Remember Columbia House? BMG Music Club? Back when people bought actual CDs, they were wildly popular. For a cheap price (10 for the price of 1!), members would automatically get new discs every month. No, you didn’t need all that music, but it sure was fun to get.
As much as we live online now, we still like getting stuff. Tangible goods. Things we can hold, use and wear. And lately, it seems, the web-savvy are gravitating towards physical products, partly in reaction to the ubiquity of digital. Just look at the “maker” movement (see On the Make in Think Quarterly’s People issue), the rise of DIY and the popularity of bits-to-its services like Postagram.
Thanks to eCommerce, we have access to more stuff than ever. And consumers have become a lot more comfortable buying online (aided by one-click ordering, free shipping and easy returns). The number of U.S. consumers buying online will increase 14.9% to 170.3 million in 2015, according to eMarketer. Between 8-10% of all queries on Google are shopping related. But there is so much available, it can be downright overwhelming. The paradox of choice is that too much selection makes it harder to select anything at all. It’s a problem of which the internet is both a cause and a cure.
That’s where a slew of new “push shopping” services come in. Including Birchbox, Shoedazzle, and Quarterly.co, these sites leverage eCommerce, online data and expert curation to help consumers make up their minds.
Subscribe to Simplicity
Our natural reaction to the accelerating speed and size of the modern world is to crave simplicity. Thanks to digital technology, we can “set it and forget it” – whether it’s setting up filters on our gmail or recurring bill payments from our bank accounts. We’ve grown accustomed to a certain level of outsourcing and automation online. Why not offline as well? Enter subscription services that take care of your basic needs. For the man with no time (and presumably no washing machine), ManPacks delivers socks and underwear each month. Guyhaus will cover the rest of your necessities -- shaving cream, toothpaste, deodorant. For women, Hoseanna will auto-ship lip balm, razors and other essentials.
Style by the Numbers
Personalization has become an expectation; it separates the signal (stuff I care about) from the noise (everything else). Algorithms can suggest anything from songs to shoes. Research by Oracle shows that recommendations are powerful; customers who click on suggestions are three more times likely to buy and spend 30% more. Problem is, computers don’t have great taste (sorry, Watson). Some subscription sites, like Kim Kardashian’s Shoedazzle and the Beachmint family of sites (Jewelmint, Beautymint and Stylemint), solve this problem by coupling expert curation with recommendation software. They all start with merchandise chosen by celebrities, then walk you through Hunch-like questionnaires to determine your style preferences. They’ll then send you fashion and beauty products each month based on your statistically-determined “personal style.” A Chicago-based start-up called Lost Crates charges $38 per month for customized stationery – whipped up just for you based on a personality test. These sites are sticky. For the same reason you don’t want to leave your hairdresser, you won’t want to leave your carefully-honed taste profile behind.
You can imagine the next wave of these services crafting unique items just for you, based on these profiles. In the short term, though, online retailers of all shapes and sizes should look to their vast consumer databases to deliver better insight into product discovery and selection.
Selling Serendipity
The web is all about helping people find what they want, but what about things they didn’t know they wanted? You’ve probably heard the word “serendipity” more in the past few years than ever before. Just look at how the word has trended in the past century using Google’s Ngram Viewer. It’s due in part to a growing concern that personalization tools will give us a digital myopia, argued strongly by Eli Parisier in “The Filter Bubble”. Cass Sunstein, whose research highlights the drawbacks of self-sorting, advocates an “architecture of serendipity”, which “ensures that every week, and maybe every day, you will run into things that catch your eye, bring you up short, and maybe even change your life.”
As much as people want their lives automated, they also crave the surprise and delight that can only come from the unexpected. That’s why we love gifts. But even better than getting a gift, is getting a gift we like. This is the experience companies like Birchbox are trying to create. The company sends a package of makeup and beauty samples to members for $10 each month. While selections are tailored to you based on variables like skin tone and hair texture, you can’t choose what you get. You leave that to the experts. For the health-conscious, Lollihop sends out a box snacks selected by nutritionists. Bluum helps new moms to discover and test products each month. Then there’s the new Quarterly.co, which asks notable thinkers, writers, and artists to curate “surprise packages.” Subscribers can “follow” them on the start-up’s site for about $25 per month, get their specially-selected items in the mail. And they’ve made it social; each mailing has its own hashtag (e.g. #FOX01) so you can follow it on Twitter.
Yes, snail mail may be dying. But the passé soon becomes premium. And some of the more unique companies in this niche take it to the analog extreme. For example, Turntable Kitchen, a blog by a California couple about their dual adventures in cooking and new music, lets readers subscribe to a “pairings box” consisting of indie music in the form of old-school vinyl records along with interesting food samples.
There are tons of such sites popping up to send you everything from chocolates to tea. There’s even Memberly, which lets anyone run their own subscription programs. Like today’s wildly popular daily deals sites, these subscription services use technology to inject new life into old business models. And their traffic growth is fueled by digital as well; social media and online word of mouth allow them reach a significantly broader user base than their predecessors. But are they just the flavor of the month? That’s anyone’s guess. But people will always want stuff, and the shopping services of tomorrow will leverage the best of the web to create new real-world products and experiences.
