Hacker News Reader

Does anybody know how companies like that differentiate themselves from 800 lb gorilla that is Amazon (they do recurring orders)?

Disclaimer: I haven't done any subscription/recurring orders, but am genuinely interested

View on HN

A good friend of mine worked for BirchBox, a subscription beauty service for women and men (Birchbox men), as an intern last summer. From what she told me, the work they did to create a community around the service helps the company beat out gorillas such as Amazon. For instance, people will record themselves opening their Birchbox order and post it on Youtube (do a Youtube search, the top unboxing I get has 57,996 views). I think Manpacks also plays to the community, as evident by them tweeting with the fellow who wanted safety razors.

Technically Amazon didn't have a Beauty site that was in competition to BirchBox until Quidsi launched Beautybar.com

Both companies leverage sampling in "boxes" to acquire new customers and hopefully they will order full sized products in their respective stores.

"Opening box" videos are a popular practice in retail (ecommerce) especially in the beauty industry.

I would think that the focus is the differentiation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com