Some customers might not consider samples to be valuable, after all. The items may not be as packaged as well as full-sized products, making them difficult to put in a purse and use while traveling, or consumers might find that those sample products are designed for one-time use.
Ipsy utilizes beauty profiles to help determine the items sent to a consumer and ensure its products meet his or her needs. The company takes personalization quite seriously, too, offering 10,000 different combinations of makeup through its Glam Bag monthly memberships. As a bonus, the new service — dubbed Glam Bag Plus — will ship out a larger bag on the first and every third delivery.
“Glam Bag Plus lets brands experiment with new products, where they have guaranteed demand, and helps them with their minimum order quantities from a production point of view,” Ipsy CEO and co-founder Marcelo Camberos told Glossy.
Such services have taken a more holistic approach to the beauty business, going beyond the actual bag. Ipsy recently launched a new eCommerce website enabling consumers to purchase products from more than 200 brands, a strategy that appears to have gained traction. The platform has seen 400 percent growth since its September launch.
Ipsy is hardly the only service finding opportunities in new variations of its existing model. In the early days of personal training app Aaptiv, customers could either take live a la carte classes taught by the Aaptiv trainers for a set price, or access archives of those classes via a subscription. The latter won out. In a June interview, Aaptiv founder and CEO Ethan Agarwal said his team quickly saw that an on-demand content subscription was much more popular, then doubled down on a fuller catalog of fitness training content. The live a la carte classes were no more.
This approach happens to align more closely with Aaptiv’s mission as a company: to make its fitness training easy and accessible throughout customers’ fitness journeys, on whatever paths they choose. The platform’s goals aren’t just to help consumers exercise more, but to get them on the path to exercising better. What started as an app for runners and offering three running training programs has now expanded to include 22 areas of fitness and more than 2,500 individual classes. In fact, Agarwal said Aaptiv releases 40 new classes each week.
“We are much more committed to helping our user on their fitness journey,” he said. “What people don’t like is the idea they have to pay more money every time they want to work out more, or in a more specialized way. That becomes a disincentive to working out, [and] giving people an unlimited offering removes that disincentive.”
Choices are key when it comes to subscriptions, according to the PYMNTS Subscription Commerce Conversion Index. It found approximately 75 percent of merchants implemented plan options in the second quarter of 2018. This shows that variety is more than just the spice of life, but also a key ingredient in subscriptions.
“The currency of now” takes on a decidedly different form in this poem about the mall’s resurgence. It celebrates the brick-and-mortar comeback fueled by Gen Z’s desire for IRL (in real life) connections and the evolving role of physical space in a digitally-driven world. Join us, with a little help from AI, as we examine this retail revolution, where the “currency” of cool reigns supreme.
The tinsel’s gone, the carols now hushed,
New Year’s returns — cashiers mildly crushed.
A sea of sweatpants, gift cards in hand,
The mall’s a vibe unplanned.
But fear not, dear shopper, the story’s not bleak —
The mall’s plotting comebacks, not just peak weak week.
Gen Z’s in the food court, TikTokking their fries,
While swiping through Depop for vintage thigh-highs.
“IRL’s better!” they might say, “No porch pirates, no wait—
Just tag me @Aritzia, I’ll meet you at eight!”
They crave neon selfies, not screens’ pixelated glow,
So malls built a skatepark where a Sears used to go.
Shopify’s merchants now hawk leather and lace
In pop-ups by Simon — no “online-only” space.
Leap powers the kiosks, the QR code deals,
As D2C brands test if foot traffic feels.
Where Macy’s once stood, now micro-lofts bloom:
“Live above Lululemon!” they might chirp. “Bath bombs in every room!”
A dentist, a daycare, a co-working hub —
The mall’s now a Swiss Army knife, scrubbed of ’80s dud.
Mall of America’s got waterslides looping its floors,
While American Dream’s got a ski slope indoors.
“Why choose between Zara and ziplines?” they could grin,
As Nordstrom becomes Saks Fifth within.
Phones glow like fireflies in this retail ballet:
Price checks on Google, then “U up?” on Tinder (hey).
They scan, they compare, they Instagram the ‘fit—
But still buy the jeans ’cause the vibe’s so legit.
So here’s to the mall — that phoenix of bricks!
No longer a relic of cassette tape tricks.
With Gen Z as hypebeast and Shopify’s might,
It’s part TikTok backdrop, part urbanist’s right.
The future’s bright, chaotic, a bit over-leased …
But hey — at least parking’s finally decreased.