Would you pay $10 to have someone randomly choose a T-Shirt for you? Well, Design By Humans thinks you would. They call it the Serendipitee T-Shirt – you pay them 10 bucks, let them know your size and they then choose a tee from over 300 different available DBH shirts (they promise the selection isn’t limited to just slow sellers). The tee that you’ll receive will be entirely in the hands of fate (better known as that dude at DBH that’s in charge of packing and shipping orders).
For fans of Design By Humans and regular customers, this might be something that would be appealing because they know the DBH style, generally like their stuff and will probably like whatever random tee they receive. But what about the rest of us? Would YOU be willing to gamble 10 bucks on a shirt that you might love, and equally so, might hate?
I see a large number of sites offer these mystery bag style shirt lucky dips. Makes a lot of sense for them I guess, if you've 300 designs sitting in your warehouse, some of which aren't proving as popular as you hoped, this is an easy way to clear them. Whether its a good deal for the consumer, I guess depends how much of a kick you're getting from the mystery of what will come. If that excitement is worth $10, you've nothing to lose. If its not and you get one you hate you could
a) Give it to an enemy/annoying family member at Christmas
b) Use it to do the drying up
c) Ebay
d) Turn it into a DBH quilt – http://www.cotygonzales.com/2008/09/29/awesome-...
So many options.
Yeah, I have on occasion picked up these mystery tees – it's fun! Half the time I dig the stuff I receive and the rest I just give away. I think that price point should be in the single digits though. These mystery tees typically run in the $5-$9 range.
If the end goal is to make money, it doesn't make any sense to do a mystery tee instead of just discounting the regular shirts.
If someone has been looking at a certain design, or feeling a design isn't worth $25, and suddenly its $10, their tune would change real fast and you'd probably have the slow moving items selling much faster than normal.
THEN after you have a sale, anything that's STILL not moving should be thrown into the mystery tee pile and then you can entice people looking for a thrill with that.
Does DBH not want to make the most money possible or what?
Some good points there Kane, but I'd say frequent discounting has a negative effect on your brand. A mystery tee doesn't. DBH has established itself as a premium brand ($25 a shirt, to Threadless $17 or $6 at $6 dollar shirts) a premium store with too frequent discounting may isolate customers attracted by that exclusivity and percieved superior quality. Competing at the premium end of the market is in someways easier than competing at the cheap end, where price is the main differentiator, cheapest wins. At the premium end you can more do with branding, or in DBH case the advanced printing techniques they use (althought their branding is excellent as well, the human messaging, custom prints giving you the feeling that every shirt is handmade and one of x thousand identicals).
I suppose image is important from that perspective, but in retrospect, how many people are really going to ding DBH's image for having a sale a few times a year to clear out inventory? DBH is a big name in independent, online tees, but when you consider that market as a whole, its not like its Saks 5th Avenue or something. Its a fairly popular and growing niche market right now, but its not like it would stunt DBH's growth to just have an honest sale. Its not like the average non indie-tee follower who stumbles upon DBH to buy a tee is going to wonder just how “exclusive” this tee site is – by its very nature its all very uniquee. Its not like Busted Tees where you can find 100 other similar sites selling copyright infringing Al Bundy Polk High tshirts.
The same people who are willing to throw away $10 on a random shirt are the same ones willing to plop down $25 for a new shirt. And in this economy, that pool of people has to be shrinking.
And I can't buy that they're willing to throw TOO MANY bones here by giving out newer $25 shirts for $10. Sure the might do it once or twice (because I'm sure DBH throws out free tshirts to certain people at times, so its expected that some of the inventory wont be sold for an individual profit), but it sure as hell won't be their first option for a every day regular buyer unless these shirts only cost $9 to make and they're taking a $16 mark up on them.
And where as high end boutiques and exclusive designers don't have “Sales,” they do pass off their items down to lower end stores to sell at a discount at the end of the fashion season. Something from Saks or a boutique is going to end up at a TJ Maxx when the season is over. Stuff from Nordstroms ends up at Nordstroms Rack. Here, DBH has no where to drop its products down to because its all self contained.
To me, this “Mystery Shirt” thing reeks of pretentiousness, and I think it's only going to be goodness if the die hard DBH followers are willing to gamble on a shirt they may may not like. Who really has $10 to just throw away on something they may or may not like? I guess this will be a test of people's line of thinking in this economy, as well as a test of loyalty for DBH's followers.
Yeah some good points there, and you're right they are not Saks. But they do have fairly regular sales, at least one a quarter I'd say, which is probably enough. Here are a few posts we wrote about their previous sales –
http://www.tee-junction.com/2009/big-dbh-12-15-...
http://www.tee-junction.com/2008/holiday-sale-a...
http://www.tee-junction.com/2008/design-by-huma...
http://www.tee-junction.com/2008/design-by-huma...
http://www.tee-junction.com/2007/design-by-huma...
Perhaps they didn't clear enough of the vaults last time so they're introducing a new method this time – the mystery tee.
I'll ask Jason one of the DBH founders to have a read and see if we can get him or another member of the team to join this discussion and share some of their thinking behind serendipitee.
I would! Just out of curiosity, surprise is always a good element and my $10 would be worth the sacrifice. Unique idea!