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Quid Beyond Dollar Shave Club: why the subscription box craze may fade





Whether you’ve bought a subscription box or not, you’ve likely heard of two big players in the space: Birchbox and Dollar Shave Club.

The former, launched in 2010, sends a box full of makeup and beauty product samples to customers each month, while the latter sends razors and shaving supplies. Both have raised hundreds of millions in VC funding, and last year, Unilever acquired Dollar Shave Club for $1 billion. 

They both essentially carved a new market out of the concept of recurring delivery of a niche product. Now, whether it’s apparel, dog treats, or meal components, there’s a subscription box business to deliver those products regularly to your door. 

But clearly, all is not well in the land of subscription boxes. The market is saturated. Venture capital in the space has dropped off dramatically, and Birchbox has had at least two rounds of layoffs

At Quid, we wanted to take a closer look at subscription boxes in both news and funding data, to see how this trendy space is changing. 

Subscription boxes focused on apparel, styling services, and interior design dominate the public conversation, which we see in news data between May 2016-May 2017. 






Quid: Top companies

Then we mapped the top companies mentioned in the data, and Unilever's acquisition of Dollar Shave Club�dominates. But interestingly, traditional brick-and-mortar retailer�Nordstrom lands at�third in the list —�mainly due to the success of its high-end styling service, Trunk Club.

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