Buying luxury 3-10 times cheaper Enter Italic, an unusual dir | Tech for Good

Buying luxury 3-10 times cheaper

Enter Italic, an unusual direct-to-consumer (D2C) brand founded by Jeremy Cai in 2018. Italic's business model is to remove middlemen between consumers and manufacturers. And to pass all the savings to consumers.

The brand does not make money on products sold. Instead, their customers pay an annual membership, currently $60. And get their goods at the cost of manufacture and delivery. Customers are happy. So are the manufacturers who get extra yield on existing production capacity.

For example, Italic's leather jacket is from the same factory as Alexander Wang, J Brand & Frame. Priced at $250, compared to $995 at Vince. Italic's luggage comes from the same production line as Lanvin, Raden & Samsonite. Priced at $100, compared to $875 at Tumi. The list may go on and on - Italic has hundreds of items in its online store.

Jeremy managed to create a membership model that is in essence a software product with a 100% margin. Such margin affords Italic to be break-even or even take some loss on product purchases. Brilliant.

The ultimate goal is to create a next-gen everything store, much like Amazon or Costco. And that's not a mere dream - the estimated value of the startup is already up to $500M.

Italic website
Company's Crunchbase profile