Inside Quince’s Quest to Sell Luxury Goods for Less

0:05It's Cyber Monday, and if your inbox is anything like mine, you've gotten dozens and dozens of emails from companies all claiming to have great deals for holiday shopping. One of the emails I got is from a brand that I've been a customer of for a while now. It's called Quince. Can someone explain to me what the Quince brand is? Has anyone ordered from Quince? Have you guys heard of Quince? Quince is a website that makes very fashionable and very trendy essentials. That's our colleague Javi Lieber. She covers fashion and culture and has been reporting on Quince. It has that aesthetic that millennials find irresistible.

0:46There's a lot of beige, a lot of browns. A lot of neutrals. A lot of neutrals. They make the things that you could see folding into your everyday life. Quince sells all kinds of products, from bed linens to furniture to clothes. The idea is everyday essentials that feel luxe. Think silk shirts, cashmere sweaters, and Italian leather purses. And, you know, they sort of market and package their products in a way where you feel like, yes, this is the thing that I'm looking for and this is what I need. Quince's products mirror best-selling luxury items from other popular brands, but they cost way less.

1:24Javi saw that concept in action at Quince headquarters. So I went out to San Francisco in September to go to the Quince offices there, and I sat on a cream Quince couch and it looked like restoration hardware. And there was racks of sweaters that looked like they could be from, you know, pick your mall brand. And a candle burning on the coffee table that looked like something that I maybe had seen at a luxury department store once, but it wasn't it, you know. So it all seems like very familiar. But at the same time, it is Quince. And how successful has Quince been? This company has grown enormously.

2:05it now brings in$1.1 billion in annual revenue. And over the summer, they did a round of funding and they were valued at$4.5 billion. Javi says that's pretty impressive for a company that's only seven years old. But Quince's rise has come with criticism that it's at the top of a copycat kingdom, criticism that the company disagrees with. They do not like to be called a copycat. Quinn says that their products are better than everyone else out there. That is the word that kept coming up over and over again when I was interviewing the CEO. You know, he said, we're better. We make everything better.

2:47Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Monday, December 1st.

3:00Coming up on the show, how Quince rose to the top of the dupe industry.

3:48Even at a$4 ,5 billion valuation, Quince is still smaller than other major fashion brands. For instance, Gap Inc., which owns Banana Republic and Old Navy, has a$10 billion market cap. Lululemon is worth over$20 billion. But Quince makes itself extremely visible, with the goal of grabbing shoppers' attention before they spend their money somewhere else. Javi, I see Quince everywhere. Like, any time I search for a new thing, I feel like Quince gets served up to me. I'm trying to look for new boots. And of course, Quince was one of the top search results. That's because you are their target customer, as am I.

4:29Their target customer are women, ages 25 to 55. And they are all over Instagram. They're all over TikTok. They're winning on search. You know, they're all over podcasts. Like they are following shoppers around the internet. Okay, I have to be honest. Recently, I did fall victim to some TikTok ads and some Instagram ads for the brand Quince. I've seen ads for years on years. I finally bought some stuff. I've been hearing about Quince literally every time I listen to a podcast. They really, really win when it comes to searching. And in my product shopping experience, anything that I have looked for and browsed for, there it is.

5:13Over the summer, I was browsing a pair of black sandals from The Row and they were$900. And I mean, that was not going to happen. So, you know, I went and was trying to look for something similar. And of course, you had your classic J.Crew, Banana Republic, someone at Nordstrom. And then there was Quince selling the exact pair of sandals that I was looking for for 92 % less than The Row. And even more than half off of what J.Crew wanted. The combo of aggressive marketing and lower price points has really worked for Quince. And the company takes it a step further. It says it uses proprietary technology to study what shoppers search for and buy from other brands.

5:59And then Quince uses that information to sell a version of those products. They have a very, very specific strategy for making what you want. They were a little bit vague in describing what this thing is, but basically they have built technology that essentially scrapes the web and it looks for a variety of things. It looks for what the best sellers are at other companies. So the chief merchandising officer, he told me they're looking at Laura Piana, Brunello Cuccinelli, Banana Republic, Todd Snyder, Jenny Kane. Okay. And then they're looking to see what are the best sellers at these brands. Some of that is actually easily accessible, but then some of it is a little bit more proprietary, which they would not get into.

6:43But I know that there is technology that you can sort of comb and find what the best sellers are. So they're combining all of that and they're crunching it, and then that determines what is the style that they want to make. And that is the real engine of Quince's business, the product pipeline, the constant hunt for the next hot item and making it available. Quince says they use their technology to add in other layers, like customer reviews. So the technology will be pulling what people are saying about the product, like what do they want from the buttons and the hardware? Where do they want the pockets to go and so on?

7:17And then Quince claims that they take this, they make their prototype of it, but they do it, quote unquote, better. This is like really fascinating because it's not just that they're advertising aggressively. It's that they are using technology to figure out what people are looking at elsewhere and using that as a guide for their product strategy. Exactly. And in that way, I would say this company is more of a tech brand than a fashion brand. Quince does have its roots in tech. The company was co-founded in Palo Alto by a former Wall Street analyst. So you met Sid Gupta, the CEO. What is he like?

8:03Yeah, he's, you know, in his mid-40s. He's a father of two. He was very self-assured. He doesn't like to talk to press. He doesn't really give interviews very often. And, I mean, it felt like, it felt very much like I was interviewing someone in the tech world. Gupta got his inspiration for Quince during a trip to India. While he was there, he noticed that things like quality bed linens and towels were so much cheaper compared to the U.S. And the way Sid explained it to me was that the pricing in the West is really marked up because of the supply chain logistics, right? Where the more people you have in the supply chain, the prices hike up.

8:42Gupta decided that the best way to slash prices was to streamline the supply chain. He teamed up with his wife and two others and set up a company that could ship products directly to consumers from manufacturers, mostly in Asia. Quince officially launched in 2018. This is very much the height of the direct-to-consumer boom. You know, you had all of these companies cutting out the minimum, cutting out the department store, etc. And they're promising that they are going to offer you a better price because they're cutting out retailer. So this company was part of this, you know, big boom of grabbing digital shoppers.

9:22Another way that Quince keeps its prices low is by making products that have staying power for customers. According to Gupta, this helps them sell 100 percent of what they produce. So the cashmere that they make this season, if they don't sell it, they can sell it next year, they can sell it the year after. And in typical fashion and retail, those costs like, you know, promotions, discounts, items that they can't sell, items that they have to offload to TG Maxx or whoever, all of those costs are baked into the price that you pay for at the mall. But because Quince allegedly says that they don't have to eat any of these costs, they're able to provide a lower price to the shopper.

10:03So there's a lot of kind of taking out pieces that would add more to the final sticker price. Yes. So far, Quince has continued to grow quickly. Gupta told Javi that Quince's web traffic has surged past other bigger retailers. Quince gets 28 million monthly visits and Lululemon gets 25.8 million monthly visits. So they have surpassed Lululemon. It's really surprising in some ways because I do feel like Lululemon is very much a household name brand at this point, where I don't know that Quince is. Like, even talking about your story with other people on my team, especially the men, they were like, what is this?

10:43I've never heard of it. Yes, it's definitely up and coming. But Quince's red-hot business model has its share of skeptics, including some of the brands that inspired the company's best-selling lookalikes. And they've taken their complaints to court. That's next.

11:09Part of Quince's success has to do with a growing interest from shoppers to find affordable alternatives to luxury brands. I think that it points to economic uncertainty. People don't want to spend as much on products anymore, especially if they know that there's other stuff out there for less. I think there's also just like given the ease of online shopping, there's almost like a thrill to it. On social media, these cheaper alternatives are often called dupes. I saved so much money this year by buying dupes instead of their actual high-end alternatives, and I need to share them with you. If I told you these were Lululemon, would you believe me?

11:49because they're not. I think that we have reached such peak dupe culture now that people are kind of proud of it. You know, if you go on TikTok, there are just like thousands of dupe videos where people tell you where they found the best dupe for this bronzer, this moisturizer, these pair of boots. To be clear, a dupe is not the same as a counterfeit. Dupes are cheaper versions of existing products and not necessarily perfect copies. Whereas a counterfeit is a knockoff that tries to pass as the real thing using another company's logos and branding. But I guess going back to Quince, does Quince make dupes, essentially?

12:28Yes, I would say they do. Quince resists the idea that it sells dupes, but it actually tells you on its website what other brands its products are comparable to. So if you scroll down to the bottom of a Quince product page, you'll see a comparison chart. If you were looking at a cashmere sweater, for example, the company will name other brands with similar cashmere sweaters. And it'll point out how much the shopper can save by buying from Quince instead. Let's use a real thing as an example. Quince sells this Australian shearling mid-calf boots. That's what they call them. I am also looking at those boots.

13:03They look a lot like Uggs. Sure do. Quince sells theirs for$79.90. and on Ugg's website, the boots that look the most similar are$190. Mm-hmm. And not only are they, you know, more than double the price, but if you go to the Quince website, they will shamelessly compare their boots to Ugg boots. Yes. And will tell you that allegedly the Quince boots are 100 % Australian shearling lining and Ugg is not, and that they also have added all of these elements, which I was explaining to you before, they are combing the web for feedback. They've added this non-slip rubber outsole, which they say Ugg doesn't have, and apparently their boots are water repellent and Uggs are not, allegedly.

13:50In 2023, Decker's Brands, which is the company that owns Ugg, sued Quince. It alleged that Quince had infringed on something called the trade dress of Ugg shoe designs. What is trade dress? Okay, so it's hard to get a trademark on a fashion design. So a copyright law will protect a pattern or a logo, but not like a functional element. And so some brands have a trade dress, which means like the look and feel of an item. Think about a product that's really connected to a brand, like the Coca-Cola bottle. Any company can make a bottled soda, but that shape is protected by trade dress, meaning other companies can't use it.

14:35So from Decker's point of view, how did Decker brands argue that Quince infringed on their trade dress? Well, they said that their item is confusing to shoppers and that it looks and feels like UGG. And what did the judge decide? Basically, the court ruled in favor of Quince, and they said that these UGG designs, like that short boot, There was another boot, like an ultra-mini boot, that these were actually considered generic and they were not protectable. Other companies have sued Quince, too. Tapestry, the parrot company for Coach and Kate Spade, has a pending lawsuit that claims Quince infringed on the trade dress of two of its handbags.

15:13And then last month, Williams-Sonoma, the premium homeware and kitchen brand, also sued Quince, citing concerns about its comparison charts and alleging false advertising. During their conversation earlier this fall, Quince CEO Sid Gupta told Javi that the practice of comparative advertising is, quote, perfectly legal.

15:35Another criticism that Quince gets is about the quality of its products. Javi spoke to a dozen Quince shoppers, and while many of them loved the brand's prices, some also complained that the products weren't quite up to snuff. I had talked to people who said, you know, the sweater's pilled, I heard a lot of people complain about the quality of some linen. Someone told me they said it felt scratchy. I talked to someone who said, like, they had worn a handbag that looked really, really beautiful, but then they wore it. And then, like, the dye just, like, bled onto their shirt. So sort of, like, indicating lower quality.

16:11One apparel expert that Javi spoke with said that some of Quince's savings are likely happening in production. In her opinion, she felt for some of the products, they use less fabric or it's not the best sewing. She felt like some of the seams were puckering and she felt like you're paying for what you get because the price difference is in where they are cutting corners. What does Quinn say about this? The CEO claims that they definitely do not lower standards and that if something has low ratings or people complain, then they pull it. But it's also worth noting that a lot of the people that I interviewed who complained about the products said that Quince reached out to them right away.

16:55Javi, what does Quince's success tell you, especially about what consumers want today? Yeah. Well, I think first and foremost, I think that people are no longer loyal to brands. They want a cashmere sweater. I don't think they care if it's J.Crew or Quince. You know, they want the best price. And, you know, I'm someone, I'm constantly talking to shoppers, and I have found that even wealthy people are trading down. You know, everybody is worried about the economy. Everybody is worried about global trade and the state of the world, and they don't want to be spending on luxury prices, which, by the way, have skyrocketed.

17:36But could quince get quince? Like, is there a worry that somebody else might, you know, dupe quince or copy their strategy and make something that's even cheaper and better? Absolutely. Quince can definitely get quince. I will say that in doing my reporting, because the algorithm had seen that I was looking at quince so much, subsequently I was pitched these other websites that make fashionable items. I saw tons of ads for like really beautiful dresses and leather bags. And it said like Balenciaga, but half the price. And it wasn't quince. It was somebody else. And it's a dupe of quince. And I just thought that was so wild.

18:20So to answer your question, yes, the dupes can get duped and quince can get quince. But this company has quite a bit of funding behind it. And they have a team of over 200 engineers. So it doesn't seem like they're asleep at the wheel.

18:44This episode has been updated. A previous version inaccurately used the phrase bullwhip effect to refer to a middleman effect in supply chain costs.

18:57That's all for today, Monday, December 1st. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. If you like our show, follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We're out every weekday afternoon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.