Introducing Italic Black
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Italic stands for luxury without labels: the quality and design you can expect from a top luxury brand, without the kitschy logos or unapproachable prices. Together with our manufacturers around the world, we’ve been able to introduce products at a speed and quality that’s unmatched in our industry.
Behind the scenes, however, we’ve been working towards an even more radical model: one that takes our original vision even further. And today — after thousands of hours and many millions invested into product development, sourcing, and engineering — we’re finally sharing what we believe is the most ambitious endeavor in modern retail.
The Italic Membership
In the next few months, we will introduce an invitation-only membership: Italic Black. Members will access all 800+ of our products at cost — meaning, Italic will make zero profit on product sales.
This means that members will be able to purchase quality goods at roughly 50% less than our already-industry-leading prices, dramatically undercutting any comparable brand in every single category we offer today and any that we expand into the future.
We’ve been carefully testing the membership model over the past few years and here’s what’s working:
- On average, member prices are 64% lower than leading brands
- 93% of new members break even on their first purchase
- Members are saving an average of $746 per year
- 97% of members recommend the membership to their friends
To better illustrate how much money members will save, here are a few examples of the prices Italic Black members will have access to compared to popular contemporaries in each category:
When including our upcoming expansion into new categorie️s like 🧘♀️ Fitness, 🏕 Outdoors, 🐶 Pets, 🧳 Luggage, 🔪 Knives, 🛌 Comforters, 🍽 Dinnerware, and 💍 Jewelry over the next year, Italic will soon have the broadest and arguably most compelling proprietary offering of any brand.
These promising early results, together with our ambitious merchandising strategy, gave us the conviction we needed to accelerate the development and release of the membership to further our mission of creating a better supply chain for manufacturers and consumers.
How to Join
We are keeping a close eye on the member count in order to maintain sufficient inventory — demand and signups for the membership have been incredibly high and we currently are not taking new members unless they’ve been invited by an existing member.
However, we’re offering an opportunity exclusively for existing customers and subscribers to join at a grandfathered $100 / year rate (just enough for us to cover shipping and customer support).
During this period, we will also be servicing all new members with a complimentary white-glove onboarding, access to a 24/7 concierge, and two invitations you can share with friends or family. My only ask is that you be open to providing thoughts on your onboarding and product offering — a business is only as good as its ability to learn and iterate from its customers.
📍 If you’d like to participate, please email me at jeremy@italic.com (yes, this is my real email) with “Membership” in the subject line. I’ll personally fast-track your process plus ensure you get a full, white-glove onboarding.
This is exclusive to existing customers and subscribers. Please do not share externally as we are still months away from launching this publicly.
Why We’re Doing This
Big or small, in-store or online, luxury or mass — brands make money through marking up products and this has never changed.
However, you might have seen some shiny new internet brands claiming otherwise… and some of them look great and are really convincing. But behind their pretty logos, feel-good missions, and heroic proclamations of transparency or saving the world is a sneaky, almost sinister strategy designed to distract consumers from the truth: these brands are identical to their predecessors and make money the exact same way. The big difference this time, however, is that these new brands are now unabashedly fleecing their customers while simultaneously promising the exact opposite.
This charade is never going to last.
Smart consumers know this and they deserve better. And so do manufacturers, who take less than a 5% margin on the final sale despite producing the finished products that brands are then marking up 10X.
So, we’re going to try something different and stop talking about transparency and just walk the walk: at Italic, our goal, like any business, is to make money. But we don’t feel good about making money selling massively inflated products under a false guise of saving the world.
Instead, we’re pioneering a new supply chain that’s inspired by marketplace liquidity and incentivized by lowering prices, not increasing them. We don’t profit off the products we sell — we only make money when we deliver real savings over time and our members decide to stay with us. This way, we run our company with a clean conscience, honesty, and no guilt.
While bringing this vision to market sure has taken us a while, we know the wait has been worth it. We couldn’t be more excited about this next part of our journey and we’d love for you to be a part of it.
Thank you again for your support, and welcome to Italic Black.
