No Junk in this Trunk (Club)
Early this month, LaunchSquad helped launch a revolutionary, virtual shopping service for men called Trunk Club.
To keep things real and answer a few questions right off the bat, here’s how Trunk Club works on a logistical level – in five simple steps:
1. Apply for the Trunk Club service online, which is 100% free.
2. Meet face to face with a Trunk Club fashion expert (via Skype) to determine clothing likes and dislikes.
3. Your fashion expert will mail a variety of hand-selected items which you then decide to keep or return.
4. Meet online again with the Trunk Club fashion expert for recommendations and insight.
5. Return whatever clothes you don’t like. Only pay for what you do.
What differentiates Trunk Club from already established (and highly successful) personal shopping services at stores like Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus? For starters, the virtual element and use of Skype to conduct all correspondence. Not only can men now “shop” from the comfort of their home, but a trained style expert is doing the heavy lifting and actually selecting and ordering clothes for you. If you don’t have a webcam to participate in the Skype session with your expert, Trunk Club will send you a complementary one. That’s right, fo’ FREE.
Secondly, the breakdown of the distribution channel: Trunk Club operates without inventory or significant real estate, so it is scalable and sustainable at a time when traditional retail models (and even E-Commerce) are faltering. Whether we like it or not, with a model like Trunk Club the need for stores and malls isn’t as imperative or relevant as it once was. There will always be those of us that enjoy the hunt and tradition (or addiction) of shopping, but thanks to Trunk Club there is now an alternative option. And it’s only a matter of time before other versions of this (possibly for women) enter the market. Right now, we can say with confidence that there is no other company like Trunk Club that exists and early feedback from media such as TechCrunch, The Los Angeles Times, Yahoo! Tech, Women’s Wear Daily, and The Washington Post seem to suggest that.
With the innovative and dynamic 25-year-old CEO and founder Joanna Van Vleck at the helm of Trunk Club, this promising new retail model should continue to pave the way for the future of virtual commerce … and create some damn well dressed dudes in the meantime.