The image appears to have a capacitor (? it's green, which is unusual) just randomly poking out at the bottom-right. I'm assuming that's a doctored image.
I also get a couple of strange images:
* One says "TT" and has the Manx triskelion, suggesting a relationship to the Isle of Mann motorcycle race, The TT.
* One says "poslednee gac" in cyrillic script, presumably "Last Hour" in Russian.
* One shows a tight shot of a large piece of heavy equipment, painted white and with a whiteboard with intriguing notes written on "Impete Forman / 3 Heat sheets from training / ..." or somesuch. [appears to refer to Kearny volunteer fire house in LA?]
* Another shows a man, wearing the garb supposed to be on sale, astride a black motorbike.
* Yet another shows an arrangement of 2048 in the stones stuck to the tyre of that motorbike.
* Another again quotes the Bible and has a large "60", but has a phone number "+1628 444 97 91" which appears to be a Russian number.
* And so on.
The music appears to be a serious of multiples of beats with some ambient sound and a small amount of speech. I'm guessing at least part of it can be interpreted as hex and converted to ascii or something similar. Later there is some chanting and partial word elements with scrambled speech too.
My best guess is viral marketing for a movie/tv-show at this point. I thought of Mr Robot, but it seems 12 Monkeys like from what little I remember seeing.
Whatever it is it's well made with a good degree of intrigue IMO.
Can you get the nice, boldly colored ones in packs? I have some really cool purple, orange, and green ones that look like fancy mall retail shop shirts.
Not to my knowledge, I just buy the packs of grey and/or black crew/v necks. But yeah I love Hanes... outstanding quality and cheap. The x-temp products are great by the way, albeit more expensive.
How do they feel on your skin? I've been wearing AA triblend tshirts for I think over 10 years now. With their recent closure in my country I tried a few other high street brands that were a lot cheaper, looked the same but felt like sandpaper on my skin compared to what I was used to.
I don't throw them away (I donate them to the local equivalent of Goodwill instead), but I definitely replace socks/underwear/t-shirts at least yearly. T-shirts often go after ~4-6 months, once they start to become a bit stretched out and faded around the collar.
Prices per item can widely differ depending where you buy them from. I checked prices from Uniqlo and made some small guesses (in favor of LOT): 19.90 + 14.9 * 6 + 7.90 * 12 + 49.90 + 7.90/3 * 12 + 10 + 2 * 40 + 3 * 40 + 4 * 29.90 = 615.2$
I do have to say, they can make the margin a lot higher by giving lower quality clothes. But I have seen lower quality clothes for higher prices.
The footer on the subscribe page quotes Jerimiah 29:11 (" For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.") and lists this coordinate (32.7663,-117.1293), which googlemaps says is on a hillside above the 805 freeway in San Diego.
This is clearly a treasure hunt or an art project, right?
Backpack features even numbers along with 0 in positions they show up on a keypad. Interesting writing on the floss, deodorant, hair dye, perfume, and id bracelet as well
Interestingly the coordinates I get in the footer are 33.6751, -117.7339 which is some undeveloped land inside the Orange County Great Park - perhaps what it gives back is based on GeoIP?
Because you want to avoid making unnecessary choices. Having to decide when to order new to replace old is one extra thing that will take cycles from something more important.
This isn't minimalism. The clothes themselves are of a minimalist art style, but the service is elitist and wasteful.
If you want to only have simple clothing, that's perfectly fine. If you don't want to have to spend a lot of thought on clothing, that's awesome! I'm the same way.
However, subscribing to an overpriced service that sends you clothing on a schedule is extremely wasteful. It's basically planned obsolescence in clothing form. It is just as simple to go find a few articles of clothing you really like and wear those until they are no longer wearable, then donate/sell and replace.
Minimalism is about maximizing the value out of things you own while minimizing their impact on your life. This accomplishes neither.
>Minimalism is about maximizing the value out of things you own while minimizing their impact on your life. This accomplishes neither.
That's largely a matter of personal taste.
>However, subscribing to an overpriced service that sends you clothing on a schedule is extremely wasteful.
High price doesn't necessarily imply wastefulness, unless you mean that you are wasting money? But that's a function of your earning potential, not only the item price.
It's only wasteful if you end up with too many pieces. If you know your t-shirts last 2 years on average, and you need 12 of them, they getting a new one every 2 months is no more wasteful than any other purchasing pattern that keeps you stocked.
How many brain cycles does it take to pick out some clothes? Own 5-7 shirts, 2 pants, make sure everything matches when you buy it (or ask a friend), and mix-and-match. Or just stock up on one outfit you like, wear it all the time, and DGAF. No need for a "curated" subscription.
How did we go from striving to be renaissance people to reducing ourselves to man-children who can't even pick out their clothes in morning?
I'm not sure, but it seems to work for every sci-fi / futuristic TV show or movie I can think of. If it helps accelerate our society to a more advanced state I will immediately commit to wearing a the same-design jumpsuit until the day I die.
Probably more to restricted budgets than anything else.
Some novels of "advanced" societies make a point of mentioning that people wear a wide variety of clothes or indeed none at all (e.g. the spectacularly advanced and hedonistic Culture - where pretty much anything goes including widely different body designs).
the futuristic universal-uniform shows you speak of are usually engaging in either a form of techno-utopian communism (star trek) or military fascism (starship troopers). Shows with more individualistic clothing (Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, Farscape) are usually more culturally contemporary (a balance of social support and capitalism). At least, that's how it seems, I'm not sure which shows you're referencing.
Even in Star Trek, the civilians wear fairly varied clothes. The Starfleet crew all wear the same clothes because _it's a uniform_ (except for Deanna Troi, for some reason).
Really like the totality of the aesthetic here - clothing, skincare, music... Nicely put together. Love it as an art project.
My thoughts are that the tattoo machine is the boondoggle piece that helps position the collection - it's fairly common in high fashion collections or new brands positioning themselves.
For example, Warby Parker's monocle, Saint Laurent's $1,200 roller skates and guitar cases, Hermes' $500 riding crops - complicated and impractical pieces not really meant for mass consumption, but they create conversation and help position the statement the designer is making.
I didn't think of that, but that makes sense. I first saw the tattoo machine and was instantly turned off because it broke the minimalistic and utilitarian vibe of the rest of the collection. Also, I wouldn't trust myself or any of my friends to give me a tattoo... I'd rather go to a professional for that, the internet is already filled with bad tattoos.
jesus christ... seriously? a few months ago, i started a subscription box service with a friend and so far we've made only one single sale. our product is food related, and although we have plenty of competitors, we believe we offer some of the best value for boxes out there. yet, no matter what we do, it seems we have difficulty converting sales. our price tiers start at only 10 bucks!
and yet, something like this... which seems ridiculous to me... people are actually willing to pay $49 just for "entertainment"? just for fun, to see what comes in the box? damn it... that is some serious marketing magic. you even think it's "cheap"! i'm genuinely either impressed by the person who started this (or stuff like this), or just baffled by those who actually pay for it.
TBH If it's a food-related box for only $10 then I wouldn't expect to be getting quality. Don't compete on price! There's no "entertainment" value in eating cardboard (no dig on you, i have no idea what your value prop is or any details beyond "food related" and "only 10 bucks"). I also have plenty of opportunities to eat well where I am.
For $49 I'm getting something I can at least wear for a year. I know a lot of people (not me personally) who would pay $49 for a good t-shirt from some fashion brands. I'll get a few more things than a t-shirt.
The "marketing magic" certainly piques my interest, but lets face it you can't even get decent seats at a concert for $49.
Also I want to be clear: if this sucks and isn't worth $49... I'll clearly cancel after one month. There's no committment period that I agreed to...
Actually, we really do ship out quality products even for our lowest tier box. I sell candy boxes, and we never procure second-rate products for our boxes - always premium brands, premium products. our goal from the start is that, because our business model is designed not to profit from the candy sales but from other derivative or peripheral services instead, we have absolute zero concern about making profit on our boxes. which means that we will always find the best ratio between shipping weight and box weight in order to make sure our customers get the most value for their money, which is to say for what you receive, you are unlikely to be able to put together the same box for the same price. not to mention, as we source directly in asia, we get access to interesting seasonal or limited edition flavors only available in asia, which as a candy lover myself can be really awesome and exciting.
i hope it's kosher to post it here but here goes: www.supercandyshop.com
why you should buy from us: we really intend to be the best value candy box out there, we currently have a break-even policy where we aim to only break even from every shipment. as long as we can find the right ratio of shipping cost to total weight of contents, we will fill em up with everything we can up until the cost reaches the price paid for the subscription(sometimes even a little past our cost). if you enjoy asian candy, give us a try you won't regret it.
what makes us interesting: the reason why we aimed to break even on the sale of each subscription is because our business model is a little different from the typical subscription box business. we do not ever aim to profit from the sale of candy/subscriptions itself, so our customers can be sure that they will always receive maximum value in every single shipment.
we believe there is more value in achieving a very satisfied customer base who enjoys every month's shipment, and that ultimately with enough scale, there will be profit.
I actually did one of these (oyatsubox) for about a year, and if you want my unsolicited feedback it'd be that it got old after a year. The DIY candy was fun (although deciphering the directions was a challenge in itself) but it all tastes the same. The Hi-chews and pocky and odd gummi things are good but I can get similar things here for cheaper if I wanted to do that regularly. I really did like the random flavored savory chips and things though, but I imagine these are not so cost effective to ship.
I don't know if it was an issue of scale and/or other folks' tastes (e.g. could they only buy "safe" flavors at scale?), but after a while I felt like I had "tried it all" and it was increasing hard to justify spending that much every month.
So if you're not planning on cutting a profit until you hit scale in a competitive market, I just wanted to provide the data point that LTV may not be as high as you hope and you might want to plan accordingly.
I'm sure you've thought a lot about these issues, but since I can provide feedback from the customer perspective I thought I'd share as an N-of-1 sample.
thank you so much, i sincerely appreciate these useful and constructive feedback from paying customers, even if it's not me they're paying!
one of the things we also plan to do is, because our order fulfillment center is in Singapore, we have access to a wide variety of limited edition or seasonal flavors of particular products. e.g green tea sakura kit kat, peach and sakura hi-chew, etc. these are often not available in western markets. we also try our very best to rotate the types of flavors and textures of products we ship out so as not to fatigue our customers' tastebuds.
without giving away too much of what makes our business model novel, our intention is to achieve a minimum scale where we become interesting as a distribution channel to other products, ideally complementary ones. this means even when at scale we are able to achieve profitability with candy sales alone, we may choose to forego the profit and continue increasing the value we ship to our customers. we believe there is plenty of profit to be made outside of the candy itself, which is why the value of our boxes will only keep going up as our costs goes down.
To give you a single perspective from the type of person who does occasionally sign up to "novelty" food subscriptions... I'm just not that in to candy.
I'd pay $10/25 a month for the savoury snack equivalent, or for maybe a condiment/spice selection, or for some really high quality dark chocolate, but I wouldn't sign up for something which I mentally perceive as a box of unhealthy sugars (even though it may be high quality / great tasting sugar).
frankly, unless you're genuinely willing to pay just for the novelty of the snacks, you'd be getting tremendously low value if you subscribe to most of the current available subscription services for such products. shipping often more than doubles the cost of these snacks due to the large amount of air in the bags.
which is not to say i'm opposed to it. if, indeed, there is a large interest in salty snacks as a box offering, we can definitely do that. as part of our sourcing for candies, we of course also come across salty and savory snack products so we already know where to get them. i'm just very skeptical that customers have such strong preference for novelty over value.
that is fair, not everyone enjoys candy on a regular basis.
i can see the appeal of offering a savory snack box, like many other of our competitors, because there are just so many interesting snacks in asia but the value just won't be there. we did attempt to put together a salty snacks box, but it was very difficult to put together one that not only contained a reasonable quantity of snacks, but could fit inside standard sized packaging and fit within shipping weight brackets. we found that majority of the boxes we could put together to ship out had such low commercial value that the price point simply didn't make sense for us. i'm confident that most of our competitors shipping out salty snacks are laughing to the bank that their customers are paying so much for shipping air. candy, on the other hand, are typically far denser so shipping cost-wise, it is far more economical.
this is certainly not a subscription service for those looking to cut sugar from their diet. we hope to aim at people who order these things for their families to try together, or people who bring these boxes to office for their colleagues, or even people who simply enjoy candy so much they'd like a regular supply of delicious and interesting candy.
Thanks for posting the link. I'll take that as a sign that you're open to some feedback and pursuing this conversation…
(First, as a bit of background, I'm a cofounder of Svpply, a fashion/aspirational-consumerist startup from about seven years ago. I've spent a lifetime thinking about why things like Lot 2046 are catnip to some folks and repellent to others. You can guess which side of the divide I fall on.)
The clothes people wear (and, to a just barely less obvious extension, all purchases people make) reinforce identity. The quick and easy stereotype is that people who buy expensive clothes are snobs; I would proffer a more generous depiction, that they are people who love beauty and want to be part of a beautiful world.
What most people miss (and I'm referring to both the beautiful people and their critics) is that folks on the opposite end of the spectrum are also engaging in reinforcement of identity. This thread is full of people talking about Hanes and Gilden t-shirts. They are projecting an identity of down-to-earth pragmatism. They are every bit as engaged in a game of ego and showmanship as that douchebag who stepped out of a GQ photoshoot. Normals and slobs spend way, way more time looking down on fashionistas than vice versa.
All consumption is conspicuous. Repeat that a few times. All consumption is conspicuous.
Lot 2046 is threading the needle of an of the hacker genius startup design savant. The punk cowboy of Neuromancer, the startup founder credo of decision fatigue, and the clean white workspace of Jonny Ives. The appeal of Lot 2046 is specific but deep.
Now I'm looking at your site. The physical goods that you're selling are pretty great! The experience and identity that you're selling is nonexistent.
Just take a look at the wrapper of the “Tokuno Milk”, or ponder the name “Hi-Chew” (I stuff my sister’s kid's stockings full of this kind of stuff every xmas, by the way). These candies are tasty and exotic and weird! And when I indulge in this kind of thing, I'm incidentally reinforcing a self-image of being a person with exotic and fun tastes. When I share these kinds of things, I'm giving the gift of exposure (there is fun weird shit that you can enjoy too), and also projecting that I am a gateway to fun, exotic, weird things.
I don't mean to give you the impression that this is the POINT of enjoying those things. The point of good food and good clothes is that they are good and beautiful and fun. But again, all consumption is conspicuous.
Another way of thinking of this is, why does every product you carry come in the wrapper that it's in? Now extend that to the space the item is sold (in this case, your site). Then look at the product Lot 2046 is selling, and how the store selling that product extends that identity.
The difference between Lot 2046 and Supercandyshop is that he understands his target demographic's subconscious aspirational identity, and you don't. All you're selling right now is a product. I can get products anywhere.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful and detailed response. I truly appreciate your feedback and will definitely take them into consideration.
I agree that we have yet to form an identity and that Lot 2046, as you said, has a very clear target audience. I'm not much of a designer, so I tried to keep the site looking as clean as possible. I did not want to go the cliche route of being overly colorful and child-like for a candy store, and wanted to maintain a clean neutral aesthetic. I personally dislike the noisy look of most other candy sites and prefer to keep it clean. Perhaps, like you said, I need a better understanding of my target demographic so I can tweak the design to align with their taste.
I've gotten similarly flabbergasted in the mobile game dev space. Someone who just spent $6 on a coffee will scoff at 99 cents for an app they could get hours of entertainment from.
In 2013, before Lapka was acquired: "He was dressed head-to-toe in tailored black garments... he confessed to me that one day, if his company ever got big, every employee would dress this way. “That’s the dream, anyway,” he said with a self-effacing laugh."
What I love about Vadik is (what I see on his site) as his second principle:
Think long term (like 30 years from now)
I think that's the thing that always comes through in the spirit of his work. Not that the things he makes are always designed to survive, but they're designed for a vision of the future.
nihilism (or more broadly, existentialism) is not directly tied to marxism. Both are materialist philosophies, but taking one does not require that you take the other. "Fuck the corporations" is also a pretty common attitude on the right as well as the left.
The right distrusts both public (government) and private (monopolistic corporate) bureaucracies as oppressive. The left gives more of a pass to government bureaucracies because they have faith that they can be democratically checked.
Careful with that wide brush of yours, there's a whole multidimensional universe of political alignments out there that are obscured by the American 'Left' and 'Right'.
2046 is a movie by Wong Kar-wai and was recently shown as part of a scifi series at Metrograph called "The Singularity" here in NYC.
I mention it because part of the plot revolves around a place called 2046, where nothing ever changes and in which people try to travel to in order to find lost loves.
Vadik Marmeladov's manifesto, which was penned in 2016, instructs as a rule #2 to think 30 years ahead, and finishes with “We are year 2046 kids”. This is clearly a reference to this.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 260 ms ] threadI like the aesthetic.
"LOT 0018 — tattoo kit; coil tattoo machine"
I also get a couple of strange images:
* One says "TT" and has the Manx triskelion, suggesting a relationship to the Isle of Mann motorcycle race, The TT.
* One says "poslednee gac" in cyrillic script, presumably "Last Hour" in Russian.
* One shows a tight shot of a large piece of heavy equipment, painted white and with a whiteboard with intriguing notes written on "Impete Forman / 3 Heat sheets from training / ..." or somesuch. [appears to refer to Kearny volunteer fire house in LA?]
* Another shows a man, wearing the garb supposed to be on sale, astride a black motorbike.
* Yet another shows an arrangement of 2048 in the stones stuck to the tyre of that motorbike.
* Another again quotes the Bible and has a large "60", but has a phone number "+1628 444 97 91" which appears to be a Russian number.
* And so on.
The music appears to be a serious of multiples of beats with some ambient sound and a small amount of speech. I'm guessing at least part of it can be interpreted as hex and converted to ascii or something similar. Later there is some chanting and partial word elements with scrambled speech too.
My best guess is viral marketing for a movie/tv-show at this point. I thought of Mr Robot, but it seems 12 Monkeys like from what little I remember seeing.
Whatever it is it's well made with a good degree of intrigue IMO.
It's +1 628 444 9791, it's a US phone number. It just says "We're sorry, the person you called has a voice mailbox that has not been set up yet."
The Russian country code is 7.
also, what exactly is a "team" in this context?
I think it's more the modern Heaven's Gate cult, saves a lot of time not asking members to shop for themselves!
I think GP was referencing the black bloc tactic.
The TRAVELERS are from a crapsack future; they're here in our time to change that. This is the sort of thing that might be useful for them.
In the footer it has my location and weather displayed too... even creepier (I turned off ublock to see if there was other stuff on this page).
This is insane, but a work of art if it's parody.
How do they feel on your skin? I've been wearing AA triblend tshirts for I think over 10 years now. With their recent closure in my country I tried a few other high street brands that were a lot cheaper, looked the same but felt like sandpaper on my skin compared to what I was used to.
1 Cap, 6 t-shirts, 12 underwear, 1 jacket, 12 socks, 2 necklaces, 2 pair shoes, 3 pants, 4 sweatshirts
Uh huh...
Not that I'm saying this is good value, not at all, but still.
I do have to say, they can make the margin a lot higher by giving lower quality clothes. But I have seen lower quality clothes for higher prices.
This is clearly a treasure hunt or an art project, right?
edit: also, the instagram is pretty artsy: https://www.instagram.com/lot2046/
https://www.xkcd.com/426/
New clothes every month? ...
Who on Earth needs a new set of clothes EACH month, all looking the same?
If it is some sort of art project attempt, well... then I guess it is beyond what I can grasp as I can't figure the point of it.
https://medium.com/personal-growth/why-steve-jobs-wore-the-s...
If you want to only have simple clothing, that's perfectly fine. If you don't want to have to spend a lot of thought on clothing, that's awesome! I'm the same way.
However, subscribing to an overpriced service that sends you clothing on a schedule is extremely wasteful. It's basically planned obsolescence in clothing form. It is just as simple to go find a few articles of clothing you really like and wear those until they are no longer wearable, then donate/sell and replace.
Minimalism is about maximizing the value out of things you own while minimizing their impact on your life. This accomplishes neither.
That's largely a matter of personal taste.
>However, subscribing to an overpriced service that sends you clothing on a schedule is extremely wasteful.
High price doesn't necessarily imply wastefulness, unless you mean that you are wasting money? But that's a function of your earning potential, not only the item price.
It's only wasteful if you end up with too many pieces. If you know your t-shirts last 2 years on average, and you need 12 of them, they getting a new one every 2 months is no more wasteful than any other purchasing pattern that keeps you stocked.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs#Health_issues)
How did we go from striving to be renaissance people to reducing ourselves to man-children who can't even pick out their clothes in morning?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_suit
Some novels of "advanced" societies make a point of mentioning that people wear a wide variety of clothes or indeed none at all (e.g. the spectacularly advanced and hedonistic Culture - where pretty much anything goes including widely different body designs).
My thoughts are that the tattoo machine is the boondoggle piece that helps position the collection - it's fairly common in high fashion collections or new brands positioning themselves.
For example, Warby Parker's monocle, Saint Laurent's $1,200 roller skates and guitar cases, Hermes' $500 riding crops - complicated and impractical pieces not really meant for mass consumption, but they create conversation and help position the statement the designer is making.
The future timeline started in 2043, and I'm pretty sure the future timeline is now somewhere roughly around the year 2046 now.
Season 3 starts in May.
*edit, changed final to THIRD season
My only fear at this point is that it's completely legit and someone actually thinks this is a good business.
Subscription confirmation: http://imgur.com/PKVip3w
and yet, something like this... which seems ridiculous to me... people are actually willing to pay $49 just for "entertainment"? just for fun, to see what comes in the box? damn it... that is some serious marketing magic. you even think it's "cheap"! i'm genuinely either impressed by the person who started this (or stuff like this), or just baffled by those who actually pay for it.
For $49 I'm getting something I can at least wear for a year. I know a lot of people (not me personally) who would pay $49 for a good t-shirt from some fashion brands. I'll get a few more things than a t-shirt.
The "marketing magic" certainly piques my interest, but lets face it you can't even get decent seats at a concert for $49.
Also I want to be clear: if this sucks and isn't worth $49... I'll clearly cancel after one month. There's no committment period that I agreed to...
why you should buy from us: we really intend to be the best value candy box out there, we currently have a break-even policy where we aim to only break even from every shipment. as long as we can find the right ratio of shipping cost to total weight of contents, we will fill em up with everything we can up until the cost reaches the price paid for the subscription(sometimes even a little past our cost). if you enjoy asian candy, give us a try you won't regret it.
what makes us interesting: the reason why we aimed to break even on the sale of each subscription is because our business model is a little different from the typical subscription box business. we do not ever aim to profit from the sale of candy/subscriptions itself, so our customers can be sure that they will always receive maximum value in every single shipment.
we believe there is more value in achieving a very satisfied customer base who enjoys every month's shipment, and that ultimately with enough scale, there will be profit.
I don't know if it was an issue of scale and/or other folks' tastes (e.g. could they only buy "safe" flavors at scale?), but after a while I felt like I had "tried it all" and it was increasing hard to justify spending that much every month.
So if you're not planning on cutting a profit until you hit scale in a competitive market, I just wanted to provide the data point that LTV may not be as high as you hope and you might want to plan accordingly.
I'm sure you've thought a lot about these issues, but since I can provide feedback from the customer perspective I thought I'd share as an N-of-1 sample.
Good luck!
one of the things we also plan to do is, because our order fulfillment center is in Singapore, we have access to a wide variety of limited edition or seasonal flavors of particular products. e.g green tea sakura kit kat, peach and sakura hi-chew, etc. these are often not available in western markets. we also try our very best to rotate the types of flavors and textures of products we ship out so as not to fatigue our customers' tastebuds.
without giving away too much of what makes our business model novel, our intention is to achieve a minimum scale where we become interesting as a distribution channel to other products, ideally complementary ones. this means even when at scale we are able to achieve profitability with candy sales alone, we may choose to forego the profit and continue increasing the value we ship to our customers. we believe there is plenty of profit to be made outside of the candy itself, which is why the value of our boxes will only keep going up as our costs goes down.
I'd pay $10/25 a month for the savoury snack equivalent, or for maybe a condiment/spice selection, or for some really high quality dark chocolate, but I wouldn't sign up for something which I mentally perceive as a box of unhealthy sugars (even though it may be high quality / great tasting sugar).
which is not to say i'm opposed to it. if, indeed, there is a large interest in salty snacks as a box offering, we can definitely do that. as part of our sourcing for candies, we of course also come across salty and savory snack products so we already know where to get them. i'm just very skeptical that customers have such strong preference for novelty over value.
i can see the appeal of offering a savory snack box, like many other of our competitors, because there are just so many interesting snacks in asia but the value just won't be there. we did attempt to put together a salty snacks box, but it was very difficult to put together one that not only contained a reasonable quantity of snacks, but could fit inside standard sized packaging and fit within shipping weight brackets. we found that majority of the boxes we could put together to ship out had such low commercial value that the price point simply didn't make sense for us. i'm confident that most of our competitors shipping out salty snacks are laughing to the bank that their customers are paying so much for shipping air. candy, on the other hand, are typically far denser so shipping cost-wise, it is far more economical.
this is certainly not a subscription service for those looking to cut sugar from their diet. we hope to aim at people who order these things for their families to try together, or people who bring these boxes to office for their colleagues, or even people who simply enjoy candy so much they'd like a regular supply of delicious and interesting candy.
(First, as a bit of background, I'm a cofounder of Svpply, a fashion/aspirational-consumerist startup from about seven years ago. I've spent a lifetime thinking about why things like Lot 2046 are catnip to some folks and repellent to others. You can guess which side of the divide I fall on.)
The clothes people wear (and, to a just barely less obvious extension, all purchases people make) reinforce identity. The quick and easy stereotype is that people who buy expensive clothes are snobs; I would proffer a more generous depiction, that they are people who love beauty and want to be part of a beautiful world.
What most people miss (and I'm referring to both the beautiful people and their critics) is that folks on the opposite end of the spectrum are also engaging in reinforcement of identity. This thread is full of people talking about Hanes and Gilden t-shirts. They are projecting an identity of down-to-earth pragmatism. They are every bit as engaged in a game of ego and showmanship as that douchebag who stepped out of a GQ photoshoot. Normals and slobs spend way, way more time looking down on fashionistas than vice versa.
All consumption is conspicuous. Repeat that a few times. All consumption is conspicuous.
Lot 2046 is threading the needle of an of the hacker genius startup design savant. The punk cowboy of Neuromancer, the startup founder credo of decision fatigue, and the clean white workspace of Jonny Ives. The appeal of Lot 2046 is specific but deep.
Now I'm looking at your site. The physical goods that you're selling are pretty great! The experience and identity that you're selling is nonexistent.
Just take a look at the wrapper of the “Tokuno Milk”, or ponder the name “Hi-Chew” (I stuff my sister’s kid's stockings full of this kind of stuff every xmas, by the way). These candies are tasty and exotic and weird! And when I indulge in this kind of thing, I'm incidentally reinforcing a self-image of being a person with exotic and fun tastes. When I share these kinds of things, I'm giving the gift of exposure (there is fun weird shit that you can enjoy too), and also projecting that I am a gateway to fun, exotic, weird things.
I don't mean to give you the impression that this is the POINT of enjoying those things. The point of good food and good clothes is that they are good and beautiful and fun. But again, all consumption is conspicuous.
Another way of thinking of this is, why does every product you carry come in the wrapper that it's in? Now extend that to the space the item is sold (in this case, your site). Then look at the product Lot 2046 is selling, and how the store selling that product extends that identity.
The difference between Lot 2046 and Supercandyshop is that he understands his target demographic's subconscious aspirational identity, and you don't. All you're selling right now is a product. I can get products anywhere.
You need to target yourself somewhere between Lot2046, https://www.lootcrate.com, and Sanrio.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful and detailed response. I truly appreciate your feedback and will definitely take them into consideration.
I agree that we have yet to form an identity and that Lot 2046, as you said, has a very clear target audience. I'm not much of a designer, so I tried to keep the site looking as clean as possible. I did not want to go the cliche route of being overly colorful and child-like for a candy store, and wanted to maintain a clean neutral aesthetic. I personally dislike the noisy look of most other candy sites and prefer to keep it clean. Perhaps, like you said, I need a better understanding of my target demographic so I can tweak the design to align with their taste.
https://twitter.com/vadikmarmeladov/status/85147501833262284...
In 2013, before Lapka was acquired: "He was dressed head-to-toe in tailored black garments... he confessed to me that one day, if his company ever got big, every employee would dress this way. “That’s the dream, anyway,” he said with a self-effacing laugh."
https://www.fastcodesign.com/3050743/why-airbnb-just-bought-...
See also his personal site http://www.vadikmarmeladov.com/ which showcases similar design principles and includes "our Codes of Practice":
1. Wear the uniform
2. Think long term (like 30 years from now)
3. Build stories and languages, not things
4. Create your own universe
8. Do not build utilitarian products. However, use them as a medium to express yourself
20. Move to LA
23. Use only one font, just a few colors, and just a few shapes
28. Remind yourself daily: you and everyone you know will die
30. We are 2046 kids
Think long term (like 30 years from now)
I think that's the thing that always comes through in the spirit of his work. Not that the things he makes are always designed to survive, but they're designed for a vision of the future.
Bwoo-shazam!
I mention it because part of the plot revolves around a place called 2046, where nothing ever changes and in which people try to travel to in order to find lost loves.