
Brandless has shut down - TuringNYC
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-10/softbank-backed-brandless-shutters-less-2-years-after-investment
======
hbosch
I think a more true representation of "brandlessness" is AmazonBasics. It's
not exactly correct to think of the lack of a logo being the lack of a brand
-- brandlessness _is_ the brand, logo or not. On the other hand, having no
phony story about your products ("Handmade by artisans in Nicaragua") or
marketing ("Better than 99% of our competitors!") and just existing is how to
communicate brandlessness.

"Brandless.com" was never what it told you it was... it was a brand with a
logo that told you it wasn't, and it stocked mediocre products. Buying from
them was supposed to "feel" like "anti-consumerism", and they told people they
didn't invest in marketing so they could give customers better deals.
Unfortunately, Brandless actually wasn't a radical rethinking of how we market
organic kale to the 27 year old tech set.

~~~
hug
Having never heard of Brandless, I was hoping they were possibly marketing
something I have a fierce desire for, which is consumer products with minimal
branding, that are superlatively well made, and priced commensurately.

Unfortunately, finding these kinds of products is _hard_ , and i don't quite
understand why.

About the closest I have found to this ethos in a mass-market kind of way is
Muji, but only some of their consumer goods are actually solid and worth
purchasing. Anything they sell that is made of plastic is almost certainly
not.

The next nearest thing to this seems to be certain classes of Etsy stores that
take pride in how well they manufacture their products, but unfortunately this
approach isn't replicable to any number of things.

~~~
ProfessorLayton
This does exist and is fairly common, at least in retail, otherwise known as
"White label products". Costco's Kirkland brand is a fantastic example of
this, where they rebrand the same products such as a particular SKU of vodka
under their own Kirkland brand.

A lot of in-house brands are just white labeled versions of a branded product.
The rub is that not all are high-quality brands like Costco's

~~~
hug
Unfortunately, as you mention, not all are high-quality.

If I want good white-label vodka I go to Costco.

Good white-label monitor arms apparently come from AmazonBasics.

Good white-label socks come from a third place.

Even worse than the fact that these different classes of products are in
different places is that even items in the same class from the same place are
completely different quality. Costco's vodka might be fine, their whiskey
might be awful. Monitor arms from amazonbasics are fine but their mic arms are
garbage.

There's no manufacturer of consistently very high quality consumer goods.
There's not even a manufacturer I can point to and say "everything they make,
even in their narrow field, is fantastic".

And that sucks.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Sears used to be that, back in the day (not recently - say, maybe pre-2000).
"Quality at a decent price" was their motto, and they did pretty well at it.
You could by clothes, tools, appliances, and none of it would fall apart on
you. They also had, perhaps not white-label brands, but their own brands.
Craftsman tools were pretty solid.

There might be an opening for someone to do that again. There's a cost to
going to 17 places for 17 things. Even if you're online shopping and getting
free delivery on everything, there's still a cost in terms of time and
aggravation. It might be worth something if some business solved that.

Unfortunately, I don't see anybody who would do so. Amazon would have to
control quality of everything they sell (or start a premium brand that was
actually premium). Sears has been irrelevant for a couple of decades, and soon
will be history. Costco seems to me to have the best chance of pulling this
off - their quality is reasonable-to-good on most things we've tried there,
but there's a lot we haven't tried. Still, they seem to have the best handle
on consistent quality out of any of the current contenders.

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Pfhreak
I was really worried for a moment, because I thought Unbranded [1] went under.
It seems like many businesses have a sort of 'brandless' identity. I suppose
it is difficult to be well regarded, well heard of, and also lack branding.
I'm curious what the takeaways are here, and what broader lessons there are to
learn.

[1] [https://theunbrandedbrand.com/](https://theunbrandedbrand.com/)

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leshokunin
That's a shame for the company. What's more interesting for me in this
headline is how the main point is that it's a SoftBank-backed company.

News of startups dying happens every day, even for VC-backed ones. There seems
to be some kind of extra scrutiny applied to SoftBank in the post WeWork
debacle. It's rather unfortunate, because that creates a narrative that's
distracting.

~~~
softasyrbank
The fact that this was a SoftBank backed company, the insane valuation placed
on it, the poor vetting of founders/higher management, and the wild gyrations
required when new decisions come down every month (get more customers doesn't
matter if they are profitable! no, stop getting customers, they aren't
profitable yet! etc) does in-fact have a lot to do with the outcome tho

signed: someone who programmed for a SoftBank backed company

~~~
_-___________-_
Do SoftBank have a lower success rate with their bets than other VCs?

~~~
mrnobody_67
Too early to tell. Funds have 10 year lifespans...

But their biggest bets are heavily in the red and they are having trouble
raising their second fund, which means LPs are doubtful they can return top
quartile VC returns.

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crowdbloom
I used, and for the most part, enjoyed brandless food products. Decent quality
and fair prices ... then they started advertising too many non-food items that
were very obviously cheap, low quality mass-produced in China items. I knew
this was the beginning of the end for them. Iirc, a $8 “santoku” shaped knife
at one point. Super cheap frying pans and kitchen tools with outrageous “mark
downs“ ... a “pro blender” was:$180 now:$90. I stopped buying altogether and
had not thought about them until this posting.

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walrus01
A much older and more successful version of this is No Name in Canada, which
is for the house brand versions of products from the grocery giant Loblaws.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=no+name+products+canada&clie...](https://www.google.com/search?q=no+name+products+canada&client=ubuntu&hs=Il3&channel=fs&sxsrf=ACYBGNRVHMzloYw7-6jU6_GI9urwaaURVA:1581387479163&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiFmsq3t8jnAhXAGDQIHVPuBVsQ_AUoAXoECGwQAw&biw=1426&bih=1053)

Loblaws:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loblaws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loblaws)

~~~
arsome
The thing about store brands like No Name (Loblaw), Compliments (Sobeys),
Great Value (Walmart) etc is that they get free access to shelf space, enjoy
higher margins from the store and lower requirements for marketing by simply
being the cheapest product available and competing exclusively on price.
Brandless still needed to deal with those issues.

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claudeganon
I’m really starting to appreciate Masayoshi Son’s determination to prove that
much of the tech industry is make-work for grifters in our era of low interest
rates.

~~~
ch4ch4
Maybe it's all just a scheme to funnel Saudi oil money into the US economy.

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PrivateBenjamin
Brandless' real mission was virtue signaling. A lot of good people put a lot
of good work into doing the right thing, but ultimately, no one in leadership
was actually as interested in bringing affordable organic products to lower
income families as they were in being publicly seen pretending to bring
affordable organic products to lower income families. Loads of talk about
"building a community" with no idea what a community actually was aside from
"gated."

Leadership constantly lied about the financial situation being wonderful and
focused primarily on sending tens of thousands of dollars worth of free
product to D-list Instagram influencers that only affluent, unemployed Marin
stepmoms paid any attention to. As such, the typical customer ordered one
bottle of coconut oil and filed 32 customer service tickets complaining about
the box it came in. It doesn't take a genius to see how that's going to pan
out but the ubiquitous narcissistic marketing bros were able to con their way
through hiring more and more of their friends to come up with brilliant ideas
like "Groupon" in spite of the fact that their numbers were consistently
pathetic and they were generating more HR complaints than sales.

SoftBank installed a new CEO and his plan to increase AOV was literally snake
oil. He lasted a couple months. Nobody on the ground knew if he left
voluntarily or not. My guess is "not." After that they started hawking Alibaba
blenders you can buy with a different logo on them for $40 and I have no idea
why it took this long for them to pull the plug. I do think they deserve some
credit for not actually giving them all of the money at once, though.

The day they shut down somebody did something stupid with the old payroll
system and it sent additional copies of 2018 W2s to the IRS with bogus numbers
on them. Folks are now receiving threatening letters from the government
demanding payment for tens of thousands of dollars of unreported, nonexistent
income and there's nobody left who knows how to do anything about it. A tire
fire to the bitter, bitter end.

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jrochkind1
> and the company pivoted to selling CBD

Wait, what?

Could anyone imagine that going well, rather than meaning "countdown to 'what
an incredible journey'"?

~~~
ezconnect
That's just one of the co-founder who quit early.

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danimal88
In general, it feels like this sort of company as a venture backed company is
a waste of time. I understand you can create a 'brandless as a brand' company
and make people think they are getting more for less, but this is literally
just an exercise in consumerism and customer acquisition. I don't love that
nonduraable CPG is controlled by a small handful of conglomerates but I also
wish VCs would ignore this type of play and work on doing something more
meaningful. I understand that there are and will be investors in different
categories, but things like this feel like venture backed plastic pollution as
a lifestyle brand.

~~~
bobthepanda
Yeah, the problem in a market like this is differentiation. Lots of stores
have "brandless" or own-branded goods that are at least acceptable (Costco's
Kirkland, Trader Joe's general goods, etc.) and it's hard to see what the
value proposition of buying something non-branded is from a website vs. a
store.

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blueboo
The literal brandlessness of Brandless is and always was a complete red
herring.

People are making apt comparisons to AmazonBasics, grocery in-house brands --
apt because these are all brands. People choose those goods for a variety of
reasons including the reputation of those brands.

With a modestly trained eye, people can spot the difference between a logo-
free Old Navy white t-shirt and a Gap one (not to mentiono a Hanes t-shirt.)
The lack of a logo doesn't make something without brand.

This dynamic may have been lost on entrepreneurs more concerned with VC decks
and tech stacks.

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busymom0
I never really understood their appeal as compared to something like Amazon
Basics or Walmart's Great Value or No Name from Loblaws chains. At least the
later ones enjoyed free shelf space and didn't really need additional
marketing other than simply being on the shelves to visible customer eyes.
Brandless on the other hand didn't have any of those benefits.

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Grue3
Can't read the article but that picture looks exactly like Ikea food section.

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adrr
For a company that said it didn’t advertise, what did they spend $300mm on?

~~~
madamelic
100MM SV salaries

100MM SV office

50MM La Croix

25MM Standing desks

25MM Scooters

~~~
catalogia
> _50MM La Croix_

The bottled water brand? Is this a joke? Did they not realize water from the
tap is safe and virtually free?

~~~
chipotle_coyote
> The bottled water brand?

Now now, it isn't bottled water. It's homeopathic soda!

> Is this a joke?

While I'm not the OP, I'm _pretty_ sure the answer is yes. :)

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hedora
I’ve been waiting for someone to implement this:

[https://www.xkcd.com/993/](https://www.xkcd.com/993/)

Too bad they folded before establishing a brand identity.

~~~
throw_away
This widely existed in the seventies and eighties:
[http://gbnfgroceries.blogspot.com/2014/01/from-misc-foods-
ai...](http://gbnfgroceries.blogspot.com/2014/01/from-misc-foods-aisle-
generic-brands.html)

I was very young, but IIRC, it was all in its own aisle.

