Love Them or Leave Them: The Beauty Box Club-of-the-Month Craze

People like their products just like they like their information: convenient, tailored to their interests, and at a marginal price. Enter stage left: the beauty box club-of-the-month craze. If you are a regular social media user, you will see that a new box enters this market almost weekly. After doing some research, I saw a few glaring reasons why people are drawn to this new trend.

1. People love to get things in the mail-especially women. AS a member of one of these clubs, women feel like the company sends them a personalized surprise present each month- even though they signed up for the club and pay the fee.

2. Convenience- Let's face it: we, as a society, are lazy people . If something isn't in our own social media news feed we don't know about it and if a product is not sent to our door we won't try it. We want what we want and we want it now. Clubs-of-the-month thrive off of this attitude.

3. People feel like they are getting a bargain- Look, I know the box is a good value because you get all these samples cheaper than buying the individual products, but if it wasn't sent to your door, would you even think about buying this stuff? Just a thought to ponder on....

So for those of you interested, here is some information on the big kahunas of the beauty box club-of-the-month world:

Birchbox

• First on the market- send you 4 or 5 beauty samples plus and extra like a hair tie or energy bar
• Products range in size from teeny tiny to retail size; quality ranges from drugstore to higher-end
• Products sent out each month vary from user to user, 
• $10 per month and can cancel at any time
• 4 month waiting list period
• Comes in a recycled cardboard box with pink tissue paper

Julep

• Runs off of the Maven program, sign up and take the style quiz to determine your personal style
• $20 a month; you receive an email before you get the box telling you what will be in your box and if you don't like the contents you can request another box for that month
• Pause or cancel your subscription at any time or send your box one month to a friend as a gift
• Mavens get 20% off purchases from the julep website,

Ipsy

• 4 or 5 cosmetic, hair or skincare products, same for all customers each month, heavier on makeup samples
• Includes coupons and discount codes for the different products
• $10 a month and can cancel at anytime
• Products come in a cheap-looking , reusable makeup pouch that usually coincides with the month's theme
• Ipsy tends to focus more on the higher-end brands for their products which produces a better value than birchbox

Glossybox

• 5-6 deluxe size samples or full-size products each month
• Concentrates on luxury and foreign brands; subcribers are exposed to products they wouldn't normally know about
• Discounts on products featured in boxes
• Glossydots reward program- complete monthly surveys and refer friends to earn dots and every 1,000 dots you get a free box
• $21 monthly, $60 for 3 months, $115 for 6 months, $220 for year; cancel anytime
• Comes in beautifully wrapped box filled with tissue paper, makes an ideal gift

If anyone is already a member of one of these or decides to join, please let me know. I would love to hear your thoughts!

* Birchbox, Ipsy, and Glossybox info gathered from buzzfeed.com, and Julep info taken from handmadebynatalie.blogspot.com.