The Debrief No. 434: MUST READ: Italic’s $100 annual membership and selling luxury goods at cost   The intentionally ugly Gen Z aesthetic.  
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Tuesday's Big Briefing:  
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fire  fire  Must Read: A $100 annual membership model and selling premium luxury goods at cost.  
Liz Segran  
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takes a look at how Italic is ushering in a new era for the modern DNVB.  
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Why pay $1,500 for that Celine purse when you can get it for $200?  
Fast Company  
The Short Shrift.  
Reading between the lines: Two of our favorites, Fast Company's Liz Segran and Jeremy Cai of  
Italic, unite in this one, a great read about Italic's brilliant approach to offering luxury goods  
at cost. In summary,  Italic sells luxury goods at cost.  
It’s a radical business model designed to  
take on the many DTC brands that launched over the last decade with the goal of selling quality  
luxury goods without the middleman markup.  
Unlike these other brands, Italic doesn’t make money  
from the sale of individual products but from its $100 annual membership fee.  
It’s a tricky  
business model at a time of intense economic uncertainty, when customers may not be willing to  
spend money up front to be able to buy goods in the future.  
star FYI: Lean Luxe founder Paul Munford is an early Italic investor.  
backhand index pointing right Get smarter:  
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Read the report here...  
Internal  
Lean Luxe: Quarterly Sponsorships  
New opportunities for Q 3 2020  
star  star Heads up: We're now taking sponsors for Q 3 2020 (July   Sept)  raising hands  raising hands  
Under our new structure, which started in Q 1, sponsorships are now open across two tiers: Gold Tier  
(9 total placements per quarter) and Silver Tier (6 total placements per quarter).  
We're limiting  
this to (4) partners per tier.  
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Potential partners go to: Lean Luxe: Quarterly Partnerships  
dot  
Fun fact: The document is also something of a  state of the publication  report––so even if you're  
not a potential sponsor, you might enjoy the progress report so far.  
Sponsors are free to get in  
touch with me directly.  
–– Paul  
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–– Email for sponsorship opportunities  
(please specify your package!)  
In Association with: Postscript  
A Word from our Sponsor  
Q 3   July 2020  
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Postscript: We’re entering a new era of customer engagement.  
July Series   Edition No. 2  slash  2.  
SMS is just like email. Except, totally different.  
When was the last time you got a 99 percent  open rate on an email campaign? Probably never.  
That’s why SMS has become the most important marketing channel of the decade for e commerce brands.  
It’s time to change how you communicate with your customers. Respect the inbox.  
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Create  
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–– Start your free 30 day trial today  rocket  
Many thanks to Postscript today. Their support makes Lean Luxe a better product.  
Learn more at:  
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Insights Corner  
Tuesday: Taking Stock  
Lucid observations  
Grab Bag: Moonshine connoisseurs.  
Explaining the  everything is  
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cake  craze  
dot  The latest banger from  
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Quintana Partners  
dot  Car designers  
are really loving the Power  
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Wheels aesthetic  
dot  Stock X had a  
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great month  
dot  Surviving on nothing but  
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Chicken Mc Nuggets  
dot  Riding the Trans  
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Siberian Railway  
dot  The Tesla  
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of bikes  
dot  Made In’s blue carbon  
steel  
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roasting pan  
dot  Liverpool’s in for  
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Weston Mc Kennie  
My mind is melting  
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in suburbia  
dot   An  
introduction  
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to Impressionism  
dot  The new  
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Substack class  
dot  Professors are stressing about  
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going back  
dot  
Summer in  
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the South  
dot  Biden’s thinking beyond  
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social politics  
dot  Strife  
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at ESPN  
dot  A eulogy for  
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The  
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Outline  
dot  What’s lost with the end of  
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office culture  
dot  Life  
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in 2022  
dot  The LEGO Nintendo  
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Entertainment  
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System  
dot  Hood By Air is  
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coming back  
dot  The New Yorker profiles  
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Casa Magazines  
dot  Emily Schildt's  
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favorite foods  
dot  And the  
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moonshine connoisseurs  
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The Verticale wants to become the go to DNVB marketplace.  
This is a smart move by The Verticale, reminiscent of Verishop’s initial mission––just executed  
with far less money and far less hype.  
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The marketplace itself hasn't launched yet; they're  
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currently on a waitlist with plan to launch towards the end of 2020  
dot  It should be said, however,  
that several folks have tried to tackle this problem of DNVB brand discovery over the last two  
years or so.  
Suffice it to say, none––if they even managed to launch––have cornered the market  
there.  
Even here, it remains to be seen whether The Verticale can get this right, but the thinking  
is certainly clear:  Currently, there is no single platform that showcases brands with purpose.  
Because of this, the onus is placed on the consumer to conduct their own research, ultimately,  
leading to brand fatigue.  
On top of that, everyday, our social media feeds are inundated with new  
brands and products, preventing us from purchasing the products we really want.  Godspeed.  
The intentionally ugly Gen Z aesthetic.  
In our current cultural era, old seasoned wisdom takes a backseat to youth, and things that are  
new  or  young  are given the microphone just by virtue of them not being old.  
Which helps to  
explain the growing fascination, bordering on obsession, of all things Gen Z today.  
It's a  
generation that is, for some reason, being looked at as the new cultural weather vane, and you’ll  
forgive us from thinking God help us if that becomes the case.  
That said,  
link  
there’s a new piece  
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tackles that deconstructs what they're calling the  intentionally ugly Gen Z aesthetic  
dot  It's a  
direct reaction to the  old  Gen Y aesthetic which is basically an orderly minimalist design  
language draped in pastels.  
Gen Z, on the other hand, is basically Brutalist in intention, and has  
a heavy dash of Windows 95 running through it.  
The dichotomy is certainly interesting even if we're  
still baffled by the unilateral obsession with what Gen Z is doing today.  
Jelly gate: Sqirl and its moldy jam.  
These days, it seems if there’s any news about a HENRY brand or company, then that news is bad  
news.  
That remains the case here with  Jelly gate' at cool girl LA cafe Sqirl (whose owner, Jessica  
Koslow, is pictured above).  
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They specialize in making jam, and apparently they’ve been serving  
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mold laden jam to customers  
dot  Which is not good.  
This saga has gone viral in a certain corner of the  
internet, and while you can read about the full details in the link there, it’s this portion that  
about why it’s going viral that made sense to us:  But what makes the story so viral (or spore ful)  
is watching a place that has built its brand not just on jam, but on the goodness of  real' food  
get taken down for precisely what it supposedly does best.  
So far, no one has claimed to have  
gotten sick off Sqirl’s jam, but it’s shocking and disgusting and allows for everyone who never  
posted an artfully lit photo of the jam toast or the line down the block to feel incredibly smug.  
––  
waving hand Paul Munford, CEO  slash  Editor  
link  
mpm at leanluxe dot com  
  
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at leanluxe  
The Community  
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fire  fire Join the conversation –– get your invite here!  
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The Ticker  
Fresh, hot links  
Lighter fare  
On Running drops a new shoe with Federer  
And it’s...interesting.  
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The Roger  
  
Hypebeast films and shows?  
Could be coming to a screen of yours soon.  
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Hollywood Reporter  
  
The Wing is late on rent  
Uh oh.  
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The Real Deal  
New Brand: Two Front  
A new entry to the dental space with a dash of whimsy.  
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Two Front  
  
Nuggs rebrands as Simulate  
Makes sense since they’re expanding beyond nuggets.  
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Tech Crunch  
  
Muji USA files for bankruptcy  
Say it ain’t so.  
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Bo F  
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star  star  News or tips for The Ticker?  
Send tips on news, quotes, coverage, mentions in the media to  
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Comments, questions, tips?  
Send a letter to the editor –– Paul Munford  
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