A US ecommerce start-up has gone ‘brand-free’, selling a range of grocery and household items with no brand name.
Aptly named Brandless, every product the retailer sells, from organic peanut butter to steak knives, costs just US$3 ($3.79).
Entrepreneurs and Brandless co-founders Tina Sharkey and Ido Leffer say they aim to eliminate the ‘brand tax’, or the extra cost attached to brand name items.
The company estimates the average person pays at least 40 per cent more for products of comparable quality to Brandless, and up to 370 per cent more for beauty products.
A direct-to-consumer model helps keep costs low, and the ecommerce site is modelled on a normal supermarket with ‘aisles’ including food, household supplies, beauty, personal care, home and office, and health.
However, unlike a normal supermarket, there is less choice. For example, just two varieties of jam rather than the tens of SKUs you would find elsewhere.
Although the products look different to the traditional branded products available elsewhere, despite its name, Brandless is not actually ‘brand-less’. In fact, Sharkey told Forbes: “We’re unapologetically a brand, but we’re reimagining what it means to be a brand today.”
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