Quince is expanding into fragrance, wellness & men’s shoes
Quince, the direct-to-consumer brand known for its $50 cashmere sweaters, is expanding into new categories like fragrance and wellness to position itself as more of a lifestyle company.
This week, Quince will start selling collagen powder and electrolyte packs via its online store. It will add more vitamins and supplements in the coming months. Customers can also expect spray perfumes and roll-ons in the first half of 2025, as well as men’s footwear and underwear, lamps, lighting and outdoor and dining furniture. All items will stick to Quince’s business model, which involves sourcing materials directly from manufacturers to keep prices down.
These expansions build on progress Quince has already made in entering into non-apparel categories. In 2023, Quince expanded into women’s footwear, and in 2024, it ventured into cookware, linen bedding and candles. Now, it’s working to market itself as a go-to source for high-quality, cost-efficient basics in all aspects of home, work and the outdoors. In other words, Quince is eyeing “anything that could fall into that essentials category, especially where we feel that consumers have to trade off quality for price,” Antonieta Moreland, head of brand at Quince, told Modern Retail. She added, “The runway is massive.”
Quince, which was founded in 2018, is online only and has benefited from the boom in “quiet luxury,” a trend that prioritizes understated, high-quality designs. After a year of beta-testing, Quince officially launched in 2020 with apparel, accessories, jewelry and home decor from more than 30 manufacturing partners. The brand raised $50 million in a Series A funding round in 2021 and clocked annual sales of around $300 million in 2023. It aimed to hit $1 billion in 2024, sources told WWD.
Even as it expands into new categories, Quince has been careful, vowing to produce items in small batches to minimize waste, Moreland said. To form new supplier relationships, Quince filled out its product team with experts in categories like leather goods. It also created a dedicated men’s team for apparel and footwear. As Quince has done with its women’s clothing, it is incorporating customer feedback into which products should stay and which products should go.
“The plan has never been over-proliferation within any one category,” Moreland said. “If consumers aren’t loving [something], then we’d rather just give them exactly what they want and then focus on essentials in other categories.”
Many of Quince’s new categories involve items with typically high price tags. This is especially true of wellness and fragrance. But by working directly with suppliers for, say, vanilla-scented roll-on perfume, Quince can cut prices by “40% to 50%,” said Moreland. “We are really trying to give [customers] really transparent pricing for the same quality of great fragrance they’re buying elsewhere.”
Chris D’Alessandro, executive director of the marketing and sales agency VML, told Modern Retail that it makes sense for Quince to expand into categories other than its existing apparel and home goods offerings. “DTC companies need to get three things right: supply chain, marketing and product,” he said. “Quince really nailed the marketing and supply chain, so now they can expand on product.”
“They should go as fast as they can into as many categories that fit within their audience,” he added. “In e-commerce, you kind of have to test. You have to throw things at the wall… You have to understand what’s going to sell, what consumers are going to buy and not buy… What I like is that they’re doing it methodically.”
To help bring more customers on board, Quince aims to update its marketing materials to emphasize its larger lifestyle play. Quince is also considering having some sort of physical retail presence so shoppers can view and touch the newer items in person. Quince held a pop-up last year that lasted for one day, and shoppers responded positively, Moreland said. As such, the brand is considering holding additional pop-ups to show off its new merchandise, she said.
“We understand that with new categories, it’s normal human consumer behavior to be a little bit skeptical,” Moreland explained. “We want to build that trust. We hope that we’ve built a layer of trust in the quality of the products that we’ve launched so far, but we want to make it easier for [customers] to access and try them.”