HEAT
Joe Wilkinson and Mario Maher are the brains behind HEAT, a clothing mystery-box company that launched in November 2019, initially working with unsold retail stock. The global pandemic that struck just a few months later ironically brought them sell-out success. HEAT customers can choose between eight different boxes containing up to three items from a wide range of streetwear brands worth more than the box price, never knowing exactly what they'll get. Initially starting with what they could buy themselves, they are now one of the most sought-after partners for luxury brands, who see in the box a way of elegantly distributing excess stock as well as bringing their product to a brand new audience. Every time the boxes drop, they sell out in a number of hours.
Interview by Caroline IssaPortrait courtesy of HEAT
CAROLINE ISSA How did you guys come up with the idea of HEAT?
JOE WILKINSON Mario and I were both working in the fashion space in different areas. I was in personal shopping; Mario was in wholesale distribution. We were both really aware of the same issue, that luxury brands have a lot of over- stock products that they don’t know what to do with. There are traditional ways of getting rid of overstock, like discounting, destroying or offloading the product, but none of these are good solutions. Luxury brands don’t want to discount and they definitely don’t want to destroy product, for sustainability reasons. We thought that if we could find a way that creates an opaque discount and gets the product to the end target consumer – a Gen Z customer – we’d be onto a winner, because this is a growing challenge that doesn’t have a solution. So we put our heads together and thought of a few different crazy ideas before we landed on the mystery box, which solves all these issues. At the end of November 2019, we launched the HEAT box. Our thinking was, if we build up this platform, this voice, this brand, people will trust our curation of products and that will help people start to shift to a seasonless mindset and away from the feeling that the new season product is the only one to have. We’ve started to see that move in a big way with Gen Z. That’s been a nice shift, because now people are open to both receiving a new-season product and also a product from a few seasons ago, as long as there’s a story behind it. People are buying more into brands, products and stories versus hype, trends and paying high retail prices. All those things aligned at the same time. The first launch was much crazier than we expected.
CI Why was it crazier?
JW We thought, “Who’s actually going to buy an expensive mystery box from a platform that’s not very well known?” In the build-up to the first launch, we used influencers to do unboxings and education pieces on what HEAT is and how it works. We wanted to use trusted voices as we were still trying to build our own. What we saw was that customers were buying the box not only to get the product, not only to get the value inside the box and its curation, but to create their own content as well. This almost simultaneously started a viral trend of people buying fashion mystery boxes and doing the unboxing and try-ons, so we got a ton of organic user-generated content on YouTube, Instagram, et cetera. We were quite fortunate with how that played out and how the stars aligned, but it was definitely crazier than we anticipated. We definitely didn’t have the stock for the 1,000 mystery boxes that we sold in the first release. So it was back to our personal-shopper days, running around retailers in Italy trying to gather stock to fulfil the orders... but we made it work.
CI You’re taking what is typically a bit of a dirty secret, of how profitable secondary and discount sales are, and making it magical. You talk about Gen Z and how they’re interested in seasonless products and timelessness. What is it about the mystery of the mystery box that works so well? How do you guys think about value?
MARIO MAHER Joe spoke about how customers are really interested in story. I think the Gen Z community is really interested in the education angle – they want to know where the pieces are from, how old they are, who the designer was. If there are two Gen Zs sitting next to each other in a coffee shop, it’s much cooler to have on the archive Helmut Lang outfit instead of head-to-toe this-season Balenciaga. Although we give customers brands they know in that box, we also like to put in brands that they may not have heard of, who we believe in. We are part of the Gen Z community as well, so we understand its themes and trends. Where we see that traction is by giving them the Amiri that they know alongside a brand from Taiwan they’ve probably never heard of. The engagement from that is probably much more than the brand that they already know, and that’s what we find really exciting. Earlier generations like what they know and know what they like. They’re quite rigid in their thinking, whereas I think Gen Z are quite flexible and open to new, engaging ways to shop, new places to seek education. And as Joe mentioned, they love telling stories as well as learning about stories, so they make their own content on YouTube and TikTok – you can see the engagement between people within that community. It’s fascinating when you look at it from an outsider’s perspective.
JW For a Gen Z customer, the main place they go for inspiration on what to wear, what’s cool, what’s on trend is online, and that influences their purchasing decisions. But if we can do the job of being the curator, being the trendsetter, and delivering them that in a mystery box, it makes their lives easier. That’s really where HEAT comes into its own, developing its own brand as the curator of products and the trend leader.
CI Are all brands open to this?
JW It’s definitely been a process from when we first started when it was very much, “What’s this mystery box? We’re worried about it. Do we work with it? Do we not work with it?” Now, we work with over 100 brands and we’re launching new-season products in the boxes alongside old-season products, which really shows the change in perception. At the beginning, it was almost like, “Can this be our dirty little secret? Can we just use this to get rid of our product?” Whereas now, with the platform, unboxing experience and community we’ve created, brands no longer think that only one channel is good for getting rid of products. The same channel can be used for pushing new products, the same channel can be used to acquire new customers. That’s what we’ve been working hard on trying to build. Our focus has always been that we wanted to go into luxury first, as that would give us the opportunity to work with other smaller premium brands, not just mega-brands. We have some key targets that we want to tick off before expanding further. There is still some way to go with our dream brands; there are a lot of brands we want to work with that we currently don’t. It takes time. Fortunately, we’ve had a lot of forward-thinking brands that have worked with us for a long time and have helped us build case studies to present back to other brands. In 2023, you’ll see a lot of these big brands inside boxes or having their own box on the platform. There’s a level of politics, always: it depends on who you speak to, what the targets are for the quarter. When the stars align at the right time, things happen. We do know that, in the long run, this is the most sustainable, most forward-thinking, most creative way for brands to get rid of surplus products, so we’re solving a growing issue. There’s only so much time that brands will keep saying no! We’re hopeful that with time, we’ll just keep adding layers of value to a point where they just think, this makes sense – let’s do it.
CI I have no doubt that is true. This issue of TANK is based around education, which you guys talk about from the point of view of your customers. Your sales platform becomes a way of helping educate your customers on the brands of tomorrow through curation. How do you approach it? Is it still quite a traditional form of teaching, or are you thinking of new ways of positioning the brands you’re working with as future vintage?
JW We try and approach education in ways that don’t feel like we’re trying to force information on people. Sometimes we like people to receive products and ask, “Why did I receive this brand? What is it?” That way our customer experience team can reply and build a more engaged relationship with customers than traditional customer-service agents. We have the opportunity to tell them, “Actually, this product was worn by Travis Scott on this day, this place”, and then all of a sudden, they’re like, “Oh, it really is the next coolest brand. I’m into it.” They go from being confused, wondering why they received a product, to “I’ve got the hottest product.” We like to speak to people, give friendly advice and help them understand, versus trying to push a load of unnecessary information onto them. Connecting with customers one-on-one is the best way to build a community. It’s the best way to educate people. And it doesn’t even feel like you’re being educated.◉