Why DTC brand Bespoke Post wants to shift to a retail model

Bespoke Post, a DTC subscription service that sells specialized gift boxes from small brands, is evolving its business strategy leaning more into retail these days.

While memberships are still part of its business, they’re no longer the main focus. Early on, Bespoke Post’s main goal was to increase signups—but today, it’s about getting high-quality products in front of customers.

“That business has done really well, but we started seeing more opportunity and people just coming to us to buy on a one-off basis,” Co-Founder Rishi Prabhu told Retail Brew.

Bespoke Post joins a host of larger DTC brands like Glossier, Goop, and Allbirds that have adopted a similar approach to drive growth beyond a slowing DTC channel. The big challenge facing DTC brands today is the rising cost of customer acquisition, Retail Brew previously reported.

“Now our goal is to get really exciting products in front of our customers, a lot of which are from small brands,” Prabhu said. “We have a lot of small brands that we sell, that you might not have heard of otherwise, that you can discover and you’ll be really excited about.”

Shelf improvement: The site now carries products like $300 decanters designed by Mexican artist Jan Barboglio and $90 canopy umbrellas by Blunt, alongside larger brands like Timex that help ground the selection with more established names.

“We also have our own products, like our own private label brands,” Prabhu said. “So we mix those three kinds of concepts for the customer, but the underarching theme is around discovery.”

Bespoke Post, launched back in 2011, ships products from lesser known brands like Blunt to over 300,000 subscribers. Since launching, the company has evolved alongside its customer base. “Over the past 10 years, our customer has gotten a little bit older; he’s gotten a little more affluent,” Prabhu said. “And so what we’re trying to do is balance like a high-medium [price range].”

“It’s important to us to also have a lower price point that’s still beautiful, that still stands for something that’s still interesting and then still excites our customer,” he added. “So, we want to have both of those price points to hit our customer who’s at different moments in their life.”

Zoom out: As more DTC brands explore the impact of AI on personalization, product discovery, and merchandising, Bespoke Post is taking a more measured approach. Prabhu said the Bespoke Post team treats AI results not as unquestioned sources of truth, but as collaborators that get better when guided by human expertise and judgment.

When it comes to DTC pivots, Sucharita Kodali, senior analyst at Forrester, said the big issue is rising customer acquisition costs, as steep digital marketing spend and frequent churn keep brands in a constant reacquisition doom loop.

“On the surface, acquiring new products is actually more expensive if you do it as traditional retailers do,” Kodali said. “You buy the inventory and you are stuck with it if it doesn’t sell. But, [DTC brands like Bespoke Post] may be carving out some different relationships and doing things in a more cost-effective way.”