How FabFitFun’s Katie Kitchens Is Helping Brands Push Perspective From Discovery to Loyalty
Member-based subscription company FabFitFun has come a long way since it first hit the scene in 2010. Created by brothers Michael and Daniel Broukhim alongside Katie Echevarria Kitchens, the once monthly membership box subscription is giving its members a wide range of ways to interact from launching new categories to offering refill options on favorite products discovered through its boxes.
Today FabFitFun’s members are 99.5 percent women with ages ranging from 13 to 85 years old — with a strong Millennial audience, which helps inform product curation and customization.
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First and foremost, Kitchens told WWD, that there is a focus on finding products that consumers will enjoy and, in many cases, (like beauty) continue to buy. Previously an editor in the lifestyle and shopping space, Kitchens understands what it takes to identify trends and works with a merch strategy team to put together a combination of brands that they believe will trend, products that are new and exciting and hit on colors that are forecasted to be important for the season.
“All of that really helps to guide our merch partnership team to go out and find the most exciting products, season over season,” Kitchens said. The fall 2024 subscription box trends included skin care and beauty items that utilized pumpkin, reduced summer skin redness, addressed body skin care and antiaging hair care, and trending items like tinted lip balms. The fashion and accessories category hit on platform shoes, new bag shapes, big hoop earrings and other non-tarnishing jewelry.
Notably, finding products and brands that use key ingredients has been a driving force for the FabFitFun team. Kitchens called out interest in gut microbiome as being particularly interesting for consumers with gut microbiome-friendly skin care continuing to trend upward for the company. “It’s something that we featured on the platform for a while. Brands that [hit these trends] continue to perform exceptionally well as members are earning more and more about this type of skin care category lens.”
Surprisingly, fragrance also continues to trend upward on the platform. “It’s an interesting category for us, specifically, because we are a digital site. When you think about scent and how that translates, it doesn’t necessarily seem like the first place where you’re going to buy your fragrance, but we’ve just seen that change over the past few years as people are just really excited about the category and just want to try more.”
At the same time, while historically FabFitFun has seen consumers spend “most of their budget on facial skin care” now luxury price points have been extended, or more accepted, when it comes to body care. “Specifically luxury body care is becoming more and more interesting and important to members with brands like Nécessaire.”
Another product expansion for FabFitFun was the launch of PupBox by FabFitFun, which focuses on the pet category, recognizing the growing audience that overlapped with the company’s existing members. The PupBox launched in August 2024 as a seasonal subscription that includes eight to 10 products ranging from treats to toys in every box.
Importantly, for the pet category, Kitchens said that the products do lean “a bit more luxury. It’s a bit more substantial. We wanted to make something that felt really special for our pets.”
As consumers have evolved alongside FabFitFun, the company has also started translating what its subscribers love about the program from discovery to brand loyalty. With the new Refills option members can purchase an item that they discovered and loved in their FabFitFun seasonal box over and over again on its own.
“Thinking of the antithesis of FabFitFun, which is all about surprise, delight and discovery, it was trying new things,” Kitchens said. “But what we’ve found [from our] amazing consumer insights team [is that] we’re constantly getting feedback from members who would try a moisturizer in her seasonal box and now she didn’t want to try a new moisturizer season after season, she just wanted to continue to get that product. [The feedback] helped guide our annual strategy.”
The Refills option, she said, is “basically a white labeling subscription for very top-tier brands. And we sell them at the best price on the market.” Not every product is included in Refills, rather the program is “just for the best of the best products and brands.” Top-performing brands are Living Proof, Elemis, Grown Alchemist, Glow Recipe and Truly Clear. Beauty is the largest category in Refills with the obvious need for replenishing a product.
“I would say what often guides that performance is brands that members already know and love because they have tried them through the platform, either in a box or in our weekly sales,” Kitchens said. Consumers come back, she said, finding that “it would be really silly to go somewhere else and buy it at that price when I can guarantee that I’m going to get it at the best price available [with FabFitFun].”
While the Refills option also ships with a member’s box timed to a cadence that consumers find they will need a refill of the product, the Refills offering has also opened up a new way for customers to be a member. Members no longer need to purchase a seasonal box to subscribe and can instead organize their box to include just their favorite products. The new membership program invites consumers who have loved FabFitFun’s discovery process in the past to continue to be a part of the fun in a new way. The program also allows members to order year-round.
“I think for brands it’s about the loyalty,” Kitchens said. “We are very much a partnership-driven brand. We don’t really exist without our partners. We’ve always said we don’t want to be one and done, we want to have a long relationship with these brands that we love and we know make our members really excited and happy. This is another way where we can just kind of extend what that partnership runway looks like, and it’s a built-in revenue stream for the brands because it is a subscription they’re staying on.”
As a partnership-focused platform, FabFitFun has also worked with brands to launch a product exclusively. Kitchens explained that at times this has been a way for brands to unlock a new category. For example, Alice and Olivia launched its accessory link on FabFitFun with a duffel bag. The brand received consumer insights to understand how the bag landed with members.
Looking ahead, Kitchens told WWD that she is looking forward to seeing more from the FabFitFun Viral Edit box, which launched last year to target younger audiences with more flexibility to highlight more trend-focused beauty and fashion products. “It’s been really fun to be able to push the envelope a little bit more, both from a product and brand perspective, but just also colors, types of products and things that just make sense to just a slightly younger female consumer.”
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