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Trunk Club vs Stitch Fix
It’s almost 2022; the future is now. Fashion has never been more accessible, with so many brands offering clothing online and bringing chic bundles right to your doorstep.
While we’re still waiting on a veritable VR shopping experience, we must put our faith in the online stylists and fashion experts at either Trunk Club or Stitch Fix to scratch our latest vogue-ish itch. But who should you choose to go with?
About Trunk Club
Trunk Club is a styling service created by Nordstrom that links you with a company stylist to fill your wardrobe with specifically curated clothing items.
Brian Spaly premiered the service back in 2009. It was the first of its kind to offer a model that allowed customers to try clothing items at their own homes before making up their minds.
Our Trunk Club vs Stitch Fix review team has a lot of respect for that innovation because we’re all too familiar with the feeling of buying clothes online, only to discover that they fit quite differently than their advertisements portrayed.
As you can probably infer, every item Trunk Club includes in their trunks come from Nordstrom. That means you’ll be able to access a wide selection of high-end fashion brands. You won’t be limited to only wearing discount Abercrombie and Fitch jeans.
Trunk Club’s headquarters is currently located in Chicago. Their services are also available in-person at certain Nordstrom locations.
About Stitch Fix
Stitch Fix offers a similar service but without singular corporate backing.
Katrina Lake founded the company back in 2011 when she found a way to combine her passion for clothing, the need for proper style guidance, and the ubiquitous accessibility of algorithms (try and say that three times fast).
With that in mind, she made Stitch Fix to save customers time, money, and the hassle of buying new clothes. The brand matches shoppers with stylists located across the United States who help them define their styles based on their daily routines, preferences, and budgets.
Each Stitch Fix box is shipped directly to the customer’s front doors after a fashion consultant works with them to cultivate their own singular flair.
Stitch Fix is proactive socially too. They launched their plus-sized women’s line in 2017 and are always developing new ways to increase their company’s inclusivity. They also actively support black-owned fashion lines and sustainably-produced clothing brands.
Our Trunk Club vs Stitch Fix review will toss both brands into the ring and watch them duke out their similarities and differences so you, our esteemed reader, can see which brand is the right one for you.
After all, you’re trusting these companies to make you look good, so you can’t be choosing their services willy-nilly.
What to Consider
In this section of our review, we’ll examine some of the larger overlaps and deviations between the two companies.
Both Trunk Club and Stitch Fix offer products for men and women, yet both of them are clearly geared more towards women.
While they both deliver packages for men there are plenty more options for women depending on their body type and size.
Trunk Club grants users a fair bit of freedom through their Style Swipes and Your Picks features. The former gives you the chance to swipe yes or no on any item your stylist selected for you.
Don’t feel bad about saying no: the more information they can gather about you, the better they can choose garments you’re sure to love!
Additionally, you can add up to three items you’ve personally selected with the Your Picks program. They’ll be included in your trunk and treated as regular items.
Stitch Fix’s customization refers to what you fill out in their styling quiz. However, if you want more control over the process, you can circumvent the styling process and fill your own Stitch Fix bundle with your personally selected picks through their Stitch Fix Freestyle program.
In regards to shipping frequencies, Trunk Club only sends you trunks when you request them.
Stitch Fix offers a similar service in addition to a variety of automatic shipping schedules. These schedules can be as follows:
- Every 2 weeks
- Monthly
- Bimonthly
- Once every season
The two services cover a wide range of sizes and body shapes. They have products for men, women, children, plus-sized women and men, and pregnant women.
All Trunk Club purchases pull from the brands Nordstrom carries. You can read a full list of these brands on the Nordstrom website.
Conversely, Stitch Fix pulls from over 1,000 brands of different styles including athletic wear, streetwear, outerwear, casual dress, and more.
While our Trunk Club vs Stitch Fix review writers believe that you could technically sign up for either program from anywhere in the world, it’d be a bit of waste seeing as how neither of them ships internationally.
In terms of prices, Trunk Club and Stitch Fix range from very affordable to flaunting paycheck flaunting. The more affordable products begin at around $25 for both services. Trunk Club’s maximum is closer to $300 while some of the products Stitch Fix could send your way may cost as much as $500.
Our team found that the two brands made impressive strides towards sustainability and inclusivity.
Both of them highlight black-owned businesses as well as pushing styles geared towards every possible human body shape and size.
Trunk Club’s social activism is geared towards racial justice and equal opportunity. They promote BLM-associated businesses, anti-Asian hate foundations, and strive towards ensuring payment parity for their employees.
Stitch Fix work towards equal business representation as well in addition to making informed choices about the brands they feature in their packages. They try to maximize sustainable environmental practices and collaborate with as many environmentally-conscious companies as possible.
Our next section in this Trunk Club vs Stitch Fix review will fill you in on how the styling process works at each company.
Trunk Club vs Stitch Fix: How Do They Work?
Trunk Club’s system is fairly easy to wrap your head around. It’s the modern-day equivalent of finding buried pirate treasure, except instead of “finding” it, Trunk Club sends it straight to your door.
After answering their questionnaire, Trunk Club will connect you with one of their expert stylists. You’ll inform them what you want your trunk to include, and once the stylist has put together your kit, you’ll have two days to virtually preview it. This preview costs $25 and doesn’t cover the cost of the items in the trunk.
Soon, your trunk will reach your doorstep and you’ll be able to try on all the items. You only need to keep what you want. If you received an item you’re not fond of or that doesn’t fit you well you can return it to Trunk Club for free.
That sounds great, but let’s see how the second contestant in our Trunk Club vs Stitch Fix review fares.
Stitch Fix’s process is rather similar to Trunk Club’s. You’ll fill out a quiz that your stylist will refer to in order to select which items they think best fit your specifications. After paying a $20 stylist’s fee you can try on any of the garments they selected for you before you purchase them.
Stitch Fix will send a package right to you, where you’ll be free to decide what to keep and what to return. There aren’t any return fees, you’re not bound by any subscriptions, and you only need to pay for what you love.
Our Trunk Club vs Stitch Fix review team found both procedures eerily similar. The only major difference is the $5 cost differential between styling fees.
Trunk Club vs Stitch Fix: What You Get in the Subscription Box
Seeing as how both Trunk Club and Stitch Fix tailor their services to your preferences, what you receive from them will largely depend on what answers you provide on your style quiz.
You can expect to receive an assortment of tops, bottoms, shoes, jackets, and accessories from both services. The difference comes in how many pieces you’ll receive at one time.
Stitch Fix sends out a modest five-item box while each Trunk Club trunk can contain up to a dozen items. You wouldn’t be saving more with either service as they both charge per piece rather than per shipment, but Trunk Club may be more sustainable since you’d get more options per shipment.
Trunk Club vs Stitch Fix: Style Quizzes
Both brands in this Trunk Club vs Stitch Fix review have a quiz that you won’t need to wrinkle your braind up to ace.
Each features their own take on the style quiz, in which you answer questions about your personal style, your shopping habits, and what you wish to get out of the service.
Both Trunk Club and Stitch Fix use your answers to match with you a stylist.
Stitch Fix asks some rather interesting questions, like how much time you put into getting dressed, whether you pay attention to modern trends, and if you even enjoy shopping in the first place.
In that sense, Stitch Fix’s quiz goes beyond basic questions like “do you prefer polka dots or stripes?” Their in-depth questions impressed our staff, to say the least.
Trunk Club’s quiz uses your answers to connect you with a stylist via their chat function. Being able to speak directly with your stylist allows you to explain what you’re looking for with more clarity.
Their open communication channel can let you tell your stylist exactly what you’re looking for, or ask questions if you can’t decide for yourself.
There’s something to love about both style quizzes. They both offer different aspects of personalization and cover different grounds. We love the interesting questions Stitch Fix asks you, but we respect Trunk Club directly connecting you with your very own stylist.
Trunk Club vs Stitch Fix: Variety
Since Trunk Club is owned by Nordstrom, each Trunk Club trunk has a chance to be filled with luxury brands like Gucci, Prada, and Pleats Please Issey Miyake, as well as more conventional brands like Reebok, The North Face, and tentree.
On the other hand, Stitch Fix boxes could be filled with products from brands like Nike, Adidas, Toms, Vans, Polo, Columbia, and Sperry. These brands cover a wide swath of styles so it’s likely you’ll find at least something that sparks your interests.
With either Trunk Club or Stitch Fix you’ll gain access to plenty of brands of differing price points and styles. It’s more likely that another ice age will happen than it is that you’ll feel bored with what either company can offer you.
Trunk Club vs Stitch Fix: Price & Value
Trunk Club and Stitch Fix can deliver a similar price range of products to your door. Most items from either company will fall between the $25 to $300 range unless you’re a big spender and want to push that upper limit higher.
It seems that you won’t be saving any money by buying through either company rather than purchasing the products outright, but there is a charm in the convenience offered by both brands.
Trunk Club vs Stitch Fix: What Do Customers Think?
Trunk Club was lauded by customers for their free return policy, how seamless the process of selecting and returning items was, and the tasteful clothing the brand provided.
If there were any complaints customers had about Trunk Club, it was about the apparent dichotomy between their tastes and their stylists’ recommendations. Some customers felt that the products in their trunks didn’t suit their styles at all. Bummer.
On a more positive note, these are the aggregate scores Trunk Club customers gave the company:
- 4.3/5 stars from 3 customer reviews on Sitejabber
- 3.9/5 stars from over 1,000 customer reviews on Facebook
- 3.5/5 stars from over 60 customer reviews on My Subscription Addiction
Stitch Fix had their own share of illuminating customer reviews. There were some commonalities we found during our search for informative buyer insight. We’ve listed what customers loved most about the service:
- The brand made shopping easy and fun
- The styling process was incredibly convenient
- The stylists selected great garments for their customers
- Stitch Fix experts understood their clients’ styles and desires
A difficult returning process and less-than-stellar product selection were among the negative complaints we found regarding Stitch Fix.
To end on a relatively positive note, here are some aggregate ratings for Stitch Fix from a variety of internet sources:
- 3.75/5 stars from over 115 customer ratings on Consumer Affairs
- 3/5 stars from over 15,000 customer ratings on Facebook
- 2.5/5 stars from over 115 customer ratings on Site Jabber
Trunk Club vs Stitch Fix: Promotions & Discounts
As we sleuthed about both Trunk Club’s and Stitch Fix’s websites for the juiciest deals, we found one that may catch your eye, or even sway your opinion towards one brand.
Our Trunk Club vs Stitch Fix review writers discovered that Trunk Club has a price matching promotion where they’ll match the cost of any men’s or women’s item available through Nordstrom in 14 days or less.
That means if you purchase an item through them that then drops in price, you can contact Trunk Club and they will reimburse you the difference.
Sadly, we weren’t able to find any such deals for Stitch Fix. Seems like they’re sticks in the mud when it comes to savings.
Thus, there’s not much of a competition here. Neither brand excels when it comes to discounts or savings, but at least Trunk Club offers something for its customers. We can’t say the same thing for Stitch Fix sadly. Oh well!
Trunk Club vs Stitch Fix: Shipping & Returns
We’ll begin this penultimate section of our Trunk Club vs Stitch Fix review by covering an oft-ignored aspect of online shopping – a company’s shipping and return policies.
There are few things worse in this world than making it all the way to product check out only to see that the estimated shipping time is over 4 weeks.
Stitch Fix offers a gratuitous 30-day return policy wherein you can send back any already purchased company product that doesn’t blow your socks off.
As part of their Stylists program, you’ll have 3 days to sort through every clothing item Stitch sends you. You only need to actually pay for the goods you want to keep; the rest you can send right back to the company without needing to spend a dime!
In both cases, you should expect any outstanding funds to pop up in your bank in 14 business days.
You can request when you want your Stitch items to arrive at your door, although keep in mind that Stitch Fix only currently delivers to the United States and the United Kingdom.
That sounds fine and dandy, but what does Trunk Club offer as a response?
Our Trunk Club vs Stitch Fix review writers found that the former company offers free shipping and returns on all items to anywhere in the United States (including Alaska and Hawaii).
If you are so driven to return your Trunk Club order, you can initiate the process through three different methods:
- Drop the trunk off at a FedEx location
- Bring your Trunk Club order and receipt to a nearby Nordstrom where the store will give you an equal amount of store credit
- Call FedEx to arrange a time for them to pick up your trunk
You’ll have up to 5 business days after delivery to request a return from the company.
So while both brands feature fair and balanced return policies, it’s a shame that they both only ship to the United States, but Stitch Fix has a slight upper hand as they also deliver to the United Kingdom.
Who Will You Shop With?
While Trunk Club and Stitch Fix are as similar as a pair of twins, there are some birthmarks each one has that distinguish them from the other.
Stitch Fix’s brands are more street-level and accessible. In addition, their styling fee is slightly (and we mean very slightly) more affordable.
On the other hand, Trunk Club grants you access to more luxury brands and you’ll receive more items per shipment.
So, we turn the question over to you: with everything you’ve learned from our review, which brand will you shop with?
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