“The first thing I see sticking out is a really interesting color,” Tasha Farsaci says skeptically. The 27-year-old pulls a pair of neon yellow sweatpants out of a white bag plastered with a large question mark. Farsaci’s surprise towards her order is warranted—she spent $100 on a bag of activewear and has no idea what’s inside.
Farsaci purchased Set Active’s Set Surprise—a deal in which buyers get discounted apparel with two catches: no returns and, aside from picking a size, no choice in what they’re getting. The brand offers three tiers of packages, the highest being $100 for eight items—a deal considering one pair of the brand’s sweatpants costs $102.
Set Active is just one of a handful of trendy retailers using mystery boxes to generate hype, get rid of excess inventory, and entice new customers. Madhappy, the Los Angeles-based streetwear brand beloved by celebrities and sorority girls alike, offers an “Optimist Box”—a mystery package of both basic sweats and past limited-edition collaborations. (Earlier this year, even Le Creuset hopped on the trend, selling boxes of its beloved cookware—the contents of which were a surprise until opening—for just $50.) Of course, purchasing one of these boxes comes with the risk of being disappointed with your merch, but it’s a gamble many are willing to take.
“The first time we did it, it sold out,” says Lindsay Carter, the founder and CEO of Set Active. “The second time we did it, we doubled the inventory and it sold out again. The third time around, the brand tripled the inventory. The result? “It sold out again.”
Carter and her team began working on Set Surprise three years ago. The company, like Madhappy, operates with limited-edition drops, where certain colors and designs are available for a short period of time. But returns, coupled with the factory sometimes producing excess product, left the brand with extra pieces Carter didn’t want to market outside of the limited window. Set Surprise was a way to move those pieces out of warehouses and to customers.
Now, the Set team begins planning Set Surprise nine months out, sprinkling in some new, full-priced pieces along with items from previous collections. The boxes are thoroughly promoted on the brand’s Instagram and TikTok accounts, and quick-fingered customers can attempt to buy a Set Surprise on the company’s website—though recent drops have sold out in minutes. Carter notes that Set Surprise has been helpful in introducing returning customers to new fabrics and new customers to Set Active altogether. 58 percent of those who snapped up the last drop had shopped the brand before; the other 42 percent were buying Set Active for the first time.
Madhappy operates in a similar way, sending out Optimist Box promos over email. Their boxes, which have been priced at up to $600 for $1,500 of product, tend to attract existing customers over newbies.
Annie and Emily Lustbader, 25-year-old sisters based in Chicago, have purchased the Madhappy Optimist Box twice. They were already big fans of the brand but used the mystery box as a way to score older, limited-edition items. “With a surprise box, you're getting the archive items, and there's an opportunity to get something that we had our eye on that we weren't able to get when the drop happened,” Emily says.
Masha Saveliea, 27, has ordered the Madhappy box twice and plans to do so again. She loves the surprise of it: “It’s almost like getting a Christmas present,” she says. Plus, given the demand for certain styles, not liking a piece she ends up with isn’t necessarily a bad thing. “I was able to resell [a sweatshirt] for $400 which basically was more than the value of the box,” she says.
Le Creuset’s process works a bit differently. The company only sells mystery boxes at their Factory to Table sale events, which pop up a few times a year in different cities. You have to spring for a VIP ticket to the sale ($25) to score a $50 box, but the items can be worth over $350.
Cierra Williams, 28, saw TikTok videos about the mystery boxes and went to the Philadelphia sale to get one. She had never purchased Le Creuset cookware before (it was out of her price range) but after taking her box home she now considers herself a convert. “It’s my entire personality now.” she says. “I absolutely would buy it outright [for] full price, because it’s definitely worth it.”
A few mystery box unboxings have gone viral on TikTok, garnering hundreds of thousands of views. Some are scrolling to compare others’ boxes to their own. But some people just like the suspense; viewers don’t know what’s inside the boxes, but, unlike most unboxings, neither does the person opening it.
“We live in a time where we're all looking for that hit of serotonin, and I feel like you just get a little bit of extra serotonin when it's a surprise box,” says 23-year-old Brittany Polevikov, who’s purchased both Madhappy and Set Active mystery bags. “If you don't know what you're getting, you can get really excited about it.”