Renting ties by mail: TieSociety.com, TieTry.com, FreshNeck.com
Many thanks to Mike, Charles, and Lisa for all sending in the style tips.
Indeed. Netflicks… for ties. For fan’s of the FX show The League, this sounds awfully familiar. On an episode that seems to have aired over a year ago, one of the characters (Taco) comes up with this idea to charge people a monthly membership fee to borrow ties, wear them, then ship them back. But that was fiction. These three companies, including the recently much buzzed about FreshNeck, are reality:
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TieSociety.com: From $10.95 / Month
This site claims they were not only the first to launch, they did so well before the episode of The League. Memberships start at $10.95 a month. That $10.95 gets you one item from their selection (ties, pocket squares, cufflinks, tie bars) for you to use and exchange whenever you want. $19.95 gets you three items, $29.95 five items, and so on. Looks like you can take 50% off your first month with the code WINTER.
TieTry.com: From $11.99/ Month
These are the guys who first appeared on the reality show SharkTank. They don’t offer other accessories. Just ties. Brands from J. Crew to Hermes. 573 ties as of post time.
FreshNeck.com: From $15.00/ month
FreshNeck was just featured on LifeHacker, and they’re going after this a little differently. There are three levels of membership, but you don’t get any more ties or accessories for the money. You get access to better brands for that extra cash, plus a few other benefits (it’s a bit complicated… you can see how it breaks down here at their site). The base $15 membership gets you three items at a time from brands like Calvin Klein, Penguin, The Tie Bar, DKNY, etc… $35 gets you access to brands like Burberry, Brooks Brothers, and Ralph Lauren. $55 and you’re in the Zegna territory. They also appear to have the slickest looking website.
Update: Founder and CEO of Freshneck David Goldgerg points out that “it’s not 3 items a month, but rather 3 items at a time, exchanging as often as the USPS will allow. Second, FreshNeck lists outright the prices to purchase an item (or if it is destroyed).”
Final Points: Read their FAQs here, here, and here.
- Yes, they clean the ties. All of these places say they clean the ties thoroughly, which is expected. You never know when you’ll get the tie Albert the assistant coroner in Terre Haute wore on toe-tag day.
- No, you can’t just cancel your membership and keep a tie. Well, you can, but all of these sites will charge your card some mystery amount if you cancel and fail to return the ties within a set time period (usually 5 – 7 days). TieTry says they’ll charge your card for the same amount as if you had destroyed the tie. But how much precisely? That’s unknown. Just “the retail value of the tie”. TieSociety says a cancellation & failure to return and “your payment Method will be billed accordingly.” Eesh.
- Time Limits don’t exist. Of course they want you to keep the ties for as long as possible. That means they get to keep charging you for your monthly membership without doing exchanges. Sounds like a good deal for them.
- Fees to clean major stains do exist. Cost of regular cleanings is included in your membership. If it’s something big that they need to clean but hasn’t completely ruined the tie, they’ll charge you for the cleaning. Tie Society is 10% of the retail value. Tie Try is $12. Freshneck is $8.
So would you? It seems like these things have caught fire as of late. Or does the idea of renting ties seem… odd? Leave it all below, under the back and forth clip of The League w/ TieTry on Shark Tank via AodzDev: