10 PR Gifts We Loved So Much We Bought Them Ourselves

Our OG Substack readers know that Selleb was once a resale marketplace for celebrity-owned clothes (get it?), though "celebrity" or "sellebrity" was admittedly a loose term in our world, encompassing anyone with a public-facing presence and a bit of influence. Our thesis was that the closets with the biggest followings behind them would clear fastest and, since most items ran auction-style, at the highest premiums. Instead, what do you know: the biggest names on the platform sold their items for chips, if at all. Why, you ask?

Consignments from that subset of “high-flying” influencers arrived like clockwork and had nearly identical profiles each and every time: the same stable of PR brands and SKUs with sometimes 2-3 sizes of each, and all NWT. Hmmm…But consumers are savvy. They know what's up. They weren't interested in buying the freebies influencers themselves had passed over. We're talking pristine, never-worn I Am Gia sets with the tags still on, unless, ofc, the markdown was too good to ignore. Meanwhile, the nano and micro influencer girls were clearing 300% premiums on used vintage shorts and unbranded smock dresses bc those pieces actually had a life before (i.e., there were TikTok/IG/Youtube vids of them wearing the pieces, digital footprints, provenance, etc.). TLDR: Consumers were onto influencers shouting fake love on free stuff from the rooftops. Show us the receipts!

PR seeding was always a thing, no doubt, but in recent years it’s been institutionalized into a well-oiled machine. This is in large part thanks to ShopMy, which handles the logistics for brands who want to partake in creator gifting. Word on the street is that ShopMy has grown fastest among the exact brands that would otherwise never swallow that pill, specifically for their Lookbooks feature, the auto-gifting tool 90% of them use, which has already shipped close to $40 million of free product. (The company is now worth $1.5 billion.)

But the thing with gifts (we now get them too!) 1) Who doesn’t love them. 2) Free things hit different. 3) Every gift also encodes a debt, and in this economy that debt gets settled in enthusiasm. That’s why in Selleb World, giving an all-star review without putting down your dollars doesn’t count. The ultimate vote of confidence is, you guessed it, putting your 👏 money where your mouth is 👏. Show us your receipts ;) If you shelled out your hard-earned dollars to buy a product, now we are interested in what you have to say. In this spirit…10 items we have personally been gifted but loved so much that we continue to buy them with our $$…(and as always, on our Selleb profiles @c and @c2)

1. Cocolab Cocofloss: Fully converted. Hate how good this is as it is quite expensive (found a random promo code for 20% off here…) but wow best floss ever. It’s kind of like a HydraFacial but for your teeth (aka satisfying to see all the gunk come out lol). So good that we are putting their toothpaste to the test too (apparently good for sensitive teeth and if yk us, we can’t turn away a fun flavor). 500+ woven fibers coated in coconut oil. Thick, but very gentle. Sister-founded too (and one is a dentist)!!! Bonus points as ever ;)

   

2. Good American jeans: Will preface but saying that we did not expect to love these. But leave it to Khloe K + Emma Grede to corner the jeans market! Flattering fit, soft as can be, what more can you ask for. After all, those two circles rarely overlap on a Venn diagram. Chloe wears these a few times a week.