A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

And now, the main event…

You sort of have to appreciate the chutzpah of Quince, the Instagram-ubiquitous, direct-to-consumer e-tailer best known for aggressively knocking off more-premium brands. Since its founding in 2018, the San Francisco–based company has been sued numerous times for alleged infringements related to its “dupe” business model. Last April, Tapestry sued Quince for copying Coach’s Rogue and Soho Flap handbags. Last November, Williams Sonoma sued Quince for its comparative advertising. (Both actions remain ongoing.) In 2023, Deckers sued Quince for copying Ugg’s Ultra Mini boots and Talisman slippers. (A California court ruled the designs were too generic to be legally protected under trademark law.)

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

Anyway, last month Quince turned the telescope around and went on the offensive—suing Deckers for… suing its competitors too much. It’s a novel and legally audacious case. In short, Quince has argued that Deckers has violated antitrust law by operating a “litigation assembly line” to shut down its rivals. According to the complaint, Deckers has filed more than 20 “trade dress lawsuits” against other companies since last October in order to increase its market share. “When Deckers’ litigation forces affordable competitors to pull products or alter designs, consumers lose access to affordable options and Deckers gets to keep charging premium prices without competitive pressure,” Joel Dion, Quince’s head of legal, said last week.

There’s a lot of money on the line for Quince, which has raised nearly half a billion dollars and now generates about $1.1 billion in annual revenue. In 2025, the company tripled its sales year over year, according to two insiders. But its customer-friendly strategy hasn’t made many industry friends. Quince’s business model relies on copying a vast array of products in multiple categories from popular brands—cashmere sweaters, wool coats, luggage, linen sheets, even vitamins and supplements—and selling them at ultralow prices. The company has also developed an astonishingly powerful customer acquisition funnel, using proprietary algorithms to scrape other websites for bestsellers and then dumping money into Instagram and Google ads, where the Quince knockoffs appear alongside their inspiration.

Quince’s longshot legal campaign could reset expectations for the industry. Currently, logos and patterns can be trademarked, but not silhouettes or nonfunctional design elements. Courts, obviously, have some discretion in determining what is or isn’t “generic.” But the Quince lawsuit is a warning shot that excessive litigation may itself be anticompetitive. “This is really an attack on brand protection as it exists writ large,” said Susan Scafidi, a professor of fashion law at Fordham University. “This is an attempt to legitimize dupes from a legal perspective.”

The suit comes at a crucial time for Quince as it takes more market share. Co-founder and C.E.O. Sid Gupta has long argued that his company is simply offering luxury-level quality at fair prices—a sort of anti-Shein. “If you go to Costco, and you have Kirkland vodka next to the Grey Goose, there’s a choice there that the consumer is going to make,” Gupta told Wirecutter last April. “There’s only one distinction between us and Kirkland: We try to make our product better than the comparable.”

But while the company has made its tactics the center of its strategy, it’s recently hinted at a readiness to shed its knockoff rep. After TikTok creator Tanner Leatherstein posted a video demonstrating how a Quince bag wasn’t made with the kind of top-grain leather it purported to be, Gupta hired him as a quality control contractor. I’m also told Quince staffers are given a monthly stipend to buy its products and give their honest feedback. Last month, the company hired Dakota Kate Isaacs, a former exec at The Estée Lauder Companies, as head of brand strategy to help Quince clarify its value to consumers outside of its prices.

Quince has begun making moves to validate its brand with key opinion elites, too. In 2025, the company launched a beauty marketplace that sells $315 moisturizer from Augustinus Bader. In January, the retailer started collaborating with celebrity stylist Erin Walsh, who works with Selena Gomez and Anne Hathaway, on an ersatz quiet-luxury capsule collection. The retailer also recently collaborated with A$AP Rocky on exclusive vinyls for Don’t Be Dumb. I’m told company executives have internally teased that similar partnerships are on the way.

It all reads like a strategy to increase brand equity—and finally reach profitability. Gupta, I’m told, recently informed staffers that the brand was nearly profitable in 2025, but fell below an unspecified goal. Quince, of course, operates on thin margins due to its low markups, and presumably spends heavily on Instagram and Google ads, given its ubiquity on those platforms. But people close to the business say Quince remains focused on quality and customer retention—the most profitable driver of sales—and plans to quintuple the size of its customer experience team.

But while it wants to rid itself of the copycat stigma, Quince’s antitrust complaint against Deckers underlines how copying other brands will always be foundational to its model—and its prodigious ambitions. I’m told that Quince’s workforce jumped last year from 800 to 1,200, and that it’s looking to triple that count before the end of the year. I’ve also heard the brand is planning to open more warehouses in the U.S.—it currently operates just one in New Jersey—along with plans to enter the U.K. this year. (The brand started shipping to Canada last fall.)

Undercutting competitors with similar designs at better prices will probably be the driving force for Quince’s next billion in sales. Now would be an inopportune time for the company to let anything—least of all its litigious adversaries—force it to radically alter a winning formula.

Alexis Page, the genius behind some of the best beauty brands in the world, launched a Substack. [Self Involved]

If these Posternak-directed clips are any indication, Antonin Tron’s debut at Balmain is going to be great. [Vogue]

Stella Bugbee and Jacob Gallagher both defended the New Balance loafer-sneakers and now look! [N.Y. Times]

Every apparel retailer is jealous of the TJX business. The owner of T.J. Maxx, T.K. Maxx, Marshalls, and so much more reported Q4 earnings today, with sales at stores that have been open for at least one year up 5 percent, beating projections. The company’s note about being positioned to “flow fresh assortments to stores and online this spring” raises an interesting question: Is the off-price giant finally getting serious about e-commerce? [TJX]

Until tomorrow,
Lauren

P.S.: We use affiliate links because we are a business. We may make a couple bucks off them.

Need help? Review our FAQ page or contact us for assistance. For brand partnerships, email ads@puck.news.

You received this email because you signed up to receive emails from Puck, or as part of your Puck account associated with {{customer.email}}. To stop receiving this newsletter and/or manage all your email preferences, click here.

Puck is published by Heat Media LLC. 107 Greenwich St., New York, NY 10006