I'm sure the BirchBox team are lovely people and good on them for building a successful business, but they did not invent the idea of subscribing for a box of g

I'm sure the BirchBox team are lovely people and good on them for building a successful business, but they did not invent the idea of subscribing for a box of goodies. BirchBox launched in May 2010 (source: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-11-08/strategy/30372330_1_customer-tech-challenges-job-descriptions http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-11-08/strategy/3037... in which it's already described as a "NetFlix [clone] for beauty", NetFlix having started in 1999). startupschwag.com started operating in mid-2007, sending startup t-shirts by subscription. http://testtube.newbeauty.com/ http://testtube.newbeauty.com/ appears to have been running since early 2007 in the exact same market that BirchBox is in. Wine of the Month Club (.com) pre-dates the Internet, sending wine by subscription since 1972. Why would you consider applying an existing business model to a new market to be cloning or copying; especially when there's no market overlap? Applying a successful model from one industry to enhance another seems to be the very definition of innovation.