It’s Monday, I’m Nithya Sudhir. I collect words, chase patterns, and write about whatever makes me curious.
In the 1890s, Wanamaker's, a Philadelphia department store, sold calico, a plain cotton cloth, for a penny a yard.
Calico is a plain cotton cloth, named after Calicut, now Kozhikode, in Kerala, India (a place I call home), and back then was priced at 70 cents to a dollar.
When word of the offer spread, shoppers surged into the store at opening.
The crowd was supposedly so large that it shattered a pane of glass in one of the doors.
There was glass everywhere.
And that is, apparently, where we get the term doorbuster, a deeply discounted, limited offer designed to get shoppers through the door.
And today we’re asking how can online brands, that don’t have a physical door, offer an irresistible doorbuster?
🤝 This edition is kindly brought to you by Tatari
Customer acquisition is shifting fast. As audiences discover brands through creators, communities, and AI, marketers need new ways to grow.
Forward by Tatari is where we explore what comes next.
Join us October 29 in NYC for a keynote and Q&A with Reddit CEO Steve Huffman. Scott Galloway will explore where attention and ad dollars are headed, while growth marketer Cody Plofker shares lessons from scaling Jones Road Beauty. Leaders from Liquid I.V., MANSCAPED, Thorne, and Avocado Green Brands will share how they’re building brands, acquiring customers, and using TV to drive growth beyond the digital playbook.
Attendance is free, but space is limited. Secure your spot today.
Three origin stories
Here’s the tea. Nobody seems to agree on the origin story.
Wikipedia credits J.C. Penney, with a Tuscaloosa News ad in January 1949, though Penney's used the word decades earlier.
Meanwhile, the Oxford English Dictionary finds it earlier still, in a Kansas newspaper from 1893.
We also know that Writer Ernie Smith searched old papers and found a 1917 ad in Cedar Rapids, and also reported a wave of uses across Iowa in the 1920s.
Whichever version you pick, they all point to the same thing: getting people in the door.
💡 For a brand, a doorbuster could be:
One bestselling product discounted much more heavily than everything else
A popular hero product available for $1 to the first 100 shoppers
A starter kit priced far below the combined value of its products
A buy-one-get-one offer on a frequently replenished product
A limited number of products sold at cost—or even at a small loss
A steep, two-hour flash discount on one highly desirable SKU
An unusually low entry price for a trial size or introductory product
The cheapest product has the biggest job
A Journal of Marketing study examined shoppers who visited stores because of a particular promotion.
Among them, three in four purchased regularly priced merchandise.
On average, they also spent more on the full-priced products than they did on the promoted ones.
In fact, they spent $18.48 on full-price goods for every $11.30 they spent on the discounted item.
Despite entering the store for a bargain, they were no less profitable than shoppers who had arrived for other reasons.
Why “Should I buy?” becomes “What else?”
Why would someone who entered to save money end up spending even more on full-priced products?
It’s because a doorbuster changes more than the price of one product.
It changes the mental context in which every product after it is judged.
1. The shopper feels like they have already won
Economist Richard Thaler called this transaction utility.
When shoppers buy something, they receive two kinds of value:
The usefulness or enjoyment of the product itself
The satisfaction of paying less than they expected
That feeling depends on the reference price.
The larger and more believable the gap between what the shopper expected to pay and what they actually paid, the more rewarding the transaction feels.
The doorbuster makes spending money feel like gaining value.
2. The shopper stops deciding whether to buy
Before the first product enters the cart, the shopper is still deliberating:
Do I need anything? Is this the right store? Should I wait?
Once they decide to buy, those questions begin to change:
What goes with this? Should I stock up? What else do I need before checking out?
This is the shopping momentum effect.
It is where the initial purchase can shift shoppers from a deliberative mindset, focused on whether to act, into an implementation mindset, focused on how to complete the shopping goal.
That means the first “Add to Cart” removes the mental hurdle that every subsequent product would otherwise have to cross.
3. The savings become permission to spend
This feeling: “I saved €40, so adding this €18 accessory is still reasonable.”
Of course, here, the shopper has not earned €40, they have spent €20.
But the discount gets mentally recorded as money saved, creating room for another purchase.
There may also be an element of moral licensing. Research by Uzma Khan and Ravi Dhar found that making a virtuous choice can give people permission to indulge afterwards.
The brain thinks that since they were smart with the first purchase, they can afford to be less strict with the next one.
What is most likely to pull one more product into your cart?
How the site turns one deal into a full cart
The doorbuster can earn the first “yes”, but the rest of the site must be designed to make the process easy.
Here is where DTC sale architecture takes over.
How Huron turns one deal into a routine
Men’s personal-care brand Huron shows what this journey can look like.
Its Sample Kit offer functions like a digital doorbuster.
With it, shoppers get two body washes, shampoo, conditioner, fragrance samples and a tote for $45 instead of the stated $109 value, plus free shipping and $20 off a future full-sized product.
From there, the brand gives that momentum somewhere to go.
It turns products into routines. Huron presents shampoo, conditioner, body wash and deodorant as a four-step system. Buying one product introduces the possibility that the routine is not yet complete.
It puts complementary products in one place. Its bundle builder lets shoppers move between face, body, hair and fragrance products, adding each one without leaving the page to search.
It creates a ladder of achievable goals. Shoppers unlock a free soap at $50, free shipping at $75 and free cologne at $125. Instead of one distant reward, the cart keeps presenting a closer next target.
It makes each additional product do two jobs. A $20 deodorant is not only a deodorant. It could also unlock free shipping or move the shopper closer to a free cologne.
It packages the finished decision. The Fave Four Bundle combines body wash, deodorant, shampoo and conditioner at a lower price than buying them separately. The shopper no longer needs to evaluate four independent products.
It makes additions require very little thought. Products inside the bundle builder have simple “Add” controls beside them. The shopper can keep building the routine without restarting the decision process each time.
This is the goal-gradient effect built into a storefront: people tend to increase their effort as they feel themselves getting closer to a reward.
Before you discount the Hero product
A doorbuster can increase the cart today while lowering a shopper’s willingness to pay tomorrow.
So, the question is not simply: Which product can we discount most heavily?
It should be: Which product creates the most natural path into the rest of our range?
How's the depth of today's edition?
As always, hit reply if something in here hits home.
See you soon,
Nithya
P.S. If you want to get a case study about your own brand, reply to this email. If you’d like to reach our newsletter audience (founders, creators, and marketers), click the button below.
If you’re new here, I’m over the moon you’ve joined us! To help me craft content that’s actually useful (and not just noise in your inbox), I’d love it if you took 1 minute to answer this quick survey below. Your insights help shape everything I write.
Insane Media is more than one voice
💡 Dive into our other newsletters - where psychology meets the founders, creator economy, Human resources and AI trends.
