“We loved home because within that category there’s a lot you can do,” said co-founder Katia Beauchamp. “We felt that it wouldn’t become repetitive or boring — we could be creative with it.”

Items in the one-time box include home decor goods from designer Jonathan Adler, gourmet goodies from Dean & Deluca and stationery from Paperless Post. The home-themed box is $58, which is significantly more expensive than the $10 original box and $20 men’s box. But Beauchamp said the items included are valued at about $140 and that the company opted for a higher-priced package because they wanted to showcase the potential of a home-centric Birchbox. When the company launched a special-edition men’s box last holiday season, it was also on the pricier side but they lowered the cost when they decided to make it a monthly product.

The higher price tag could be a deterrent for some customers. But those who already look forward to their monthly beauty box could trust Birchbox’s taste enough to spring for limited edition offer.

For now, Birchbox, which says it has 300,000 subscribers and 400 brand partners worldwide, is focused on selling the thousands of one-time boxes it’s produced in time for the holidays. But as with the men’s box, if the response is positive, Birchbox Home could become a regular offering.

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But Walmart is trying its hand at “discovery commerce” with a Birchbox-style subscription service for gourmet food.  Called Goodies, the service launches Wednesday after a three-month-long beta test including 3,000 users in the U.S.

“The whole idea is around discovery,” said Ravi Raj, vice president of products at Walmart Labs. “We want to introduce you to new types of food that you haven’t heard of before, not things you’d find at most mainstream stores.”

Goodies is the latest service from WalmartLabs, the retail giant’s innovation arm that was created last year with the acquisition of social media startup Kosmix. In the past year, Walmart Labs has also launched Shopycat, a gift-giving Facebook app, and Polaris, the search engine powering Walmart.com.

With Goodies, subscribers pay $7 a month, including tax and shipping, to get a box of gourmet, organic and artisanal food valued at about $15.  The boxed items are sample-sized but users can purchase full-sized products at goodies.co.

The service, which clearly follows Birchbox‘s model, is not the first to bring discovery commerce to food. Love With Food, which is backed by 500 startups, and Tasterie offer similar services. Lollihop provided a subscription service for healthy snacks, until it shut down earlier this year.

But Raj said Walmart aims to differentiate itself (and avoid the deadpool) by undercutting rivals with a cheaper price (most other products are about twice as expensive), offering a unique selection of items curated by in-house foodies and rewarding subscribers with a social loyalty program. For each review they write about the products, members earn points, which they’ll ultimately be able to redeem for a free box. During the beta period, members weren’t able to redeem their points, but half still submitted reviews for products, Raj said.

It’s a smart move for Walmart – they can get cheaper prices from food suppliers eager for a chance to distribute more widely in Walmart stores and then see which items might have mass appeal. (A formal arrangement isn’t in place yet, but Raj said items that resonate well have a good shot at ending up on store shelves.) And it could get the company in front of a different set of customers.  Initially, Raj said they thought Goodies might appeal to younger, more urban customers, but they’ve found that it attracts a broad swath of consumers, from millennials to seniors.

But, going forward, it will be interesting to see how consumers respond to the new service. From the box that made its way to us, it looks like Goodies selections are certainly more interesting than the fare I’d expect to find at my local Walmart. But, while some items looked like they were from off the beaten path, others – like Smartfood Selects chips and a Nutella snack pack – would be hard to classify as “artisanal.”

For now, Raj said, the company is focused on food, which is Walmart’s largest category and naturally inspires social commentary. But he acknowledged that with a name like “Goodies” the door is open for expansion into other categories.

“Given time… there’s a chance we might be looking at other verticals,” he said.

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The startup, which helps consumers discover new beauty products through a monthly subscription-based box of samples, on Thursday said it was partnering with Gwyneth Paltrow’s goop on a special edition box, featuring more Europe-based brands.

While goop initially gained popularity (and some notoriety) for its weekly newsletter, it has grown into a fuller lifestyle publication and e-commerce site. For Birchbox’s special edition box, goop’s London-based editors selected the items, drawing from a more global pool of brands.

The box is only available to Birchbox’s U.S. subscribers but, as the company looks to increase its global presence (with the purchase of JolieBox, which had previously acquired similar startups in Spain and the U.K.), the goop partnership could help the company elevate its profile among European brands.

“It shows the kinds of partnerships we could be doing and our awareness of other brands,” said Birchbox co-founder Katia Beauchamp. (Hear more about Birchbox’s expansion from Beauchamp at our RoadMap conference on November 5th in San Francisco)

In the past year, Birchbox has partnered with a handful of other fashion and lifestyle media properties, including Teen Vogue, Glamour and the TV show Gossip Girl, on special edition boxes. The partnerships keep the experience fresh for subscribers, Beauchamp said, as well as enable the partnering companies to use Birchbox as a marketing vehicle to reach new consumers.

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Today, the company, which is led by Nils Johnson, an early investor in e-commerce startups Warby Parker and Everlane, is expanding to Android. Similarly to Beautylish’s iPhone app, the new Android app gives users full access to its reviews and editorial content but doesn’t yet include the option to purchase products.

As consumers increasingly use their smartphones as in-store shopping guides, as well as for general shopping, Johnson said the overall beauty category is seeing strong growth on mobile, pointing to Sephora  as an example.

By the end of the year, Beautylish’s apps will likely include the ability to purchase goods but for now the site is focused on building user engagement.

“We wanted to start with content – it’s a better daily hook than just commerce,” he said. Currently, the apps let users read product review, watch demonstration videos and get tips from community members.

The new app comes on the heels of the startup’s first e-commerce option, released last month. Since launching the site two years ago, Beautylish has created a strong online community of makeup enthusiasts and artists (the company said it attracts one million monthly unique visitors). Its new e-commerce platform, called Boutiques, gives members the option to buy products from favorite brands on the site.

New York-based Birchbox has made a big name for itself in the beauty e-commerce space with its subscription boxes, but Beautylish clearly wants to challenge it as a way for people to discover and purchase beauty products in the digital age. Both companies focus on product discovery, but while Beautylish leans heavily on user-generated and original content, Birchbox (which isn’t on iOS or Android) provides samples which it hopes entices people to buy full-size versions.

For more on mobile commerce and how smartphones are changing consumer behavior, check out the live stream of GigaOM’s Mobilize conference, which starts today.

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In the past year, JolieBox, basically a Birchbox clone, has itself acquired Spain’s Glamourum and the UK’s Boudoir Privé, so in addition to adding an office in Paris, New York–based Birchbox is expanding its footprint to London and Barcelona. As more companies enter the beauty e-commerce market, including Fab and Beautylish, an international focus could help Birchbox keep ahead of competition.

“We always knew that we would be a global company because we believe wholeheartedly in discovery commerce,” said Birchbox cofounder Katia Beauchamp. “The business model really does translate…it makes sense for us to be international.”

With its first acquisition, Birchbox, which has raised $11.9 million from investors including Accel Partners, First Round Capital and Lerer Ventures, will add about 30 employees to its 90-person team.

Birchbox was founded in 2010 by Harvard Business School classmates Hayley Barna and Katia Beauchamp and sends over 100,000 subscribers a monthly box of beauty samples, which they can purchase in full size on the company’s website. The company initially focused on women but, earlier this year, expanded to include a men’s box of grooming and lifestyle goods.

Birchbox is often credited with giving rise to the recent trend of subscription commerce but, in recent months, the trend has come under scrutiny, with some saying it’s overhyped and over-saturated. On a panel this week at TechCrunch Disript, Sequoia Capital’s Alfred Lin (who is not a Birchbox investor) reportedly said there’s now a “Birchbox for everything.” Statements like that are good for the Birchbox brand, even the business model doesn’t fit every category.

But Birchbox distinguishes between “subscription commerce” and “discovery commerce,” with the former involving just the delivery of a monthly box of goods and the latter creating new demand among consumers.

“We’re not a box-of-the-month company — that is the very surface view of what Birchbox is,” Beauchamp said. “What we do is generate demand where there wasn’t any before.”

Of the company’s subscribers, she said, about 50 percent go on to purchase full-size items from the online store.

As for future international expansion, Beauchamp said Birchbox will first look to other European countries, then potentially explore other areas, like South America and Asia, with its brand partners.

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