KURB Newsletter September 2026

We’re winded, sprawling on the floor like a dettol emulsified aphid- nothing can stop or save us from the well we have cast ourselves into, KURB’s fate is sealed. However, this depth should not be considered so bleak- however: prized KURB Newsletter reader, it is in fact your salvation. Yes it is, and what has been and is to come is also predetermined as carefully laid on in this month’s Newsletter. I urge you to not avert your eyes.

Last month was our most inexplicable yet. Heaven sent Stina from the cant not podcast to invite JP and I on to offer a brief glimpse into the bowels of the chronically online archival men's designer world. I urge you all to give it a listen, it likely won’t be anything new for you but at least you can ridicule my silly little indecipherable accent. October unfortunately marks the end of the most affordable KURB has ever been in two ways:

1. The opportunity to be grandfathered into the 6 USD p.month / 48 USD p.year plan.

2. The end of our half price KURB Pro offer.

For those that are out of the loop KURB Pro will now be offered 20 USD p.month / 160 USD p.year.

We made the decision to increase the price of KURB for a plethora of reasons. As we have continued to pour our hearts and souls into KURB, making it the best archival designer search platform out there it has also become increasingly expensive to run. We deeply appreciate any and all support we get, there is no more motivating act then when you guys decide to subscribe to KURB Pro: it is the fuel for KURB's development, but for KURB to continue to grow it's important we don't push the team into financial destitution. We made this decision after realizing what was needed to really push KURB to the next level and researching what other services that cover a fraction of the market with a sliver of the tooling charge. KURB is 100% owned by the team and is financed from our own pockets and what we get from our generous KURB Pro supporters. However, being bootstrapped is a double-edged sword, the best part is that no investment-return crazed outsider decides what becomes of the archival designer market but it also means we are limited by our own capital. 

Now let’s get back into all the fun tech changes we have made! We re-engineered our reverse-image search system to be much more efficient and accurate, in addition to allowing you to now layer on keywords. So now you can precision filter your search feed based on an image, a few keywords while still having the ability to layer on additional filters. On the topic of accuracy we have retrained our Appraisal model so now its assertions are much more up-to-date and accurate, feel free to give it a shot. We added a wholly new feature for your auction feeds, Auction Alerts. For auction listings you now have the option to set up an alert that will notify you before an auction ends so you can swoop in with a bid before it’s too late.

On the user interface side we have made a bunch of updates. We entirely overhauled how the “new matching results” system works. Now for all your Saved Filters if there are new matching results that come onto the market that will be communicated directly to you within the Saved Filter Dropdown, landing page pills and the brand new small device hot bar! That’s right, it’s something we have sorely neglected to develop but it is here now. For all you small device users you can now enjoy fluidly traversing across the most important KURB pages within a discrete and ever present bar.  Additionally, it is now possible to save your reverse image searches as saved filters that will also take advantage of the constant Saved Filter matching updates infrastructure. Finally, with the release of iPhone Duo we have released an optimized KURB tablet view… with a Duo implementation currently in development for you particularly tech trend archival designer enthusiasts!

This month we hit coverage of 900 archival stores and over 500 designer brands. We focused on adding several luxury classics like Isaac Sellam, Phoebe Philo, White Mountaineering. While on the stores side we increased our list by about 10% to include marketplaces like GOAT, Dolap; Franchises like 17th Street, Retro.jp, Designer Revival; and Independent sellers like 762WARDROBE, Flat Rack, MYCOOLARCHIVE and many many more.

I’ve been caught in a mind bending funk recently, and so have decided to inoculate you with this condition. Expose your minds to this terrible trip while reminding yourselves it is never too late to ruin your life, or if you’re especially… terrible company, I guess you could also futilely strive to improve it- but how boring is that?

I confess, this was the hardest Newsletter to write to date. This entire time I have been with-holding our most exciting update to date and what’s even worse- there are 3 of them. Next month we will be hitting you with the triple whammy inshallah in this order.

1. iOS and Android release

2. The KURB Q3 Report (huge revamp here, less text wall)

3. For You page (we are COOKING on this)

… If you want a sneak peak at the iOS App ahead of release, check THIS out.