How Risky is Discounting for New E-Commerce Brands?

Discounts have been around as long as retail has. And on the web, the flash sales wave pushed them front and center. But I was still surprised when I recently visited certain non-flash sales e-commerce sites to find that young startups with aspirations of creating brands with cachet would be offering discount promotions to first-time buyers right on their homepage. So I asked three of them that offer homepage discounts in exchange for an email address — menswear maker Bonobos, high-end T-shirt startup Pickwick & Weller, and women's jewelry seller BaubleBar — to explain their thought process.