001: Sarah's Subscription Box Journey - How I Launched a Subscription Box, Built a Thriving Busin...

Welcome to the Launch Your Box podcast. I'm so excited for the very first episode. Today I'm going to share my own subscription box journey with all of you because I think it's important. It's important to see that it's a journey of ups and downs. It's never perfect. It's always messy. It's not instant success, but it's so worth it.

Welcome to the Launch Your Box podcast with weekly tips, tricks, and strategies to start, launch, and grow your subscription box. Now here's your host, Sarah Williams.

Hi, I'm Sarah Williams. I'm the founder of Launch Your Box, where I get to coach thousands of box entrepreneurs, maybe just like you, but I'm also the founder of the Framed Monogram Box. This box took my passion and exploded my e-commerce business. And I'm sharing it because it's important. I'm sharing my journey. I'm helping you understand the process doesn't always start with a grand scale. So let's rewind just a little bit. We're going to start with my journey. My journey starts where probably most entrepreneurial dreams do, with just a few dollars in your bank account and your kitchen table. What started as a way to make a little extra money quickly turned into a 7-figure business. That employs over a dozen people. And what a crazy journey this has been for me. So let me tell you, I was in my mid-30s. I was working in a retail environment and really wanted more. I wanted more for myself, more freedom, less corporate demands. You know, in the beginning when I started my retail store, I was just making and selling items from my home. I went through my first Christmas season and I had sold so many custom gifts I was hooked. I knew I had to make this my full-time gig and really, really put my all into it. But I was terrified of giving up my regular paycheck. I think that's what terrifies most of us when we embark on this entrepreneurial journey. But after a lot of soul searching, I jumped all in. I quit that Fortune 500 job I had. I opened my first store. There was a lot of, lot of scary stuff going on there. It was this cute little hole-in-the-wall store. It was all of 600 feet. Like, literally, you could say it was a closet. But what had happened over the last 6 months prior was that people were coming to my home to pick up the items that I had made for them, the custom gifts. And so really, this 600-square-foot store was not a store at all, but just a way for me to have a place to make things and for people to pick them up. My husband was sick of all the stuff lining the hallways, the kitchen table, the kitchen counter. Literally every surface in my home that was blank had something I was making on it. And so it was time for me to get a big girl store, get this out of my house, and become a legit business. But what happened was it quickly became a, a store. It became a place where people wanted to shop, and that's not what I expected at all. I expected that they would message me, I would make their gift, and they would come pick it up. It's my side hustle, right? And so what happened was my little shop became busy, and I filled it with inventory, and it became busier. And after that next Christmas, I knew I was onto something special. And what started to happen was I was seeing the same customer come in. You know, when you start your business in the beginning, you're the cashier, you're the CEO, you're the shipping department, you're customer service. Like, you're doing all the things. And that was me. I was unlike anyone else. I mean, that was what we do as small business owners. We do all the jobs until we can afford to pay someone to help us do those jobs. So I'm the cashier and I'm talking to everyone as they come in there. A lot of times they're standing and talking and shopping and I'm making the things while they're right there. But what happened was I would get to know them. I would see them on a regular basis. I would get to know who they were. I would ask about their families and quickly these people became friends of mine. A lot of times they were buying gifts for either themselves or someone else and we would talk about it. I look forward to seeing them all the time. What I found were these regular customers were coming in once, maybe twice a month and they were looking for something special. And a lot of times I was getting feedback that, well, I saw that on your Facebook page, but you were already sold out. And that started to get to me. And I thought, how could I make sure that these amazing repeat customers of mine had instant access or first access or even exclusive access to the new things? I had this idea of creating a VIP experience for my customer. I wanted it to be exclusive. I wanted them to feel like they were part of something that was just for them, and this subscription box was on the forefront of my mind. I wasn't sure how I was going to make this work. I knew I wanted to do something. It seemed too complicated for me. I was new in business. Um, all I wanted to do was make the cute things and sell them. I really didn't have my head wrapped around what it was going to take to create a business like this. I wasn't even selling anything online at this point. I was just selling in my local retail brick-and-mortar store. And so it became complicated. I sat on that for a long time time because it became too complicated for me to figure out. And then I watched a large company, you know, those companies that you follow, they're bigger than you, you're inspired by them. I watched a large company do what I wanted to do and I thought, man, they did it before me. And I watched them do it and they had a lot of subscribers. Um, the way they had priced their subscription, there was no way I would ever be able to offer that kind of price. I felt like they were giving away their subscription boxes. And so it kind of put me in a funk, and I thought, well, I could never do that because I can't price, price it as cheap as the big box companies, and I don't have all the logistics figured out. So again, I just sat on my idea for a while. I'd get into my head like over and over, like, how would I set up recurring payments? How would I know what I was going to put in this box each month? How would I even get people to sign up for this? Again, I wasn't selling anything online at the time. Where would I find boxes? How would I handle shipping? All of these things just started going through my head and it would— I would tell myself I couldn't do it. But then I continued to watch this other company do it and it intrigued me. It intrigued me because the comments on their social media were terrible. It was a terrible experience for these customers. The sizing was way off. Nobody would answer their customer service emails. And so I started to see a real disconnect between the product and the experience that these customers, these subscribers were getting from this company. And I thought, you know, I can do this and I can do this better because I care about my customers. And ultimately that's why I'm doing this. But then again, it just paralyzed me. The thought of all the things that I needed to do. I was busy. My store was humming. Sales were good. I now had an employee that was working for me. I started to pay myself regularly. We even moved into a larger, a larger retail store. So we went from 600 square feet to almost 4,000 square feet within 18 months. My store was doing well, but it kept— something kept pulling me back. And the better I was doing, the more expenses I was having. The new store came a whole lot more rent, more utilities. I needed more employees to cover the square footage of the store. And I kept going back to that thought of creating this VIP experience. For my regulars. So a few months later, I had a meeting with my web developer. We were getting ready to put my products online. I was going to start selling them online. And we were sitting down going over what the website would look like and what we needed. And at the end of that meeting, he said, what else can I help you with, Sarah? And I just blurted it out. I said, I want to start a subscription box. And instantly I wanted to pull that right back out. Like, I just wanted to push that right back in my mouth. Like, I just verbal vomited something I had never told anyone. I had kept this to myself for an entire year because I thought it was unrealistic and I was scared. I was scared he was going to think I was crazy because you have to remember this was 2017 and there were really only the big box companies that were doing subscriptions. You didn't hear of a lot of little companies doing subscriptions at the time. So there were companies like Birchbox and FabFitFun and Ipsy, and those were the big players. And there weren't a lot of little subscriptions in the market yet. And so I just knew he thought I was a lunatic, but he didn't. And he said, all we have to figure out are two things, Sarah. We have to figure out recurring payments and we have to figure out shipping. And I know we can figure that out. And so here I was, I was about to start a subscription box and I was excited. In my head, I already knew what these first 3 months would look like. I'd been planning this for a year in my head. And so I told him exactly what I thought should be in those boxes. And he said, if you can figure out how to get the product and the boxes and the shipping, I can figure out how to do the payments and the products on the back end. And so we did it. I did, uh, several months of research. I was literally searching every minute of the day that I could on all the questions that I had. I was trying to find more products, getting packaging, creating new logos. I was figuring out a way to make this a really great box But it was a lot of work. And what I wish I would have had then that we do now is resources for subscription box owners. I didn't have a group that I could ask questions in. I didn't have business friends that were doing anything like this. And so it was really a struggle for me. But I did it. And I, man, I don't regret one, one instant of it. So here we are ready to launch. And I really didn't even know what a launch was back then. I had never really invested in any kind of formal training, entrepreneurial training, e-commerce training or anything like that. So I'm just launching this thing because I just— the word launch was a great word, right? And I set a goal for myself. And when I sat down and looked at the numbers and aside from really wanting to make this a great experience for my customers because initially that was my number one goal. But I had a number two goal and that was my financial goal. Like, what number of subscribers do I need to really feel stable financially in my business? And that was 100 subscribers. If I could pay my bills at the store, cover a paycheck for myself and my one employee, like, that is gold. I would have given anything to do that. And that's what I was about to do. And for me, that was 100 subscribers than anything else I sold online. Anything else I sold in the store was all a bonus. But if I could cover those initial expenses, that was really going to help me stabilize my business and create this really consistent and reliable revenue that I desperately needed. And so here I was launching my box. To my surprise, I had 44 people sign up and I planned for 50. And in my mind, it was worst case scenario was that this was a total flop stop. I could sell this inventory at Christmas and it would be fine. But I have this little personal mantra, and that mantra is that I'm not afraid to fail. I'm afraid of not trying. And so I knew that there was a risk of failing at this, but I wasn't afraid of that. I've done many things, tried and failed, and it's no big deal. But the thought of not trying this and not knowing what the possibility would be is what would keep me up at night. So here I was, 44 people believed in me enough to buy this monthly subscription box. They were now committing themselves to giving me, you know, money every single month. And they had no idea what was going to be in this box. I laugh about it now because it was the worst marketing campaign I could have ever done, and I would never do it that way now. But it was literally a white mockup box with my logo slapped on it. And that's what I was selling you because it was a mystery box. I didn't want to tell you what was in the box, and I couldn't because I wanted it to be a surprise. That was one of the core principles around this box, was that it was a monthly surprise gift to you. And so here I am, I'm just putting this white box with a terrible logo on it out there and saying, hey, if you like my things, sign up for a subscription box. And 44 people did this, and I thought, okay, let's do this. I sold 44 of my first 50 boxes. Once I did that box reveal that very first month, I sold the other 6, and then I also increased my second box by 25 more box subscribers. And what I did was I built in 25 more boxes every month for the next 9 months as I was increasing it. So then I went to 75, and then I went to 100, and then I went to 125. And I was a little conservative. Anybody that's a little bit more of a risk taker would have gone higher, but I'm not a risk taker, and I didn't want to be sitting on a whole pile of inventory. I was super nervous about that because if you're a product seller, you know that product sitting on your shelf is like bundles of dollar bills sitting there. So you don't want to leave bundles of dollar bills sitting all over your back room. And that's what I had to deal with. And so I was super conservative with those numbers and that grew and we grew and we grew. And then we were almost to 300 monthly boxes by the end of that year. And then what happened by the end of that 9 months? It was about the 1-year mark, I would say. I kept increasing my products. I was feeling a little bit better about increasing the number. So instead of 25, I was doing a percentage every month and I was really increasing it. And I started to plateau. Those numbers started to get stagnant and I was stuck about the 350 mark and I didn't know what to do. I spent the next 6 months spinning my wheels. How am I going to grow? I'm stuck with a lot of inventory every month and I've had to order out, you know, 4 to 6 months out. And I've got all this inventory coming and I'm not growing. I wasn't sure what to do. I kept feeling like, is this it? Is this as good as it's going to get for me? Don't get me wrong, I was happy with this growth. I loved my 300 subscribers, but I kept feeling that I was really meant for more. And so I spent the next 6 months heavily investing in business coaching and training for myself. I mean, after all, I really bootstrapped this whole idea from the kitchen table and I didn't know what I didn't know. I took courses, I joined memberships, I joined a mastermind. I was really in a space where I was learning about being an entrepreneur when I feel like I just lucked into it. It just fell in my lap. I really didn't know what I was getting myself into or the things I needed to learn. I started learning, I started implementing. I tried not to get overwhelmed. There were still gaps in the information I needed and what was available in the market. And a lot of this I had to teach myself. I started showing up. I started doing Facebook ads. I started an affiliate program. All these things I knew nothing about. I didn't want to be the face of my brand, but you know what? That's what I needed to do. I didn't know how to run Facebook ads, but I needed to learn that. I didn't know the importance of having affiliates. Promote your box. And that has been a game changer as well. And this shift occurred. I started to really gain traction. I was heavily in my local town because of my retail store. And once I started to do these things that I knew nothing about, I started to grow across the country. I needed to hire more people. I ended up starting a second subscription. My numbers had now tripled at this time. I was really in tune with what my customers wanted more than ever and how I could deliver an experience for them. They loved it, and I love curating this amazing experience for them every single month. Fast forward, a whole nother year has gone by. We're sending thousands of monthly subscriptions. We've got a waiting list of people that can't wait to get in, and we're constantly finding ways to uplevel the experience for our existing subscribers and our future subscribers. And that's it. I mean, that's my story. It really doesn't end here. And I don't know, I don't know what the future holds. I'm excited about it. I'm excited to share it with all of you. And I'd love for you to subscribe to my podcast and take you along with me on my subscription box journey. We don't have to be in fear that we have to be a big company to do this. We can start small and we build on that, because what success means for you is not always what success means for everyone else. And it takes putting yourself out there, doing it, and keep getting better at it. And so I can't wait for you to come along this journey with me. If the idea of creating a subscription box is swirling around in your head, I encourage you to head over to launchyourbox.com with Sarah.com. Get on our waitlist and grab some of our free downloads to help you get started. That's launchyourboxwithsarah.com.