070: Ask Sarah: How Do You Handle Variations and Personalization for Your Subscription Box? with ...

Does the thought of creating variations or personalizing the items in your box overwhelm you? Today on the Ask Sarah series, I'm talking with Maria on how to capture that info and create a process that is scalable. Come join us.

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.

Welcome back to the Launch Your Box podcast. I'm excited today for another round of Ask Sarah. I've got Maria here from Sunflower and Scout, and she's got an interesting question for me. We're going to dive into that in just a minute, but I want you to get to know Maria and learn about her business journey, and then we're going to dive into her question. So Maria, welcome. Why don't you introduce yourself and tell everybody about your business?

Okay, well, my name is Maria Reavy. I am from Jacksonville, Florida, although you cannot tell by my tan. I'm a good redhead in Florida, so perfectly, perfectly good waste of a redhead. Born and raised in Florida, and actually how I got to this point's been a little interesting. In 2008, I moved back to Jacksonville, Florida to take care of my parents. Both my mom had suffered a stroke and they both needed full-time care, and we were thinking, oh, we'll be here a few weeks and 7 years later we were still here. But in the middle of that, my cousin and I opened an antique shop and it quickly became one of the most popular antique shops in Jacksonville. And then branching off of that, a year or two afterwards, I started a show called Rustapalooza, which became a nationally recognized antique show. And I did that up until 2020. And we all know what happened in 2020. We did. You can't have 6,000 people gathering together looking at antiques. And so at the time we're like, oh, well, we'll push it to April. Oh, we'll push it to the fall. Oh, we'll push it to next year.

Because we were, we were flattening the curve. Right. And that was only going to take a few weeks.

Right. Exactly. We were thinking, oh my gosh, you know, hindsight, but we were thinking, okay, in a month this will all be over and life will be normal. And well, it wasn't. So after a year went by, I decided to get a quote, real job just for a little while until I knew I was going to be able to do a show again. And once again, got canceled again, canceled again, and finally got to the point where it's like, okay, I'm smart enough to figure this out. We, we can pivot and do something new. And I always felt guilty leaving my antique people, and I didn't want to leave my antique people, but I wanted to do something online because that's where everyone was. Everyone was at home, they were shopping, they wanted to buy stuff online, but it's really hard to find antiques when you can't leave the house and go get one-of-a-kind items. So I totally pivoted. I just put the show idea away for a while, and I was like, okay, I want to do something that's easy to ship, that's not breakable. Like a lot of antiques you had to worry about finding, and they were breakable. And I wanted to do something that just brought joy, and people would just, you know, it'd be like happy mail every month when they got something in the mail. And along comes Sarah in my Facebook feed. And I'm like, oh my gosh, this is like the perfect idea. And I still in the back of my mind was thinking antiques and vintage, but I am a purist. I cannot go by vintage-inspired, you know, something. It had to be real antique. So I kind of quickly put that aside and I just fell into another niche that's just— I'm passionate about. I love leather handbags. There's this one particular company that they, like, have a cult following. But everyone also loves to customize their bags with these guitar straps and these customizable straps. And I'm like, oh my gosh, that's my niche. I'm going to just do straps, just straps. So that's kind of how I got to the point where I am now, where I want to do both the online Shopify store as well as a monthly subscription, like the little strap fairy you get in the mail, you know, a nice surprise every month.

Okay. So did you come into my world? You came in from an ad. Was that for Coaching Week? Did you come to Coach?

Yeah, I joined Coaching Week in the fall. I think October it was.

Uh-huh. Yeah. So when you went through Coaching Week, we're getting ready to do Coaching Week next month again, but, um, you kind of laid out your 6-month plan, right? What did that look like for you?

My 6-month plan. Um, well, like I said, initially I was still in the vintage and antiques mindset. I hadn't gotten to And so I laid it out and I had this great idea. We do a pickin' t-shirt and we would do, you know, some kind of antique. But then I couldn't get over the struggle of finding true vintage or antiques. It would be something antique adjacent, you know, or— and so I just put it on the back burner and said, okay, once again, I'm going to figure this out. I'm going to do something else. And I literally just— I was in the group talking to it because I just got one of my new leather bags in the mail. And I was in the group, everybody was sharing. They do this cool thing called mystery boxes where you order from them and you don't know what color tote you're going to get, what kind of bag. It's just— and so then everybody, when they get some, they, they reveal them on Facebook in the group. But everybody's like, oh, where'd you get that custom strap? Where'd you get that custom strip? I'm like, oh, I know where I get those custom straps, you know. So that's kind of where I am now.

Okay, so we haven't started our subscription box yet, right? We figured out our concept, we have our ideas, because you have this question looming in your head about starting that. And so tell everybody what your question is for me.

Okay, so my question was, I love how you do personalization, and I was thinking, you know, maybe somebody doesn't want just a strap, maybe they want a cute little tassel to hang on their bag, or maybe they want a keychain with their initial on it. But I was like, oh my gosh, if I start and sign all these people up, How do I know what initial they would want? How would I know what monogram they would want from the beginning? There's something in the process in the app or on my Shopify store that I need to add, and I want to know how I do that to get it right from the beginning and not have to backtrack once all these people have signed up, and then I'm like, oh, by the way, what's your initial?

And the other really big thing was, how do you handle the workload, right? Yeah, you handle customizing every single one of your subscriptions, right?

Right.

And what does that process look like? So I'm glad that you asked about capturing the information. And here's what I did in the beginning when I started my subscription box. You have to get that information at checkout because you following up to get that information is going to be near impossible. You're going to get maybe a good 70% of the people respond, but you're going to be chasing things down.

Okay.

So you don't necessarily want to have to do that after the fact. If you're on Shopify, you can use something like Infinite Options. We have that on Shopify where you can set different options that they have. Now, if you're not 100% sure what exactly you want to do, create more options so you have all the sizes. And let me tell you what, what I'm thinking. When I started my subscription box, I knew that I wanted to put a t-shirt in there. like once a quarter. So that was already on my mind that I needed their t-shirt size. Yes, I needed their 3-letter monogram. So I needed their first, middle, and last name. But I also had this idea that I might want to personalize some things with just a single initial. So I made an option. If you could have a single initial, what would that be? Because sometimes people would prefer their last initial over their first initial. And so I needed that option. So I just asked so many questions. I asked their pant size. I asked their shoe size. I thought of all the things I'm ever going to possibly add this box, I'm going to get all that information up front so I don't have to chase them down. So that's what I wanted to do in, in the beginning is I got all of their sizing and I got all the ways that they would want their initials put on things. And I did give an option for only having a single letter. Some people don't have 3 initials. And so, and was there an option for a 2-letter monogram or a 3-letter monogram or a single monogram? And what would that look like for you? What would you want that to be? And so I made sure that that was clearly outlined. On the checkout process. Now, when we talk about customizing these boxes, it's a double-edged sword. It's something that was so fun, and it made me stand out and be unique and different, and still does. But if I could do it all over again, I don't know that I would do it really. Yes, as we grew, but it still makes me unique and different, so we're gonna, we're gonna go with it. When I started, I had 44 subscribers, so me monogramming 44 things things, no problem. And then the next month it was 75, the next month it was 100, and the next month it was 150. And as I continued to grow, that workload grew for me. So anytime you want to do any kind of customization, I want you to think about what has to happen as I scale. The things that you do times 50 are very different times 500. So for me, it became more equipment. So the more I grew, the more embroidery machines I had to purchase.

So you actually do the personalization yourself? Oh, okay. Wow.

That's how it started. So as I grew, I was— I was— me personally was monogramming everything. I was sitting behind the machines monogramming everything, and even to the point where I was at like 300 to 400 subscribers, I was still the only person monogramming. Wow. So that became hectic. I did buy 2 machines, and then I got 3 machines, and then I got 4 machines, because, you know, once you put it on the machine, it monograms, and then you can work on the next one. And so I was like, this little machine thing— I was the machine, right?

You were the machine.

Yeah. And then I was like, this is dumb. I am working from sunup to sundown. All I've done for the last 10 hours is monogram, and I still have a business to run. So I needed to hire someone to run those machines, but that's just not a skill set that people just have, like, you know, so I had to teach and train someone. So that was kind of the next step. So then she could run machines, I could run machines. So when she wasn't running machines, I was running machines. Um, when she was there, I got to take a break and go do other things. Um, so I had that second person. Then as we grew into 500 and 600, it became to where it would take 10 days, 10 solid hours a day to get them done. And it was very stressful and it was very time-consuming. And that was the point where I looked at outsourcing. Okay. So I started to work with a company that I was getting products from that also did monogramming in-house. And I was able to, when I ordered, when I ordered something from them, say a bag for the subscription box, I was able to have that monogrammed by them before I ever got it. So that was like, when, you know, I was like, whoa, but I wasn't ordering. Everything from them. So, so I would strategically place that my heavy months like November and December. I would make sure that the monogram item was from them. A month where I was on vacation, I made sure that the item was from them. So I kind of worked it in my schedule that they would have those months when I needed that. Then it turned out I couldn't keep up with all of it. Now I'm in the 900,000 subscribers and I can't even do it on the off month. Right. So we worked out a deal where I bought almost all of my product from them and they started monogramming everything. Then our friend COVID came around and, you know, we worked through it almost all of 2020. We worked through the product issues. We had bought far enough in advance that we were okay. But then when 2021 happened, everything was getting harder and harder.

Right.

And my product stopped showing up. My product that I was ordering from them wasn't arriving on time. And I was stuck because I had to order a product from them to get it monogrammed from them. I could get product elsewhere, but now I was monogramming it again. And then as I started monogramming it again, um, I realized that this needed to come back home. This needed to come back in-house so that I had flexibility with my vendors and my products and what I wanted to do. So at that point, we got strategic with more equipment and more people that could monogram. I don't monogram a single thing, but my warehouse team monograms everything now. And so we did a couple different kinds of monogramming. So we weren't always behind the embroidery machine. Maybe we did a DTF monogram, maybe we did a, a laser monogram, maybe we did a— we did different equipment. And, and people around the warehouse all learned the equipment, so it wasn't relying on one person, right, time. So everybody was cross-training on the different equipment, and we, we spread out what kind of monogram was going to go in the box. So not every month it's embroidery, and, you know, some months it's vinyl, some months it's direct to film, you know, some months it's different things. So that we could not, you know, be bogged down by one piece of equipment. But here's what I want to talk to you about. Okay, when you start this, you have to think about what happens if— what happens if I get to 500 subscribers? What does that look like? And I want you to really go into it with an eye-open idea of what it could look like. I looked locally for someone to monogram, even take half of it off my plate. Like, they did half, I did half, we could get it done half the time. Nobody could do really what I did. Most embroidery people embroider like the same logo times 100 on something, not a different one for every different item. That was challenging to find. So before you offer that, I want to make sure that you have a good plan in place. So as I grow, I'm going to get more equipment. As I grow, I'm going to hire more people. And if you know that going up front, what's the threshold? Is that 100 subscribers? At 100 subscribers, can I afford another machine? Can I afford another person? And so if you build that into your plan, knowing that as you grow and scale, you're going to need to grow and scale your production, your manufacturing, that's what we need to do. And that's true for really anybody that makes product. There's so many people listening, Maria, that probably cut their own wood or create their own, you know, designs. Maybe they sew their own, own products. I don't know how you're going to do your guitar straps, but maybe you'll be sewing sewing those. And so when you think about your production, even aside from the monogramming, even aside from the customization, how will you produce your products as you scale? So we don't want to lock ourselves into a ceiling. Like, that's why we're entrepreneurs, right? Because the sky's the limit for us.

Exactly.

We don't want to lock ourselves into a ceiling where we can't grow past because we don't have the capacity. For me, I was making a lot of things that I was selling at that time, and I knew I couldn't do that with the subscription. I had to find vendors that could either make the things I was making or had something similar that I wanted to do. So I couldn't lock myself into hand-making all of the items that went into the subscription box. And then outsourcing a little bit as you go, if you find someone that can help, you know, so the ends of your guitar straps or add the, add the buckles or add the clips or whatever the things that you're doing, you're going to need to outsource along the way or hire along the way. But hiring creates overhead. Having a building where everyone works creates overhead. So if you can outsource it, I 100% think that that's the route that everyone should go until you've built your infrastructure enough that you want to take it in-house. If that is even what you want to do. I couldn't take it in-house at that time. I had a small room that only 2 machines fit in, and it was just— there wasn't enough workspace. So until we went to our big warehouse, that's when we decided, okay, we have the space, we have the capacity, we have the resources to take this back in-house now. And that's how I'm going to continue to customize that. So tell me what questions you have about all that.

That makes total sense. I'm not a maker side of it, so I'm really good at researching and finding products. So that's been one of my strengths because I've just from my background in the show and knowing vendors and knowing which vendors to call, that, that fortunately has been, you know, a good resource to reach back to is to find vendors that I've used in the past and say, hey, I know you make this, but can you do this? And so that's been great. And even just other wholesalers, like going to market and wholesaling, finding, you know, wholesales for this particular product has been—

if you're thinking about like variations, like I said, you know, you mentioned having a tassel or having a monogram or having something added to it. The best way that I can help you organize that is to really create some systems and processes on how you pack that or you prep that.

Okay.

So when someone subscribes to our subscription, okay, it's a manual process. We put them onto a Google Sheet. So all of their information that they fill in at checkout is now transferred into a Google Sheet. And you could do this automated with like a zap from software called Zapier. It could zap it on there, but it would take so many zaps per person because there's so many fields that we fill out. It's just easier for us to do it. So my customer service person will fill it all out. We'll have their names, their monogram, their size, like all of the things. And we're also going to put their upgrades. So this could be an option for you, like if you have either a guitar strap and then a, uh, an add-on. So maybe it's an accessory with the strap. So maybe it's that tassel, maybe it's the keychain, but maybe you create an upgrade so that they can either just get the strap strap, or they can get a strap and an accessory to go with it. And so what we want to do is we want to put them all on this Google Sheet that we use. And we use Google Sheets because multiple people can use it and edit it and it saves in real time. So like an Excel spreadsheet, you would have to edit it, save it, upload it. But a Google Sheet, any— all of us could be on the same Google Sheet at one time.

Okay.

Yes. And so then we put what type of subscription do they have. So yours would be guitar strap only, or plus accessory, or whatever you're going to call it. You create a column for that. And then during packing day, we run a sort on those. So if we're getting ready to prep our boxes, we'll sort them by their, by their upgrades. So anyone that's just getting the monogram box, we'll pull those. You could pack those easily. Those could go out the door. Anyone has the upgrade to the guitar strap, you could print those separately. Those could go out the door so that you're packing them in separate batches and there's not a lot of back and forth on, okay, this one needs an accessory, this one doesn't. You're like, all these don't need an accessory and all these need an accessory, and you can go from there. The other way, and the way that we do it, is we have to do it alphabetically because all of our monograms— okay, leave everything like it is on this spreadsheet with all the information. That we need. And then what I do right before we go to pack, I pull this spreadsheet into Avery.com, which is the Avery labels, like the address labels, and I pick which columns I need for this box. Okay, so like for this box, I need their t-shirt size, I need their 3-letter monogram, and I need to know what their upgrade is. Those are the only things that I need to know this month. Next month I might need to know their shoe size, their single letter monogram, you know, I might need to know other things, but I don't put all of that stuff on each label, just what I need to know so it's easy to read for this box. And so then we'll print out these little labels and we'll stick them on the sides of the box, so it'll say Maria, and these are her initials, and this is her shirt size, and then the bottom row will say what kind of box she has. She has a monogram box, she has combo box, or she has ultimate box. And so because we monogram everything, we put it in alphabetical order anyway, so when we go to pack We go down the row and we line up the initials with the box from what we just did, and then we can say, okay, she needs a size small shirt. And then someone has all the smalls and they go down the row and they put a small in every box that has an S on it. And since someone else has the mediums and they go down the row and they put it one in everything that has the mediums, um, and then the upgrade is the last thing. So if they get the combo, if they get the extra, that's laid on top, we close them, and that's how it goes. So that's how you can organize any variation or any customization that you have. If you don't have the initials involved, if you don't have personalization involved, I would do it in 2 batches. That's what we do with our t-shirt club, because we have a t-shirt and then a t-shirt more. Yes. So what we do is we pack all of those, um, in 2 spots. So we'll pull all the smalls. Everybody that doesn't get earrings gets packed first, then all the smalls that get earrings get packed next. Done. Round 2, mediums. Everybody that doesn't have earrings, they get packed first. Everybody that has earrings, they get packed second. And they're kind of these batches, and they're these waves, so that you're not flipping back and forth between these customizations or upgrades or variations or whatever you want to call them. And that's more opportunity for error. And so that's the way that we handle those. So does that help?

So helpful, because like my brain is naturally wired to organize things. Like I just walk into a room and I compartmentalize. But that's so helpful the way way that you said that, because I was already going down the whole rabbit trail. It's like, okay, so if I order navy this month and, you know, because I know you've done— would you say like 60 boxes now? And trying not to overlap for whatever, you know, I'm thinking a year down the road I want to do a different color. But what if my bag company that all my people follow release these 3 colors? I want to be able to find straps that match those, you know. So that's very, very helpful in knowing the processes, like to put that in order and the add-ons, especially just the Google, the Google Sheet alone. That's like gold. Cause I was like, okay, so how, once I get them in Shopify and they've signed up, how do I get them into a box? How do I get all their stuff into the right box?

Yeah. And that's it. And then the sheet becomes this working document all the time. So then if we have a cancellation, we go to the sheet, we take them off. If someone wants to update their size, We go to the sheet and we update the size. So it's this living document that someone owns. It used to be me. I used to own that. I mean, I did everything in the business. I'm monogramming, I'm owning a spreadsheet, I'm taking out the trash, but I don't own that anymore. Some— that's someone's job. That's my customer service job because 9 times out of 10, the customer service emails are like, can I change my address? Can I change my size? Can I upgrade? You know, all of those things. So she's handling that anyway. She's the owner. Of that spreadsheet. And so it's, it is updated daily as she's doing her job. And so she's adding the new people in, she's taking cancellations out, she's updating changes in real time. So it's not this big task, like at the end of the month before you get ready to start your next subscription batch. So my advice for you when you're thinking about variations, like on a month to month, don't give them more than 3 options. It's too much. So if you want to do just the strap, and then if you want to do the accessory, or you want to do personalization, that's it. No more.

There's 3 options, correct?

And you can make that little accessory a mystery, you know. It can— you don't have to show them. You might have some great ideas down the road that you weren't thinking of when you started it. So by making it a mystery accessory, you get the freedom to change your mind and do whatever you want. Be creative with it. So I would just give them 3 options, no more than 3 options, then they can't decide.

So, um, that makes sense.

We don't want to confuse our customer. And then just keep it organized as you go. Um, get it when they, when they sign up, organize as you go, and have a plan to scale, because that's the goal, right?

Yeah.

So you can't start something that you can't scale. So we don't want to start something that we can't follow up with. And that's hard for us because we want to do all the things and we can— I could do that. No big deal. You can do it now, but can you do it at 500? And that's what you've got to ask yourself. Or how does it look differently at 500?

Correct.

That's our goal. Like, we got to get— we got to scale it.

So, so if you're in the waitlist building phase, yeah, is there like a magic percentage? Like, say you have a 500 people on your waitlist, do you automatically say, I'm going to do 50 boxes, I'm going to do 100 boxes? Is there like a magic number? Do you do all 500? You know, is there like—

it's a whole nother series we got going.

I know, I know, but I just thought about that one.

Yeah. So what I want you to do is I want you to go over into the Launch Your Box training library. There is a lesson, I believe it's called, um, Limits and Growth. I think something like that. I want you to go watch because I break down how to figure that out for you.

Okay.

There. So, okay. It's not a magic number, but it's a little bit of a formula that I use. What's going to depend on that is, um, how, how warm or cold that waitlist is. So how long have they been sitting there?

Okay.

Um, what you've been doing, have you been nurturing them?

Okay.

Um, so there's a couple factors you want to consider. It's not just the number.

Okay. Makes sense.

All right, so if— here's, here's what we want to do. If someone's listening that is like, whatever guitar strap she's putting out, I want in, get me on the waitlist. Maria, where can they find you?

It's not live yet, but it's so close to being live. It'll be sunflowerandscout.com, and there will be a landing page there for you to join that waitlist, hopefully by the end of the day. I've been working on it all morning.

So normally the other question that I always ask my guests is what advice would you give to someone that hasn't started their subscription box yet? But that's you. So I'm going to ask you a different question.

Okay.

What is your launch date?

It is August 1st.

Okay. I love that you could answer that because some people like, I have none, Sarah, I've got nothing. August 1st. I'm going to check up on you. Um, and I, I can't wait to see your progress and I can't wait to see what you do with your subscription box. So if you are interested in getting on Maria's waitlist, head over there. We'll have that link in the show notes as well. Thank you so much for joining me.

I really appreciate it.

Awesome. If the idea of creating a subscription box is swirling around in your head, I encourage you to head over to launchyourboxwithsarah.com, get on our waitlist, and grab some of our free downloads to help you get started. That's launchyourboxwithsarah.com.