074: From 0 to 400 Subscribers: Turning One-Time Sales into Recurring Revenue

I have a very special episode for you today. I recorded this episode live with an audience while I was at SubSummit. SubSummit is the largest subscription box conference in the world. It was so fun to interview one of my members of Launch Your Box live. Come join us as we talk about Rachel's journey from 0 to 400 during a pandemic. We talk about launching, we talk about wholesaling, we talk about product seeding, And we also talked about being a finalist in the pitch competition. Come listen. 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. Today's special because this is the first time I'm recording a podcast live with an in-studio audience here with me today. And it's great because I'm at Sub Summit in Orlando, Florida today. If you're listening, I'm already home, but we're here and I asked Rachel to join me for this podcast episode because it's kind of like full circle. Rachel and I met at Sub Summit last year. She quickly became a member of Launch Your Box and she's joined our community and I'm really excited to have her here. She's also in the pitch competition here at Sub Summit. We're gonna talk about her subscription box. We're gonna talk about how she provides services and goods for other subscription boxes. And we're gonna talk about her journey through the pitch competition today. Rachel, why don't you introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about MicroPuzzles.

All right. I'm Rachel, MicroPuzzles. It's me and my husband that run the company. I'm the CEO, just so you know.

But noted.

Noted.

I see him walking this way in the background.

Yeah. The better half of MicroPuzzles. Yeah, we started in 2018. I like things that were kind of small and my husband had a printing background, so we decided we were going to start a puzzle company. And it has been a journey from when we started being, you know, we used to call our website, we were on Shopify, we used to call our website Onesie Twosies. Because we sold 1 and 2 and we thought we're going to do destination retail because we were doing like Ron Jon Surf Shop and the Magic Castle in L.A. and we were doing a lot of destination places. But then the pandemic hit and then we had to pivot.

So, okay, let's back up just a minute because you just glossed over a whole bunch of stuff that our listeners need to know. So you have a product called Micro Puzzles. Tell everyone listening what a Micro Puzzle is.

Okay, so Micro Puzzles are 4 by 6. There's 150 pieces. So each piece is about the size of like a little smaller than a dime. So they take about an hour to do. We normally sell to people that are probably 20s to like 60s, 70s. So, and mostly women are most of our puzzles, but we can put any design on a puzzle.

So you started your business in 2018. When did you decide that you wanted to have a subscription box? With your business?

So once the pandemic hit, uh, we were already, um, puzzles became so popular and like nobody could get a hold of them. And so everybody were contacting us and our sales were going through the roof and it was just like a crazy ride. We had to scale up and everything. And then, um, people kept saying, well, when are you getting more designs? Because we had like 4 designs when we started. And when are you getting more designs? And just one night I looked at my husband, I'm like, we should do a subscription box. Now I've never had a subscription box, I've never subscribed to any boxes. I, I didn't even know what one was, but we just kind of thought like, what would we want to put in the box? And, and, you know, what are we going to price it at? So, you know, just basically the launch your box experience, like, what do I want to put in my box? What do I want to curate what am I going to, you know, do each month. And we came up with a— we're doing a theme every month. So, you know, we pick whatever theme. We don't pick it ahead like you do. We're kind of a little slower on that. I'm last minute.

You'll get there.

I know we've got to get there. It would be nice. And then we make our own puzzles. So we manufacture the puzzles. So we do that for our theme box. And then we already— we add a couple of little goodies. So this month was— we did a cooking one. So one of the puzzles actually had like a retro theme, and actually the apron— you can't see it online, but I have this apron— it was on the puzzle and had a recipe on the back side. And then the other one was a pie one, and then we had little cookie cutters that are puzzle-shaped and a little magnet that has like measuring tape, so like all the measuring conversions. So You know, every month we do that and every month we have to find products and—

So when you decided one day that you were gonna start a subscription box, tell me what the process was like for you. So the great thing about you is that you already had a business, you were already selling to your ideal customers, you had this audience that you've already built in. So now how does the launch look? Tell me what you did to go into the launch of your subscription box.

So for us, originally what we did is a 3-month. We just put a 3-month subscription. There was no month to month. There was no 6. We didn't really know what we were doing. So we just grabbed it. We said 3 months. We had probably 100 in our first month. So, you know, it was pretty easy, but then it was, you know, the difficulty of trying to figure out how to actually fulfill it. We're folding tissue paper. Probably all of you have done that at one point or another. We had a plain white Uline box that we made stickers for. So we just started. We like to go at like a 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 thing. So every time we try something, we're just like, okay, this is just 1.0.

We're going to start with what you have. Yeah. Build up to what you want.

Yes.

Okay. So how many subscribers do we have now?

We have about 425.

425 subscribers. Can we celebrate that for a minute? Yes. Yes.

And we love every single one.

That's amazing. And so when you joined Launch Your Box last year, it became this instant attraction to your cute little puzzles that are packaged in this little— what is it, a test tube?

A test tube.

And so you partnered with some of the people in Launch Your Box to provide puzzles for their subscription boxes. Can you talk to me about how you did that, who you worked with, what it— how that all went around?

Yeah. So actually, we came to Launch Your Box or came to see Cheryl, who does Yarnables, my, one of my employees said, oh, there's this yarn box and we have to put our puzzles in there. And so I call Cheryl and I'm like, hey Cheryl, would you like, would you like some tiny puzzles in your box? And she's like, oh my God, that would be amazing. So when we went to Dallas, I went to go talk, see your talk with Cheryl there, and immediately we're just like, okay, we're gonna join Launch Your Box. Look how much fun they are.

But We're so fun, right?

Right.

We're so fun.

Okay. We signed up immediately. But for us, you know, we have a product that we can put in other people's boxes, which not only benefits, you know, we have our subscription box. We, we've done the Yarnables. We've done the Guinea Pig. We've done a Divorced Woman Box, S'mores Box, a Cash Crate Box. Am I missing somebody else over your house? Guinea Pig Box? We've actually done one for Crew Snack Nation. So what do you put on these puzzles?

So if I got the G-Pig box and I've got the Yarnable box, they're not getting the same puzzle.

No.

Tell me how you customize that.

Yeah, they actually send me the artwork that they want in their puzzle. So I will help them and just say, you know, we want, we want to make sure there's a lot on it. There's colorful. Not every great picture makes a great puzzle. So, you know, I try to help people decide what they want on their, for their design, but they usually give me the design. So it can be themed to their box. So maybe not one that has yarn on it, but I'm doing butterflies this month, or I'm doing whatever, and then we can do that. And we also have stock on our website. So we have, how many do we have? We probably have 50, 60 stock items. So you could just pick one there and then, you know, say that one's donuts are going to fit the divorce women box, they wanted the donuts, so they just went with stock items, which are a lot faster.

Yeah, that's amazing that you have the ability to create something super custom in-house and have a quick turnaround with it for other people as well as yourself. Because I know, and many of us here know, that through the last few years, supply chain has been a real issue, especially as our numbers get into the hundreds and thousands of subscribers. And so being able to produce your item for your subscription box and for other boxes, that's really worth its weight in gold. We also are here because you're in the pitch competition and that's a big deal. And so I wanna talk about that because I was looking at like all the dates, it's a process. And so I'd love for you to like break down what it's been like to be in the, in the Sub2Sub Summit pitch competition and what the journey's been. You're in the final 4. And you did your pitch last night. We don't know the results yet, but at the end of this podcast, if you're listening on your— on the podcast, I will have the results for you at the end. I will update you. We don't know it in real time right now. We'll find out tonight. But tell me about the process from applying to where you are now.

Yeah, we— so the pitch competition is only if you've been in your subscription box has been under 2 years. So we actually have, we have one of the oldest puzzles in existence. It's something we own. Subtle reached out to us. They wanted to do for National Puzzle Day, which is January 29th. They did a little interview with us, you know, to talk about our Spilsbury puzzle, the inventor of the puzzle from 1767. And Jen and Nadine have a show and we were on their show and Jen just mentioned, she goes, have you thought about being in the pitch competition? And we're like, no, well, but we'll try it. So you apply. I actually made Michael do most of that work, so I don't really know what happens, but they're just going to ask you about your company. Like, and some of them are, you can even do it pre-launch. So if it's, you know, what you think your box is going to be, and then, you know, so you answer some questions. Um, they picked 10 finalists. They had 2 sessions.

So for the first one, 2 rounds for round 1 and 10 for round 2.

So yeah, so we were in the first. We had to pitch virtually, which, you know, was a lot of work and it was something that we started deciding that we really wanted to do. We actually, the day of the pitch, we were supposed to be flying from Hawaii, you know, taking our honeymoon, late honeymoon, because we got married in 2020. And we, we decided, well, it's kind of more important. It's something we want for our business. So we canceled the trip and we did our virtual pitch. You have— at this time you had 3 minutes to do your pitch, and they are pretty strict on time. So you have to rehearse and rehearse, which we were on the money, 3 minutes.

So I'm envisioning like Shark Tank style. Is this what happened?

Well, we are Shark Tank style, I guess. Yeah, we're— we like the show. We're a toy company. We're a little flashy. We thought it would be fun, so we had like props and, you know, flying puzzles and like air horns and, and whatever. So they picked 2 people from round 1, they picked 2 people from round 2, and then we all made it out here in Orlando and had to go live, which is scarier.

Live was scarier.

Yeah.

Well, you did great. So yesterday was actually your second pitch. You did one pitch virtually and then you're, you made it to the finals. Yes. So what is next for MicroPuzzles?

Oh, so we just made a big move cross-country. We did. We had been in California. Michael was moved out from Disney World to Disneyland. Basically, we were furloughed and puzzles took off. So our side gig turned into our full-time gig. So we weren't returning, but we have family here and it's cheaper in Florida than California. So we decided to move the whole company. So as of 2 days ago, we just got our keys for our 3,000 square foot.

She's been busy, y'all. She's been a little busy.

But, you know, we started this in our kitchen. We, we literally had a 1-bedroom apartment. I would store the tubes, the test tubes that the puzzles go in, in the second bathroom shower, like, so I could close the shower and nobody would know that I was— not the printer in the living room would have gave it away. But, but, you know, we would kind of hide things and we were just like, But that, you know, that's how we started and it, you know, it was small at first and it, it gotten bigger. We, we actually early on, we did some product seeding. So product seeding is basically you're giving your product away. And I know like for puzzles, it's not very expensive, but maybe there's some way with your products that maybe you could do. But product seeding has been amazing for us. Everybody here at Sub Summit got one of our puzzles in their, their welcome box. So. We donated those in, 1,500 puzzles, but you know, everybody gets to see our product. It brings our, the name of our brand up. It's something that we like to do just because it's not very expensive for us. We have, you know, pretty good margins.

Can you mention some other ways that you've done some product seeding?

Oh, well, so we sent it to, at the time pandemic just happened, so it was April 2020. We used to watch the morning show in LA. LA is a huge market. We just sent the puzzles and said, thank you so much for what you do every day while we're breaking up puzzles, because we had to break them up by hand at the time. When we're breaking up puzzles, we watch your show and we just want to thank you for that. And they called us and said, would you like to be on, on our, our show? They gave us 6 minutes. We had been like on Shopify. We have, they have a screen that you can see the backside of the, your store and Up until then we had 20 people and we were, we were high-fiving. Like we thought 20 people on our website. When, when we finished our 6 minutes, we took off our piece. They said, thank you. You know, for more information, go to micropuzzles.com. We walked over and it was blowing up. There was 2,007 people on our website at one time. And Michael was filming it. He had to stop because the phones were ringing and You know, Shark Tank had contacted us, Capitol Records had contacted us. It had just gone crazy. And this was all because we sent out 3 or 4 puzzles.

What I love about, what I love about what you did there was you created a connection. You didn't pitch a sale. You gifted it with a genuine intention, a genuine connection story of, hey, we do these puzzles while we're watching your show. You connected your puzzles to them in a non-salesy way. And that's the connection that we have to show up and do every single day on our social media. Every time we go live, anything that we do when we're creating content, that's the way we do it. And that's what got you results. It's not a sales pitch that you sent to them. It was the connection that you made between your product, yourself, and what they do. And that's really important.

Now, And we, you know, we, we're, we're always handing out puzzles to everybody.

So I feel like must be why you wear an apron. Like, is it just stocked with puzzles? You're just walking around handing out puzzles.

Yeah.

She's, she's literally pulling puzzles out of her apron right now.

So we have a logoed car. So the car has, it's in the parking lot here.

I'm sure you do.

And so we, we've got a logo car and it's in the parking lot here if anybody wants to see it. You know, it's got puzzle pieces on the side. It says Micro Puzzles. And every time we drive up to a drive-thru and someone says, what's Micro Puzzles? I always got a puzzle to hand out. Like, and we went to like a Christmas thing and we had these bright jackets and this woman just said, oh, I love your jackets. Can I take pictures with you? I handed her a puzzle and then she said, oh, I do the gift bags for the Oscars. Would you like to be in the Oscar bags?

Yes.

I'm like, Yes, we'll do that.

So it's the perfect business card. And I think that's, that's a very actionable thing that a lot of us could do if we have small products, right? Are you an earring of the month subscription? Can you just put a pair of earrings in your pocket? And every time that you meet someone that asks you about the earrings that you're wearing, you're like, would you like to have a pair? Nancy's here. She's giving taffy out every time I see her. She's handing somebody some taffy. And so think about what in your business that is like a business card without it being a physical card. Nope. I got back to the room last night, I had 4 cards in my pocket and I'm like, I don't remember talking to these people. I'm going to remember the micro puzzle though. I'm going to pull that out. I'm like, oh yeah, this is a really cool puzzle. It's a great business card for you and to get people to really like your product too. So Rachel, anyone listening right now that might be thinking about starting a subscription box, maybe they've been stuck on their idea, what advice would you give them?

Okay, so I probably have a few things, but one of the things I always say to Michael is done is better than perfect. Do not wait until your product is perfect. Start at 1.0, go to 2.0. You know, this way you can even test it and see what people like. If you're, if you're going to wait until your product is 100%, even Michael and I used to work Disney, and they launch at like 80%. So when they put new products out or they do a ride, they only launch it at 80% and then they build up. So go ahead and just do it. And there's a lot that you can learn as you're doing it, you know? So that would probably be one. This is probably not like a professional one, but we have, we have a dog, a rescue dog. His, his name is Presto, but we call him Brian and Chipping. If you put a dog on your box, or we have like a card, if we make a mistake, Brian in shipping is super sorry he messed up your order. It's like he doesn't take his unpaid internship very seriously, and it's a cute little picture of him. It diffuses any problems.

I'm gonna need a Brian in customer service.

Yeah, yeah, you need that. Be like, oh, oh, you didn't get your puzzle? Oh, Oh, Brian is shipping, taking his third nap of the day, but we'll let him know. So that, that has been like gold for us because it was at the beginning of the pandemic when they're like, oh, make your pet your coworker. Well, we just jumped on board that and that has been amazing.

What I love about you is that you just do things wholeheartedly. You're super fun and you show all the colors of your world. And I love that in your business and your life. Rachel, if anyone listening wants to follow you, how can they find you?

So if you just go on micropuzzles.com, @micropuzzles, whatever, but where you can pretty much find us pretty easy. So, and my name, Rachel, if you wanna send me something direct, you have any questions or just wanna talk, we'll put it in the show notes today.

Yeah, you can find us, uh, right here in the show notes. I'll have all of Rachel's information. Thanks for listening to another episode of The Laundry Box Podcast. Go ahead and leave us a 5-star review. So I promised an update at the end of this episode. I'm back home now and the pitch competition is over. We found out that night of the recording that MicroPuzzles, Rachel and MicroPuzzles did not win the pitch competition, but I'm so, so excited. They ended up in the final 4. And congratulations to the Robot Garage who ended up winning the STEM Summit 2022. Pitch competition. 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.