113: How Cotton Chaos 5X Their Subscribers with a Strategic Launch Plan

Does it feel like you're building your business without an actual plan on how to do that? Growing and scaling is hard. It's even harder when you aren't sure what actions to take that actually give you results. On this episode, we're walking through the plan that 5x'd one subscription box business in their second year. Come join us. Welcome to the Launch Your Box podcast with weekly tips, tricks, and strategies to start, launch, and grow your subscription Now here's your host, Sarah Williams. Welcome back to the Launch Your Box podcast. I have got two members of our community with us today. They are in Launch Your Box, they are in Scale Your Box, they are in our Mastermind, and we're going to talk about a recent launch of theirs, and we're just going to break it down. We're going to break down their journey. They've had a huge year of growth behind them. So we're going to talk about it, but most importantly, what I want you to listen to today is how they did it, what they did, what they measured, and how they're going to continue to do more of it. All right, so, uh, Andrea and Whitney, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. Why don't we do a little intro? Tell them who you are. It's weird because I have a duo. I normally just have a single person They will probably talk over each other a little bit, although they're very good at when one starts and stops, the other one— almost like twins, but you know, they're not. So we're going to let them introduce themselves and I want you to— I want them to give you a little bit of background of their business and then we're going to jump right into your journey. All right. So y'all take it away. All right.

So I'm Andrea and I'm Whitney and we are Cotton Chaos. Um, so we are a t-shirt company that sells retail. We do our custom screen printing in-house. We also do wholesale and custom orders, but what we're here to talk about today is our t-shirt subscription. Yes.

Okay, so tell me about the subscription. So you were already doing mostly wholesale at the time that you started your subscription, or were you doing mostly retail?

It was— I say it was mostly wholesale, I think.

Yes, we were— had just started diving into retail and really trying to build our own brand as Cotton Chaos. When we all started, it was just going to be like a hobby of us just kind of selling shirts to our friends and things. Then it turned into wholesale, and then it was like, we've got to get a website to start selling these things other than jotting a name down on a piece of paper and making a shirt for them.

I can just picture— I'm going to let you into a little insight. My very first location, I had one of those like wires that went across the room that you put like, you know, old diner receipts on. We clipped all my orders on there because they were all made to order. And that's how I was there too. I did the whole— and I remember one Christmas we lost an order. We lost an order. Someone was there to pick it up. It was a few days before Christmas. And we're like, we don't have an order for you. And he was like, I ordered it. And he had his copy of that little carbon copy receipt that we gave people. And I was like, I don't know how we've missed this order. And so anyway, long story short is like, we made it for him very quickly and got it ready for Christmas. And then probably 6 months later, we were cleaning and it had fallen behind our tables. And so that little receipt thingy hanging on the wall, that's how we missed an order. But I think we all start there. We all start with a pen and paper and let me make an order for my friend and let me jot down some orders from someone that's an acquaintance. And, and that's how most of our businesses start. And so you were really looking forward to building your own brand and being in kind of the front of the business instead of just the back end and doing wholesale. And so you decided you wanted to start your t-shirt subscription in January of '21. Is that right? So 2 years ago?

Yes.

And so you launched it, and tell me a little bit about that very first launch.

We did a first, like, a new membership price, so we went in at $22. Anybody who joined that first month got the shirt for $22. The next month would be going up, and we got 35 members that very first month. Okay, which felt really good.

Excited. Yeah, because you're like building this front end of your business, right? People that were buying from you didn't necessarily come from your, your, uh, social media, right? They were just people that knew people that knew people that knew you, right? And so here you are now, you've got 35 subscribers on your first launch, and you go a few months and you decide that, okay, we're gonna launch again. You've been building your social media presence, you've been building your club, you've been talking about it. Talk me through the April— no, when do you launch again after the January 2021?

I don't really honestly say that we never ran— we never ran a proper launch until we joined Scale Your Box.

You just left it open? You had an open model, they could join at any time, and you just showed them the new thing, the new shirt, and they could join, right?

Yes. You know, we were newbies. We just did what we thought was would work. We wanted to get 100. We would talk about it, take pictures of it, be excited when one would join, but we didn't really like actually form like a game plan and knew what worked until we joined Scale Your Box.

Okay, so at what point— so you go all through 2021, do you know where you ended up in 2021 with how many subscribers you had?

In December, we— I think it was right at 100. It might have been a little less.

We—

I know we were close to 100 by the end of, by the end of 2021.

And that was your goal? Like, if we can get to 100, yeah, we made it, we're doing the thing, like, this is it, we're getting to 100. Okay, it took you the whole year to get to 100, right? It probably felt hard, huh? Yes, because you didn't really have a plan, did you? Okay, so tell me about 2022.

So 2022, in April of 2022, we did our first real launch, okay, where we followed your plan, okay? And we did an extra— you get an extra free shirt that time, that, that sign up. So anybody who was already a member got a shirt, plus anybody new got a shirt. So they were getting two shirts.

And then also during that time we started bringing in affiliates, and affiliates has been a huge part of growing our subscription. It has brought on— I mean, we've brought on a lot of new members by following a plan, but finding people that have a presence that go live and finding the people that are our people that are also their people have also helped us grow tremendously and build a community around our t-shirt club also.

Let's talk about that for a little bit because that's one question that I get asked a lot is how do I find affiliates? How do I know what is a good affiliate? What kind of percentage are you giving your affiliates? What does that look like for you guys?

Uh, well, our affiliate program guidelines right now is they get 10%. As far as the club goes, they have to initially get 10 signups from the club before we actually allow them to get their own club for free. So they have— we have to see that they are getting 10 members signed up under their affiliate before we allow them to get their actual club for free. And then we just request that, you know, they go live in their shirt if they want to open the package and go live. That's great. But we fell into the niche of the community where a lot of our people are the middle-aged to older generation, um, fixed income. They love sitting around and watching crafters, you know. They find somebody they like, they're there for their whole 2-hour live. No, we are not crafters and we're not going to do a 2-hour live, but those are the people asking every time, um, hey, where did you get the shirt you're wearing? Or, you know, it never fails. You'll go on somebody's Facebook page and you'll scroll through their comments on their live. It's a crafter or somebody that's doing like a longer live, and then they're always asking them, where did you get your earrings? Where did you get your shirt? Or something like that. And that's where we started looking at people's followers and what were people asking in their lives.

Okay, so you connected with some of those people. I know that you connected with some people inside Launch Your Box and Scale Your Box and and our mastermind and some other connections that you've had. So when you did that full proper launch Sarah style in April 2022, you went from a little under 100 subscribers to how many?

300, was it right at 300? Yep, 300.

So you gained 200 people from one launch when it took you a year to get to 100. Were you just like, this is really happening to us?

Yes. We had just gotten back from spring break and we were like, we're going to do this launch. And let me tell you, we worked our tails off and we could not believe the outcome. Like, I don't even know.

Okay, so now you're at 300. You're probably scrambling a little bit because you're now having to fill triple what you were just a month before. And you gave them a free shirt with sign up. So now we're giving you know, 2 shirts out this month. So you're getting all that together. Things are rocking and rolling. Your community is excited. You're creating a lot of buzz. What happened after that April launch?

After the April launch, we then decided that we were going to— we're like, you know, we've got this number. We're going to have to start looking at shirt availability. Also, we have the $25 option for the shirt, but then we have the $35 option. Where they can become a plus member and get a matching accessory at that point and start looking at, you know, we weren't familiar with, you know, having to get 100 pieces of a necklace or 100. We had never had to deal with that. So at that point, we decided to go to like a closed cart model, not only to create FOMO, but it allowed us to then convert to a waitlist. And so we spent the rest of the year from— we did a 48-hour promo starting the first of each month. And we would add that we would give them an initiative to sign up in the first 48 hours of each month. And we would only offer it to the waitlist and let them know that we had spots available.

And what was their reason? What was that incentive for them to sign up?

So we would always do like just an extra bonus gift in there. Sometimes it would be earrings.

And honestly, sometimes it would be something on the shelf of something we needed to liquidate that we just needed to get rid of. It sometimes it might have been like a discount on a future order. We didn't try to overcomplicate it, but at the same time, enough of an incentive that they were like, oh, I have to join within the first 48 hours or I don't get that extra thing. So I mean, it didn't necessarily— you could say earrings. And you could have 1 or 2 pair of earrings of this kind and 3 or 4 pair of earrings of this kind. And they don't know that everybody's not getting the same thing and it's not making you money sitting on the shelf. So it was a way to get them to sign up and you get stuff off your shelf too.

And then now we're giving everybody this item or only the people that signed up in that month.

So we did not say it out publicly that we would give them something extra. It was always in that white list email flow that we would do at the beginning of the month.

Okay, I love that. Okay, so I'm writing that down. A little tip from Whitney and Andrea. Okay, so then we start doing this kind of 48-hour flash sale every single month right before the new t-shirt drops and gets sent out. And so are you gaining more than you're losing? Like, I know we have churn every month. Were you gaining more than you were losing, as many as you were losing, or were you still losing as more than you were gaining?

So we never went below the number. I don't feel like we always kept— we, even if we would lose some, we would gain that plus a few more back.

Okay, so there was always this recurring— so whatever you were losing, you were just staying even. You didn't have a lot of growth, but you weren't depleting every month. And I think that's the hard thing for closed cart models is that it feels like we're always losing people every month and we're never launching to get to gain that. But you were doing similar to that waitlist launch, right? Like, I've got spots open, you can get this free thing that I have left over from maybe last month or the month before. And then you were just steadily getting people back in and your bucket wasn't leaky from month to month. So that's a really great place to be in. Do you have another full-on launch that year? Did you only launch in April?

We only launched in April. The only thing we did do a Black Friday deal where we had buy 6 months or 12 months of the club. And then in December we told them, which is not really a great time, but we told them if they got in before January 1st, then they would be locked in at the $25 and $35 because we were going up January 1st.

Okay, this is a great topic of discussion because I just did a podcast about price increases. And so if you listen to that past podcast about increasing your price, this is exactly what Whitney and Andrea did that I talk about using it as a marketing promotion. So you were increasing your price in January and so you ran a promo. Was that publicly or just an email?

No, we were very, very public about it. We did lives about it. We sent emails about it. We were very specific that the current members were not going to be affected. But it was a huge push that if you would join before January 1st, you were locked in to that $25 and $35. And so we did see an increase in members, um, to be able to lock in. Um, and it also helped too because those people that, you know, might were on the fence that were starting to think about budgeting for the new year, we said if you cancel and then you miss us and decide to rejoin, you're not locked in anymore. So when you start thinking about that churn in January, you know, in the back of their head they're thinking, man, but if I cancel, I'm not ever going to be able to have that $25 and $35 price again. So I think both of those tactics helped us, um, with it the end of the year.

Okay, great. So how did you end last year? How do you end up in 2022? We started 2022 with maybe a little less than 100, and how did we end 2022?

With 500 members.

Let's give that just a slow clap on the podcast. 500. So you, you went from having less than 100 subscribers to over 500 subscribers in that one year. And if we just recap what you did last year is that you did a huge launch in April and that really built a lot of momentum. And you did that with a free shirt with signup and you gave it to all of your existing members and you brought in affiliates for that launch. And so then you followed that major launch up with these flash sales every single month, showing them the new t-shirt, giving them an incentive to go ahead and sign up in that 48 hours, and you were able to maintain your subscriber numbers. Then you run a Black Friday promotion, then you run a price increase promotion, and you end the year over 500 subscribers. And I know that was your goal, um, going into the year, which felt like a very lofty goal at the beginning of the year. But as you put the work in, it started to pay off. I mean, how does it feel to have 500 subscribers at that point at the end of last year?

I mean, to know that we worked so hard— we set that goal at like the very beginning of the year. I was like, we can do it, we can do it, we're gonna make it happen. And just to know that we actually got there was like—

I mean, we had a celebration, and as you should. Yeah. So We're a few months into the new year, and I know you just got done with a launch, and that's why I wanted to have you on the podcast today, because what I've seen from you two is that you've been super consistent. And you know how I feel about consistency, like it's— it drives everything. You did the work, you created the plan, you executed the plan, and you've been consistent ever since. It's not like you did this one thing in April and you didn't do anything since then, because if you would have done that I guarantee you would be back down to 100 by now if you just did that big launch in April and said, you know what, we're good. And then slowly, slowly, slowly, every month that churn is going to chip away and you, you know, you won't be back. You'll, you'll be back to nothing again. You'll have to basically start all over. So it's gaining that instant burst of momentum and building off of it every single month. So you said to me that you had a little bit of churn in January. Again, we all do. We have churn every single month. I looked at the churn that you told me you had. It's like 4%. It's really good. And so I just want you to remember that. I think it's hard when we go from having like, say, less than 100 subscribers to 500, we see that number and we're like, oh my God, all these people canceled. We have to remember that. We have to remember our retention rate and we have to track that so that we don't get in our head about how many people canceled. You're in a really awesome retention rate right now. A 96% retention rate is amazing. So we can't get down on ourselves about a 4%. When we can look at it in a percentage and not a number, it makes us feel better. So let's talk a little bit about what you've been doing since the new year and where we're at now.

Okay. So at the beginning of— no, at the end of January, we did a giveaway It was for a 6-month subscript free subscription for— we ran it through KingSumo. So they would sign up and we drew for the winner on the 31st of January. So we collected lots of emails through that giveaway and we were able to—

we did put some ad spend behind the giveaway just because putting the ad spend behind the giveaway, we were hoping that it would be a good option to also get new emails to capture for when we did run our launch. So with our giveaway, we ended up having— getting 1,228 new emails that we were able to add. We use Klaviyo to add to our list that we could then target during our launch.

That's great because I see from your stats that you gave me that you had 1,714 um, contestants through your KingSumo, and 1,228 of those were brand new to your list. So you had roughly 500 people that were already on your list join the giveaway, but you got 1,200 new leads with $377. So I think that's a huge outcome, and you should be really proud of that. So you do the giveaway, now you're into launch. And tell me about this launch.

This launch, we did the 4-day launch, but it was still the same plan that we did last year, and we gave away a free shirt again.

So we actually decided this year we were going to start it— we are going to do 4 days leading up to when the cart closed on the 15th. Now when I say when the cart closed, that 15th is the cutoff for you to be able to receive that month's shirt when you sign up.

It was technically open since the first?

It has been, yes, it has. Okay. So we decided instead of doing it on the first, we were going to do it as we led up to when it closed. So we actually kicked it off on Super Bowl Sunday on that afternoon and we geared it towards what are the women going to do. And so that's kind of how we launched, started our launch of Let the men watch the game and let the girls— let's kick off our T-Shirt Club launch and join the club.

I love it. So you ran your launch, you got affiliates. Did you have any new affiliates this time or was it just your past affiliates?

We had new affiliates go live with us that we had never had go live with us before.

And so with our launch, we did a 4-day launch and then within the launch we always make out a schedule beforehand. We know exactly what we're going to do in those 4 days. Weeks before, and we sit down with our team. Everybody knows exactly what they're going to be doing. But something that we do every single launch is always rinse and repeat our emails. So we do an AM and a PM email every single day. So through the 4-day launches, 8 emails went out.

And I see that you say your open rate was between 30 and 33%. You're recapping the lives from the day and offering, you know, inviting them to join. So you did affiliates, you did emails, you did lives, you did socials. Anything else that you did? That, that sums it up. Did you do a free gift?

We did not.

The free— the only thing was the— for everybody that signed up during that time till the 15th got the free shirt.

Okay, so you did have a free t-shirt. For the launch. Yes. And so you got how many new members on this launch?

155.

155 new members.

Okay.

Now I did ask you how many of them were from your affiliates, and you told me 47, which is almost a third of your total. So 30% of that was from your affiliate traffic. You had 1,200 brand new leads right before you went into launch from your giveaway. You stayed consistent with your launch plan, with your emails. And something that you told me here too that I think is awesome, because I didn't even ask you that, but you said, um, 98% of the people that joined to get that free t-shirt during our launch have stayed through the March.

And yes, that was a big fear of ours last year when we did it. We were like, oh no, is everybody going to cancel after they get their first 2 shirts, you know, that next month? And it didn't. And we actually tracked the numbers this time, and the same thing, they didn't cancel.

I love it. So let's talk a little bit about those takeaways from your launch. Okay, I asked you what worked. Tell me what worked for this launch.

All the lives, We did 2 lives several days. How many lives?

Um, 7 lives in 4 days.

Okay.

Yes.

What else?

A lot of them were with affiliates. When the affiliates would come on with us, we always let our affiliates use their link just because they've used their time to help us go live. We always do like a Q&A type live where people will just put questions, any kind of questions they have in the comments, and we just sit there and kind of answer any questions they may have. And then, you know, we're not all— I think it's just going at it at different angles. You know, you have some people that want to read the emails, they want the recap, the short version. You have some people that want to sit there and watch the full live. You have some people that want to see the social media post several times a day about it. So as long as you're doing just rinsing and repeating every single thing, not recreating the wheel just being able to use that same information. Um, I think that's how you get the traffic, it's just using that same information.

Consistency, that's all it is. It's just creating a plan. I think that's the first challenge for anybody that's about to launch, is creating the launch plan. And if they're members of LauncherBox, we have it laid out for them so they don't have to even figure it out. Like I know it works. I've done that launch plan over and over and over and over again. And then, oh, here's Whitney and Andrea who did the same launch plan, and oh, it worked for them too. So many of our members run that launch plan and it just works. So you don't have to sit there and figure it out on your own. You have resources to do that. And if you just start to put those pieces in place and run the launch, you only ran one big launch a year. Except for that end of year last year where you did the price change kind of launch. But I mean, that what, 5x'd your subscription? It was the launch plan plus what you guys did with those monthly flash sales. Had you not had those flash sales, you would have been just filling that bucket at the end of the year. So that combination was a really sweet combination for you guys that really helped your growth. And then you do it again. You just said, okay, this worked amazing back in April. Let's do it again after the first of the year. We already have the plan, we've already written the emails, we already know what to do, and now let's do a little bit more. Because you were figuring it all out in the first time, so you have to write the emails, you have to figure out what you're going to talk about live, you have to figure it out the first time, right? But now the second time, you already have the emails, you already figured out the plan, you already know what this looks like and what people responded to the best during the first launch. You brought affiliates on live. For the second big launch. And that was— that changed for you. That was something that you layered in, and you saw a 30% conversion rate on signups from having your affiliates with you. And I think that's important to understand, that data that made a big difference in your launch. And so I think it's just tracking the data, keep working what works. If something stops working, we just chunk it and start something different, try something else, and not get in our head about it. But I'm really, really excited for you guys as far as what this means for your business. Talk to me a little bit about 2023. I know we're, you know, in the third— the first quarter right now, the last of the first quarter. What do you see for this year for your business? So I can't get down there. They don't even know what to say. I know you, I know you see growth. I know that every entrepreneur, every small business owner, that's— we go into the new year and we have eyes on growth. And yes, I know that you guys have seen some expansion in different areas. Let's talk about that. You recently brought on some extra products that you weren't selling before. I call that expansion revenue because we can take what our subscribers love is our subscription, and we can add something that complements that. And so talk to me a little bit about what you did there.

One of the things that really was like an aha moment is during fourth quarter, we started offering some things that were good giftable items and we were selling out and we were like, why did we just think we had to do this just in fourth quarter? People don't just buy gifts in fourth quarter, they need gifts year-round. And then we would offer bundles, and we did really good with our holiday boxes. And so— and people obsess over our plus items. And so I think it was the aha moment of you can stay in your niche of t-shirts, but there's so many more things that can go with your products that complement it. That just increases your cash flow.

Yes.

And increase sales and revenue and cash flow helps you hire. And also a lot of times those one-off products have a higher profit margin for you. So you're building that higher profit margin back into your business, not with another subscription, not with 400 more subscribers, but with more products, higher profit margin, less labor, and you're selling them to your loyal customers, right?

Yes. Because I think that's another thing is that we always thought, well, if we offer anything else, it just needs to be another t-shirt. Well, then we have to make that. And so, yeah, just thinking, oh, just some different product to complement it.

And so you've really been focusing on expanding that revenue. I know through the fourth quarter last year going into this year. So if somebody needs t-shirts in their lives that needs the ones to come check out what you've got in your shop, Where can they find you?

Cottonchaos.com. Everything you need is there. Um, you can get a hold of us there. Our phone number's there. Our custom request form is there. Everything is in one spot, so you shouldn't have any trouble finding anything you need. We're on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok also, but, um, we're pretty accessible.

We are.

Now let's give, let's give some advice because, you know, my podcast is about inspiring other small businesses to take the leap and launch their dang box that they've been thinking about forever. What advice would you give? Maybe somebody has launched their subscription box like you and they've gotten 10, 20, 30 subscribers, but they haven't really dug into actually launching properly. What advice would you give them if they're kind of in that stage?

I would say if you're a member of Launch Your Box, go get the launch plan, set it up, get it all figured out, and run it. Because it's, it's, it's like flawless. I'm almost like it's inevitable if you have to convert from it.

And I think don't rush it. Don't— if you're not ready, don't do it. Don't do it until you have everything in place to do it. Don't have your emails halfway done. Don't have your schedule halfway done. Don't do it without a sales page. Have every— take a week, take a month, take 6 months. Get all the keys.

No, no, no.

Whitney, what?

Don't get them in trouble. Don't take 6 months.

Don't take 6 months. I know, but I'm just saying don't rush it. Like, don't do it until you have every single thing checked off your checklist. Because that is how it's going to run flawless, and that's how you're going to reap what you sow, is by having everything in place instead of just rushing it and doing it and then being disappointed by the outcome.

The number one thing is obviously having an audience to do this launch to. Yeah, and that's really, really important, and that's where most people get disappointed. It's not because their launch wasn't good, it's just because they didn't have enough people to be in front of. So it's those things that Woody was talking about. There's so much of it that you can pre-prep before you're in a launch, and that's number one, your sales page, then your emails that are going to come with it. You can schedule all your graphics, you can make all your graphics ahead of time, then, you know, make a couple of outlines for your lives and you're ready to go. It's just about putting it in place, getting over the fear of trying something that's going to be a little bit intense. And that's why we only do it for 4 days, because that's not sustainable for a long period of time. I've tried it, trust me, it doesn't work. And that's where the 4 days comes into place, because if you can put all of your energy, all of your attention on one thing for 4 days and really build up the excitement for it, it's going to convert. And so that's why we only do it for 4 days. But there's a lot of work that goes into before the 4 days actually happen. You can't get into the 4 days and then plan everything out. You have to have it ready before you launch to make it super successful the way that Whitney and Andrea did. And one thing that they did well is they knew they didn't have a huge following to launch to, and they got affiliates involved, and that was people that they knew that they had networked with that had met over time. And that's all something that we can do. We know people in different industries, we know different business owners. If you're part of Launch Your Box, you know a lot of different business owners. And so it's taking the relationships that we've built throughout the years and getting them to help us get in front of their people too. And that's all an affiliate is. It's not, you know, that you're out searching on the interwebs for an influencer that fits some demographic. It's somebody that you know. It's a micro-influencer. It's someone that has a smaller niche down audience that is different from yours. That's a good, a good affiliate. They're not out there looking for people that have t-shirt clubs that sell t-shirts. They're not— I'm not their affiliate. I have my own t-shirt subscription. These are people that are not selling t-shirts. They're getting in front of different people that are not selling the same thing. And that's— but they have their ideal person in their audience. That's what you need to look for. Those are relationships that you need to build, and that can turn into 30% of your launch right there. So, all right, great debrief from Cotton Chaos. If you want to check out their t-shirts, go over to cottonchaos.com. Thanks, ladies.

Thanks.

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.