160: 5 Reasons Why You Should Start a Subscription Box Right Now

Have you been sitting on your subscription box idea too long? On this episode, I'm giving you 5 more reasons to get started right now. Stop sitting on the sidelines and let's take action to get your subscription box up and running this year. Come join me. 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 we're going to talk about 5 reasons you should start a subscription box right now. I feel like it's such a good time to talk about this because you could turn on the news and see what the economy is like any day of the week. It's big box retailers are closing stores faster than you can keep up with. Every single day I hear of a new big box retailer that's shutting down 50 stores, 100 stores, 300 stores. It's going so fast that you can't even keep up with it. Small businesses are shutting their doors daily. When you look at small businesses pre-2020, we are less than half of what we used to be. And so you're probably thinking, why should I start a subscription box right now, Sarah? Like, how does this make sense? I want to talk to you about that because people are buying. I see it every day in my own business. I just finished a great launch where I added 421 new subscriptions to my business. That is tens of thousands of dollars of recurring revenue every single month. Okay. And I have the honor of working with thousands of subscription box owners every single day. And I'm seeing them grow their businesses. I'm seeing them launch and selling out. From their first launch. So I don't want you to look at the news and see what's happening and think, okay, the economy is bad. I'm going to wait till it gets better because there's really no time like the present. If we continue to wait, we'll always find an excuse of why we shouldn't start a subscription box. But if you do something now and you take action now, in 6 months, where will you be? The thing about the recurring revenue model is that it adds a layer of stability, predictability, and security to our business that most businesses don't have. You can see all these businesses going out of business. They don't have recurring revenue in their business model, and that's what makes it different for us. The subscription box industry reached $22.7 billion by the end of 2021. And it is expected to triple that number by 2027. Do you understand the magnitude of that? Triple $22 billion by 2027. It is our time to get into the market. It's our time to grab the market share. The number one market share right now in subscriptions are replenishment subscriptions. That's if I buy, say, dog food, which I have a subscription for dog food and it comes every 2 weeks. So that's a replenishment. Like my dogs are eating the dog food, it comes every 2 weeks. Okay. The number 2 market share was curation subscriptions. You're curating an experience like most of us do in my world for that consumer. Now, Here are some fun facts because I recently read an article in the Wall Street Journal and I like dog-eared it. I like highlighted it, circled, I wrote all over this article because it was really powerful to me. But it said approximately 25% of all online shoppers have subscribed to one or more subscription services to receive products on a recurring basis. 25% of all online shoppers, y'all. That's huge. It also said that convenience and the discovery of new products are major drivers for subscription box purchasers. They appreciate the ease of receiving products regularly without needing to reorder. And they also cited that one of the biggest opportunities is in the niche markets. And providing high-quality experience to increase subscriber retention. So this article showed me 4 things, okay? And I want you to really think about these things. Number 1, the subscription box market is growing rapidly. Okay, rapidly. It's time to get in. Number 2, 1/4 of all online shoppers have had a subscription before. So they understand this model. 1/4, 1 in every 4 people have had a subscription at some point. Number 3, it's all about the convenience and the experience, and it's less about the stuff. And number 4, if you've listened to my podcast at all, you've heard me say the riches are in the niches. That's what they're saying. Niche markets are growing and it's one of the biggest opportunities. And I want you to really focus on that as you start your subscription box. So let's dig in. Let's talk about why you should start a subscription box right now. If that wasn't enough for you, I'm going to give you 5 reasons. Number 1, and this is my favorite, and I think this is everyone's favorite that I come in contact with because we just don't like this part of the business. But number 1, you don't have to constantly sell. Okay? If I didn't open my shop and sell things today, I would make no income if I didn't have a subscription box. But because I have a subscription box, I know that there are 3 times a month that payments are going to process all the time because I have 3 subscriptions and they're set to go on a certain day every single month. Didn't sell anything else in my business, I know that I can pay the bills. I know that I've made an income. I know I can pay my employees. But if I didn't have a subscription box, I would have to show up every day on social media, in your inbox, and just keep selling, selling, which is not something I want to do. And it's not something most creatives and small business owners want to do. We just want to make the things. and we want people to buy them. We don't want to have to show up and convince you to buy them. We don't want to have to constantly sell. That's one of the number one reasons you should start a subscription box. Number two, and I've just seen this over and over and over again, and I'm gonna give you a good example, but number two is you're creating loyal raving fans. When someone subscribes to your subscription box, they are your biggest fans. They are giving you their credit card and telling you, go ahead and charge that month after month after month. And most of the time those people want anything that you're selling. They want more of this, more of this, more of this. They will buy all the things. They are your biggest and best customers. Having a conversation yesterday with my mastermind ladies and Christy from Christy's Craft Room is in my mastermind and she was talking about how she's stopping really offering all these one-off things all the time, all these collections every week, because it was just taking a toll to design and cut and create and ship all these one-off orders. And so she really leaned into her subscribers and offered additional kits, offered coordinating items with what they're already getting. And she's selling— I think she told me she sold 800 add-on kits last month to her subscribers that are already getting her subscription box. Y'all, These are our best customers. Once we have a subscriber, the loyalty, the raving fans, like they are your best customers. So it's really creating a lot of loyalty. If I buy a pair of jeans from this boutique and a pair of shorts from another boutique and a skirt from another boutique, there's no loyalty there. But if I had a subscription box coming of denim once a month, I would go back and shop that website because I know my size, I know what I like, I know their quality is good. I know about that business. I'm more likely to shop for other things with them than I would some random shop in my feed. Okay, number 3, the product that you're investing in is already sold. How many times, if you're a current product-based business owner, have you gone to purchase product and you're trying to decide how much should I buy? How much should I invest in this? How well is it going to sell? There's this really sweet spot of buying enough to generate a lot of sales from it, but not buying too much in case it doesn't sell. So there's this really fine line of, you know, being profitable when you're buying one-off products because you never know. And the things that I think are going to sell versus the things that I'm like, I'm not sure about this one, I'll go lower. Those always are the winners. I don't know what it is, but I can be so confident about a product and buy a bunch of it and it still, it would still be sitting on my shelf. So the thing about this product that you're buying for your subscription box is that you don't have to worry about it. When I go buy thousands of something, I know it's already sold. I'm not worried about what I'm going to price it and how long it's going to sit on my shelf and are my customers going to like it. I'm curating the box and buying the product for the box, and it just relieves so much stress and pressure because I already know that it's sold. I already have subscribers. It's going to go in their box, so I'm going to buy it. It's going to go out the door. I'm going to get the money for it. Like, I don't have to worry. and I don't have the extra stress of knowing, will it sell? Did I buy enough? Did I buy too much? All those things for product-based business owners go through our head all the time. Number 4, you create a box, an experience that you are passionate about. Being passionate about your business is going to help you continue to show up. So if you can create a subscription box around one of your passions, you're going to show up and you're going to be able to talk about it. Nonstop, and that's going to benefit you greatly. I love when subscription box owners are their own ideal customer because we know the messaging. We know someone's— what they're feeling or what they're thinking behind our products. We know how to speak to them. We know the benefits that we're providing for them. We know the hangups that they're going to have purchasing, and we can really nail our messaging. You've got to love what you do. It's not transactional. A lot of people think business is transactional, and sometimes it is. And I think it's a little bit gender-based, and I don't mean that in a way, but a lot of guys are very transactional. They're very analytical. It's very transaction-based, and a lot of women are more emotionally based. So if we as women, or any men that have that same mentality of, I want to be passionate about what I do, because there's a lot of men out there that feel that way, that are less transactional. But when we can be passionate about what we sell, it's going to provide longevity. You're not just selling the stuff, you're selling a feeling. You're treating people with a carefully curated experience. And when we can build that into our business model, it's going to create longevity for us in our business, and it's going to allow us to show up on those hard days because you're going to have hard days as a business owner. So being able to be passionate about what you do is very important. And number 5, my favorite, consistent revenue in your bank account every month. It hits at the same time. It's right back up to number 1 where you don't constantly have to sell. I'm going to take you back to 2020. I had a brick-and-mortar store, had a gift shop. It's about 3,000 square feet, and I have a great local customer base. I had my subscription box for about 3 years at that point, and we got notice one day that we had to close our store. And I thought, whoa, what are we going to do here? The whole world was shutting down and I needed to continue my business. I had employees to pay. I still had rent to pay. And I was calmed by the fact that I had this subscription box. So when people were losing their jobs, when people were losing their life, I didn't have to go sell a cute graphic tee and some earrings to match because that felt very insensitive to me. My subscription box That recurring revenue that I had spent 3 years building sustained my business until we opened back up without me having to sell anything. And it grew because people couldn't go out and shop and they already had purchased it. So it wasn't— I didn't have a ton of cancellations. I had some cancellations and they were mostly, I've lost my job, I don't know when I'm gonna go back to work, I need to cancel this for now. And that— and I totally understood that. But so many people were just waiting for their box to to arrive. They couldn't go anywhere, they couldn't do anything, and that saved my business. And it was consistent revenue. I was able to pay my rent, pay my employees, and maintain through those months of unknown. And so let's recap these 5, because these are the reasons why you should start a subscription box business. Number 1, you don't have to constantly sell. Number 2, you're going to create loyal raving fans that want more of you and what you have. Number 3, you don't have to fret about inventory because the product you're investing in is already sold. Number 4, you get to create a box, an experience that you're passionate about. And number 5, that consistent revenue in your bank account is a game changer. It's a game changer in business and it's a game changer in life. So I want you to think about that. Subscription box businesses provide a level of stability, predictability and security in building a business right now. It's not too late to get in the game. I want you to check out a recent episode I did with Bev from Blessed Bee Boutique. It's episode 158. She hit retirement, she retired, got bored, and then 6 months later she started her subscription box and she sold out on her first launch. Or you can check out Megan's story. It's episode 147. She'd been thinking about starting her box for a long time. She bought my new book, One Box at a Time, read it cover to cover in days, and launched her subscription box 3 weeks later and sold out as well. Your time is now. Stop waiting. Stop wishing. Start building a business that you can make an income from and be passionate about. Make sure you subscribe to the Launch Your Box podcast. I'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review it. Let me know which episode is your favorite so far. Don't forget to join me next week right here.