Inside My Subscription Box Business: Year-End Recap + 2026 Strategy

This year didn't go exactly as planned. There were wins I didn't see coming, a few flops I definitely didn't expect. I launched, I adjusted, and I learned a lot about what's actually moving the needle in my subscription box business. In this episode, I'm pulling back the curtain and sharing the real story so you can walk into 2026 with more clarity, more focus, and a strategy that fits you. Let's get into it. Welcome to the Launch Your Box podcast with weekly tips, tricks, and strategies to start, launch, and grow your subscription box. Now here's your host, Sarah Williams. Welcome back to the Launch Your Box podcast. This is the first episode for 2026, and I'm doing something just a little different today, um, for the brand new year. But I, I want you to think of it as meeting me for coffee today. Like, I've got my coffee right here. I'm just sitting super casually today, but we're just gonna have like girl talk or girl-to-guy talk, who's ever listening out there. Um, but I just want to share, um, some things. And you know, I'm gonna share some really— some great things. I'm gonna share some challenging things. I'm gonna share some things I've never shared before on the podcast about the direction that I'm going. Um, but you know, as Subscription Box Coach, one of the things that I, um, really take pride in is pulling back the curtain, being transparent, being honest, being actionable, encouraging. And I just want to pull back the curtain on my own business for you in this episode. And so, um, you know, I want to show you exactly what happened inside my business for 2025. We're going to talk about what worked so that maybe you're encouraged or inspired by that. We're going to talk about what flopped. We're going to talk about where we grew. And let's go back, like, I need you to know that I flop too. I need you to know that I have failures too. Um, I want you to know, like, what grew in our business this year, um, and where I'm headed for 2026, um, as far as subscription boxes go. And so, um, if you're in this season of reflection or really just trying to figure out your next move, this episode's for you. So let's get started with the nitty-gritty. I feel like I'm gonna need to take a drink for this one. And I'm just drinking coffee with creamer. There is nothing else in here. Let me have a drink before we get started on this one, because we're gonna start with numbers. Because while numbers never tell the full story, they don't lie. And they show patterns. So let's dig into the numbers this year. Um, so really I had 4 launches this year. One of them was kind of a flop. 3 of them were great. Um, I added 1,300 new subscribers in 2025. 860 of those came from 3 of the 4 launches. My launch in April, my launch in July, and my launch in August. My launch in March was a flop, and you're going to kind of learn a little bit more of that later when I talk about the challenges. I had a major challenge in March that was unrelated to my launch, but it affected my launch in a big way. And so we're going to break— I'm going to break down each of these launches for you. I can tell you what I did and whether that worked or didn't work. But let's just start with March. So March, I decided to do a t-shirt club only launch. Aside from my very first t-shirt club launch, I had never just launched the t-shirt club by itself before, and the numbers were kind of dwindling over the years. And I thought, I really just need to do a big push about the t-shirt club. And so we did. We set up for a 5-day t-shirt club launch. I also ran like 30 days of t-shirts, like every single day for March. I wore a t-shirt every single day and I posted it and, and encouraged our audience to post what they were wearing. And so this one was a big miss for me. And I don't quite know, like, I know, but I don't honestly know if it was the t-shirt only subscription that was a flop or here's what happened. I had a major challenge in March. Um, if you follow me at all, um, whether you're inside LauncherBox or you're part of Framed, um, I had all of my subscription payments detach in March from my payment processor, which meant none of my payments ran for March. Now you have to remember that 80% of my business is subscriptions, so you can imagine how I'm feeling. 80% of my income was not processing. And no one was helping me until I got a lawyer involved. And then all of a sudden everything got reattached. But it was right in the middle of this t-shirt club launch. I was stressed. I was begging our subscribers to go in and put a new credit card in, which by the way, only about 25% of them did. Luckily, I was able to recover all the payments but it happened through this launch. And so I don't know if it was just the wrong offer to offer t-shirt club only. I don't know if it was the timing with all the detached payments. I don't know if it was the wrong time of year. I tried something new, it didn't work. It's okay, it's okay. I got about 60 new subscribers from March, um, which was not expected. I expected hundreds. Um, and so it's a lesson learned. Like, should I continue to do a t-shirt only launch or not, because what I do know is that when I do the monogram box launch, I always get over 100 t-shirt club subscribers during that launch. So is it worth my time, effort, and energy to do a t-shirt club only launch again? I don't know. I'm reassessing that right now. So March was a dud, um, and it took me a long time to get the payment situation figured out. But then we roll into April and I'm preparing for my big April monogram box launch. So March was t-shirt club launch. April was going to be monogram box launch. I was nervous because I just come off this big issue with the detached payments, but everything was set. We had the bonuses set that matched the box. I couldn't push it back, so I went all in and we launched the monogram box. And I had a huge success in the April launch. I did a bonus for this launch that they signed up during the month of April, and all my existing subscribers got a bonus monogram tee. And so it was a monogram tee that matched one of the other wearable items in the April box. And so we had great performance from that. We got hundreds of subscribers from that launch. And so that felt successful after I came off this flop. So just because one thing doesn't work, it doesn't mean that the next thing is not going to work. And literally, it was, it was 30 days. It was a 30-day time frame from the t-shirt club launch to the monogram box launch, and it went successful. Now, my next launch was in July. Um, and so here's what— here, let me just preface this for you if you're following along with the timeline. I like to launch the monogram box twice a year, spring and fall. So I did an April and an August monogram box launch. I tried a t-shirt club launch, didn't work. Um, the only other launch that I do for the subscriptions is July, and that is my teacher tee launch. So I have a subscription called Tees for Teachers and it's my baby subscription. And, you know, at some point I wonder why I kept doing it, but I just really loved it. And this year showed me why I kept doing it. So in July, we had the Teacher Tee launch, and I always do it in July because teachers are getting ready to go back to school. So they'll get their first t-shirt the first week of August. And so I did a bonus this year. It was a personalized Teacher Tee, so it had teacher written on it and then Mrs. Williams through the teacher. So it was a personalized bonus and it was probably the best bonus I've ever offered. I don't know if it was timing. I don't know if it was the bonus. I don't know if my ads were just killing it, but I went from 168 teacher subscribers to 401. And I'm so excited about that because it showed me I've been kind of limping this little subscription on, you know, I've got thousands of subscribers. So this little 168 was kind of just one of those things on the back burner. And so it showed me if I give it a little more attention, it, it can grow. And then August came along. So I did that in July, it was strictly for teachers, and now August I was doing monogram box, um, launch again. Now August was my biggest launch of the year. I got 450 new subscribers, and the bonus I did for the August launch was something I hadn't done before. Um, so back in April we gave everyone the monogrammed t-shirts. If you were a subscriber, you got it. If you were a new subscriber, you got it. Everyone that was signed up for that in that April launch by May 1st got that new t-shirt. Okay, so for August, I wanted to do something a little different. I've been focusing on profit margins, and so I was like, how can I give a bonus without having to give thousands of them away again? And so I had some bags left over from the previous box, and I had about 150 of them, maybe close to 200. And I put it as an early bird bonus offer. And so it was like, if you get in by this date, you're going to get this bonus, which was these 2 bags that were in the previous subscription. And so for me, I didn't have to give it to everyone because all the— all my existing subscribers got this in their last box. So it was something I had left over and it was something that served as a great bonus. We sold out of them in that time frame and we had over 450 new subscribers in this launch. And so this was just a great use of inventory I already had. It was a great way to add a bonus in without having to spend a ton of money. And these 3 launches brought in 860 new members. And it's wild that they weren't even like, they weren't like these, like I didn't like get thousands of subscribers. But you know what? It's, it's the bump that you need. It's the lift that you need. Like getting a couple hundred subscribers 3 or 4 times a year is fabulous. And that's what I did. And I evened it out and I didn't plan just one launch. And I think that's a lesson I've learned over the last few years is that I can't put all my eggs into one launch a year because what happens if that launch was my March launch? It flopped and then I would have been stuck. You have to strategically plan launches throughout the year. You cannot bank on just one if you want to continue to have growth because now I have growth and I'm building on growth instead of having growth once a year, losing it the next 11 months and trying to grow again. So let's talk about what happened in between these launches, because that's where things really started to shift for me. Um, there was this lift in subscribers in May and September. May and September were our biggest months of new subscribers outside of these launch windows, and I believe they were because there was so much momentum from the launching. So I was launching in April. Boom, I got a big lift in new subscribers for May. There's a lot of buzz. There's a lot of leftover momentum. There's a lot happening. So we got a ton of subscribers in May and a ton of subscribers in September, even outside of the launch. And I want you to think about that because a good launch doesn't stop when the launch is over. It keeps going if you fuel it right. Another, another part of this is I'm ending the year with a 94% retention rate across all 3 of my subscriptions. And, and listen, that tells me that people aren't just buying the box, but they're staying for the experience. So I want you to take a look like these are the numbers I want you to think about. What's your retention rate this year? What was your retention rate last year so that you have something to go off of because these things are part of making your business profitable. If I have strong launches and then strong retention on top of that, that's where the profit lies. Now I want to talk about a couple— like, I would say probably my biggest win with the subscriptions this year. I was thinking about this question, um, like, what was my biggest win? My biggest win was that we more than doubled our teacher subscription with one 5-day launch. Remember I told you I went from 168 to 401? And I think what made it so successful? Why was that my big win for the year? I think it's timing. My teachers were off work in July. They're prepping to go back to school. We built a lot of community connection around that. The offer, the bonus offer was really good, and I put a lot of energy into that. And so I would call that my biggest subscription win for the year. Now, my revenue reflection— when I look back at my revenue, here's a couple things. These are two key points that I want you to learn, because it's not all sunshine and roses, okay? In 2025, I ended 4.8% down compared to the year before, 4.8%. But— and I'm going to put the but in there because it's not always about year-to-year growth. Okay. But I increased my profit margins by 12% in 2025, and I did that by focusing on really smart buying decisions instead of buying the fun things and hoping they sell. I really focus on reducing inventory waste. And the other thing that, you know, is part of the but— I ended 4.8% down for 2025, but I hit $6 million in subscription box sales. I hit $6 million in subscription box sales since I've had my subscription box for the last 8 and a half years. In 8.5 years, my subscriptions have generated $6 million. And when I sit and think about that, that's a big deal. So what if I was down 4.8% last year? So what? I, I increased how much I got paid by 12%. And also, I hit this huge milestone in revenue for subscription box sales. And I'm proud of that. And so my goal is not to be down next year, but you know what? I'm going to take that 4.8% and I'm going to take it in stride. OK, you can be down in revenue and up in profit like me. And that's the kind of shift I want you to think about for your plan. Even though I was down 4.8%, I made more money. I made more money. And at the end of the day, that's what matters. Not this revenue goal that I didn't hit, but how much is in my bank account. That's the real goal right now. Of course, no year is without challenges, and I, I have a couple. And I didn't have a lot of challenges this year. I was thinking about this Um, I had the major detached payment challenge. Um, it hit me hard. It wiped me out. There were days that I laid in bed crying, wondering if my business was going to survive this. That's how bad it was. Um, it's a long story, but luckily I got it back within about 3 weeks and fixed everything. And, and here's the thing, As I was going through it, I was very transparent with my audience. This is what's happened. This is where I need your help. Um, we sent email after email. I did lives, I did posts, and it's just one of those things that was this freak thing that there was nothing I could have done to prevent it. It happened. I had to problem solve through it, but there were a few days in those 3 weeks where I wondered if it was time just to shut it all down. I didn't know if I could rebuild it from, from square one again. I didn't know if I had it in me. I felt completely defeated. Tears are welling up in my eyes right now as I'm thinking about it. It was probably the hardest thing I ever went through with my business and Luckily, I have a really great support system that kept talking me through it. What can we do? How can we help? And it was finally just reaching out to a lawyer, and all that lawyer had to do was send one email. And it's crazy that that's what it took, but it was also someone in my circle that said, hey, I know a lawyer that could help you. And I said, give me her information. So, you know, when you feel like you got hit the hardest, I'm going to tell you not to give up, even when you feel like you want to, even when it hits you hard. Oh, like it did me. I'm glad I didn't give up. I'm grateful I didn't give up. And I'm so thankful for the support I had around me. My husband, my employees, my friends in the business. It's really important who you surround yourself with. Now, challenge number 2 is a little bit more— it's not as intense. I have had huge challenges with social media algorithm this year. If you feel like nothing is getting seen, same. I, I have been struggling. I've shared it a couple times in LauncherBox. Um, when people have, you know, brand new pages and they're like, nobody's liking my things, I'm like, same. Look, I've got 45,000 followers and I have one like. And so that's been a challenge for me. And what it's done is it's caused me to look at things differently. Um, I use email a lot more. I have started a broadcast channel. I'm running ads more consistently because just posting on social media is not enough to get the traction that I needed. And so that's been a challenge for me that I've been working on. I just saw this huge drop in visibility, um, this year. Even my strong content wasn't getting the reach it used to, even my lives, even my reels. Um, and so it really forced me to think about things differently. And it's hard when you feel like you're doing all the things right and not seeing traction, but that's when you learn to pivot and not quit. And that leads me into some things that we're changing for 2026. So all in all, let's talk about what's working. Subscriptions, subscriptions, subscriptions, subscriptions. Um, they're working. And even though I was down 4%, like, that's a drop in the hat compared to, um, what someone else might be dealing with right now. But in 2026, I want to get our subscriptions to an an all-time high. We got really, really close this fall, and I know I need to make that move a little earlier in the year so that the retention plays out through the year and I have that number multiplied throughout the year. We go through these December, January months that are just full of cancellations. Like, if you're feeling it, like, it's, it's no joke. Like, you're gonna have more cancellations in December and January, and that's to be expected So I have to get on it quick this year. I can't let those cancellations sit there through the spring. I got to get it back up so that I can make sure I get my subscribers, all my numbers up. I want to be the highest I've ever been this year, and I think I can do it. And so the way I think I need to do that is I need to have more growth between my launches. Okay, so we're moving into some more strategic email marketing, more paid ads to grow all year long, not just during those launches. So I'm going to be very strategic about that in the off months this year. I'm also going to continue to work on my profit margins. I'm reducing expenses this year. Um, there's a lot happening, and I'm going to be taking you on the journey of what's happening this year, um, on this podcast. But I'm making some big changes this year, and you're going to start to see them in the next month or two. Um, but reducing expenses is my number one, number one priority this year. And really, my other thing I tried to do that this year that in 2025 I tried to tell myself to focus more on subscriptions and less on one-time products, but I just kept coming back with more collections, more stuff, more things to sell. And I'm sorry, more things to sell. And the 80/20 rule showed me the truth that 80% of my revenue is coming from subscriptions. So we're focusing our time, our energy, and our inventory on that 80%. I'm going to stop working so much on the one-offs. I'm going to stop feeling like I have to produce the next collection, that I have to buy all the inventory to go with everything that sits on my shelf all year long. I'm going to put so much effort into only subscriptions this year, and I think that's going to make the big difference. You don't need more stuff in your business. You need more of what's working. So let's bring this home with a little bit of reflection, because that's where your 2026 strategy really starts. I want you to ask yourself and reflect on these 3 questions. Okay. Number 1, what worked this year? What worked in your business this year and how can you double down on it? For me, I just told you, is those teacher subscriptions. I already have strategy in place that's going to start this month to continue to grow that. I'd like to double it again this year. What flopped? What flopped in your business? T-shirt club launch. I'm not giving up on it completely because it's the first time I've done that and I don't know if it coincided with the whole detached payment debacle. But what do you need to let go of so that you can double down on what worked? I want you to ask yourself that question. Write this down. What do I need to let go of so I can double down on what worked? And then the third question that I want you to ask yourself is, where do I actually want to go in 2026? At year-end, where do I want to be and what change needs to happen to get me there? You don't have to do all the things, just the right ones. A couple great launches, a couple great email campaigns, some paid ads— it can change your business. And if you're not already inside LauncherBox, I want you to come join us because we're going to go through this year strategically together and you don't have to figure this out all alone. Here's to a focused, profitable, and more intentional year ahead.