Reading Time: 4 minutes How to Start a Subscription Box Business
This is a post by Ashley about making money.
If you’re looking to start a new business, you were probably forced to come up with solutions to problems you didn’t know existed. It’s all well and good to want a business doing what you love the most, but what if you discover you can make better money elsewhere?
Once you come up with a business idea, you need to come up with a business model too.
How would you keep your customers interested? How would you keep them coming back for more? For many business owners, the best answer would be to start a subscription box service. It’s a steady way to do business, and with a unique idea, you can almost make sure you’ll have a steady stream of income coming.
Then there are some obvious questions, like how to handle the packaging for your subscription boxes. You can either invest in your own boxes, or buy packaging boxes from companies who specialize in this thing. If you want to know more about how to start a subscription box business, keep reading!
Table of Contents
What Do You Have to Offer?
There are countless subscription box services in the market. If you’re looking to get in on some of that action, you need to figure out what value you can offer to your customers that they can’t get anywhere else. Select a single niche market, preferably something you already know a lot about, and then start digging into the competition.
The best approach is to order a box from competing subscription box services and see what they deliver. Consider how you can offer something different, and figure out if there is even a demand for it.
Once you have all these questions answered, it’s time to move on to the next step.
Look Into Different Suppliers
Not all companies would be willing to work with a new box on the market, especially when there are already so many. This is why you need to conduct some extra market research and find out what companies do work with box services. Your market research into your competitors will come in handy.
The brands and products you saw in those boxes belong to companies that already work with box businesses and may be able to serve you too. Be careful though, you don’t want to come up with something everyone else is already doing – that’s the easiest way to fail.
Aim for getting better deals and different products than your competitors that are more in demand, but reaching out to the companies who already work with boxing companies is a good place to start.
Figure Out Delivery and Logistics
Once you know what’s going on in your boxes, how much they might weigh, and what the packaging will look like, you’ll need to look into delivery partners to help you get them to your subscribers. If you plan on delivering to people outside a certain locality, it would be hard for you to deliver all the boxes yourself.
In many cases, your best bet is to work with a delivery service. This way delivery will cost you less, be on time, and the whole process will be efficient.
Create a Brand, Logo, and Website
Now that you have almost everything figured out, it’s time to get the word out about your brand and service. The best way to do this is to invest in online advertising, make a website, and a brand image that you feel many people will sympathize with and like to spend money on.
Create a unique identity that’s meant to stand out, make sure your website is professional and attractive, and aim to make the best first impression possible.
Don’t make the mistake of trying to sell people a service they don’t need, or try to create demand for a service when there isn’t any. These are fatal mistakes that end up being responsible for a startup failing. Make sure you’re not one of them!
Rachel is an Austin blogger, educator, mom, wife, young breast cancer survivor writing about health, saving money, and living a happy life in Austin, Texas.
Rachel has written for HuffPost and Hometalk and has been featured on KXAN, Studio 512, Fox 7 Austin, and CBS Austin.