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Yes. You definitely need to market this to the backpacking crowd. They'll blow $100's on light, compact gear and then shove beans + grinder + aeropress on top..
by throwaway729 10y ago
Yes. You definitely need to market this to the backpacking crowd. They'll blow $100's on light, compact gear and then shove beans + grinder + aeropress on top... and then deal with the mess. Or at least, I will :)
The subscription model isn't great in this respect.
I travel up to a dozen times a year and backpack at least a couple weeks per year (in aggregate).
So that's 3x2x12 (3 cups per day of travel for each work trip) + 3x14 (backpacking trips). And probably another dozen or three here or there for random stuff (full-day bike rides, long drives, run out of beans @ work, etc.)
If I like Sudden, and especially if it's better than Starbucks drip served at airports, I'd use it for all of these things.
But I'm not going to+ sign up for a subscription because the vast majority of the year I'm happy with my espresso machine at home and decent drip at work. It's not like hygiene products where I just need a steady drip. My demand for instant coffee is very bursty. I expect that's true of others as well.
Maybe the logistics just don't work out without a subscription model, which is fine. And I certainly won't pretend to know what I'm talking about. But you're definitely losing one potential customer by forcing me to do a monthly subscription :)
Also, something is confusing in your ordering page. How many servings of coffee do I get for $19? I feel like that'd be useful information to have somewhere on the order page. Is it 8 cups of instant grounds? Or enough instant groups for 8 "cups" of coffee?
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+ well actually, I am to try it out. But I won't mess with starting/canceling the subscription in the future. If you gave me a way to schedule things though, that would convert me for sure, assuming I enjoy the coffee.
- zloof 10y agoIt definitely does work well for backpacking and based on your amount of usage - sounds like something that could work well. Definitely have run some campaigns with a travel focus. However, the bursty demand you mentioned is what we hear from travelers and backpackers - that makes it a lot harder to serve (it's hard to get in front of you right around when you'll need it). A big part of our mission is serving coffee for everyone's need - we have some people who use it camping, we have others who use it on the way to work. There is room for both.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- finnh 10y agoWith the 4-6 (+) shelf life you mention elsewhere on-thread, could you setup a seasonal subscription? "Camping time! Send me x ounces every: May [x] June [] July []"
- zloof 10y agoYeah that could definitely work. We're limited technically at the moment (e.g. can't really extend our platform to do things like that), but hiring a team to enable things like that. What would be really neat is if we learned exactly how much you need and sent you the right amount at the right time.
- finnh 10y agoJust let me schedule it. Trying to "learn" the right time and amount probably won't work well with such small datasets, and has a high risk of annoying your customers. At most, send me a reminder email asking if I want to repeat last year's order.