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Birchbox started the trend in 2010. I started spinning the idea for an asian snack box thereafter. I found you in 2011 and gave up on it. By 2012 it became th

Birchbox started the trend in 2010. I started spinning the idea for an asian snack box thereafter. I found you in 2011 and gave up on it. By 2012 it became the default business model for online wantrepreneurs. Then Cratejoy spun up in 2013 and went gangbusters in 2014. Now in 2015 it's the late comers to the trend with most of the profitable niches already covered. I imagine by 2016 with all the low hanging fruits taken you're gonna need to be a established player to play the game considering the logistics costs and distributing something of substance. Then we'll be on to something else to copy. Biggest lesson I took out of watching the mail order box business is more or less it's a marketing game. It's all pretty much the same but reaching the potential audience is the hardest part. This isn't competition like McDonalds vs Burger King where you can just drive a block down to get a burger, it's competition to being first to introduce the idea of hamburgers.

bemmu 11y ago
Perhaps the next thing would be to provide widgets / marketing services for these subscription businesses?
- alaskamiller 11y ago
  Cratejoy is basically a shopify clone so they got the software side covered. The hardest part is still shipping. When I looked into this the shipping was the killer, it eats up all possible margins until you get to scale. I learned about how FedEx and UPS works and how they handle last mile deliveries with the USPS and so on so forth. Shyp is basically Postmate arbitraging on a national shipping account. Amazon FBA is basically just Amazon arbitraging on Amazon. That's the opportunity right there. Being somewhere in between Shyp and Amazon FBA. They call it 3PL, third party logistics provider. You see that problem getting written about quite often. Everyone thinks they can solve it themselves but there's not quite a dedicated modern solutions provider. But after working for a physical products company operating on a national level the only thing I've learned is that automating sending thousands of packages anywhere consistently is hard as all heck.
- alaskamiller 11y ago
  Also, I'll tell you the trick why Birchbox worked and became hundreds of millions of dollars and why these other box startups aren't in the same game. Birchbox found the best opportunity to capitalize on. They charge subscribers to receive a box of makeup samples. In other words they've convinced people to pay money for ads. The COGS are basically free and on top of that they leverage and poll their subscriber base for data that gets sold right back to the manufacturers. Everyone else is just trying to replicate Sears Roebuck but unable to convincingly explain their value proposition.

bemmu 11y ago

Perhaps the next thing would be to provide widgets / marketing services for these subscription businesses?

alaskamiller 11y ago
Cratejoy is basically a shopify clone so they got the software side covered. The hardest part is still shipping. When I looked into this the shipping was the killer, it eats up all possible margins until you get to scale. I learned about how FedEx and UPS works and how they handle last mile deliveries with the USPS and so on so forth. Shyp is basically Postmate arbitraging on a national shipping account. Amazon FBA is basically just Amazon arbitraging on Amazon. That's the opportunity right there. Being somewhere in between Shyp and Amazon FBA. They call it 3PL, third party logistics provider. You see that problem getting written about quite often. Everyone thinks they can solve it themselves but there's not quite a dedicated modern solutions provider. But after working for a physical products company operating on a national level the only thing I've learned is that automating sending thousands of packages anywhere consistently is hard as all heck.
alaskamiller 11y ago
Also, I'll tell you the trick why Birchbox worked and became hundreds of millions of dollars and why these other box startups aren't in the same game. Birchbox found the best opportunity to capitalize on. They charge subscribers to receive a box of makeup samples. In other words they've convinced people to pay money for ads. The COGS are basically free and on top of that they leverage and poll their subscriber base for data that gets sold right back to the manufacturers. Everyone else is just trying to replicate Sears Roebuck but unable to convincingly explain their value proposition.