Subscription Box Answers

Your Subscription Box Northstar - (With Stefan Pretty)

• Liam Brennan

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In this week’s episode of Subscription Box Answers, I’m joined by Stefan Pretty, the CEO of Subbly, for an insightful chat about launching and scaling subscription box businesses.

Stefan introduces Subbly's exciting new "Launch with Subbly" service, which helps subscription box owners create a done-for-you website tailored to their vision.

This offer was inspired by the early days of BusterBox when partnering with Subbly to build a professional, high-converting website gave us the foundation we needed for success.

I also share the story of how BusterBox got started, the lessons learned, and why investing in a great website is key to building a thriving subscription box business. If you’re ready to take your business to the next level, this episode is for you!


If you have a question you want answered on the episode, head over to www.SubscriptionBoxResources.com, join the FREE Facebook group, and post it there.

If you want to take advantage of the new done for you website service Subbly is offering head over here and join the waitlist - https://launch.subbly.me/

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Subscription Box Answers with your host, liam Brennan. You're no rubbish, no crap. Straight to the point podcast with real, actionable tips, real strategies and insights from the industry which will help you start and grow your own successful subscription box business. You ask the questions, you ask the questions, you ask the questions. Liam gives the answers. It's as simple as that.

Speaker 2:

Welcome back to a brand new episode of Subscription Box Answers. I hope you're having a really good day. Today we have the pleasure of welcoming back Stefan Prithi, the CEO of Sobri. How are you, Stefan?

Speaker 3:

I'm doing great. Thanks very much, liam. It's good to be back. I always enjoy doing these episodes with you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, definitely. Your last few episodes went down very well. We got some very good feedback and the listener numbers were quite high as well. Okay, always great to have you back to talk about what's going on in the world of subscription. Now, today we are speaking about a new offer that subli are launching, which is a complete no-brainer, especially if you're only getting started in this industry or if you've been going a while and you need some help with your branding, website and conversions, and we will touch on that later in the episode. But for now and this all ties together, if you bear with us Stefan actually has some questions he wants to ask me, so this will be helpful and you'll know what we mean by the end of the podcast. So go for it.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, thanks very much, liam. So, yeah, you know, the reason that I wanted to switch the format of this podcast episode even though it's your podcast, where I'm essentially interviewing you to your podcast, where I'm essentially interviewing you is because the offer that you've just alluded to is actually inspired, by a large part, because of BusterBox and the relationship that we have with you guys, and this story goes back nine years, right, and, which is crazy, I mean, just before we started recording this podcast, liam and I were having panic attacks. Just before we started recording this podcast, liam and I were having panic attacks realizing how much time has lapsed. But, yeah, it's been a great journey and I think that the origins of BusterBox and Subly's relationship are actually really important, and I think that the story could probably serve as a great example and guiding principle for for people who are looking to start a subscription business or, as you said, uh, who are, uh struggling to get exactly what they're looking for and they're ready to take things to the next level.

Speaker 3:

Um, so, yeah, first, the question is like I know that you guys started, um, I mean it's fitting because I know that you guys started. I mean it's fitting because I know that you guys started BusterBox with the inspiration allegedly, I'm assuming, from BartBox, right? Am I correct in making that assumption?

Speaker 2:

Do you want me to explain that? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:

So I would love to understand how you got to that point.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, so we were. I was doing a different business beforehand that I don't know. I think I told you before. I can't remember I had a job marketplace first of all, double-sided marketplace, never worked. Put a lot of money into it and time never had the experience back then to make it work, acquiring two different sets of customers very hard to make the finances work. Then I was selling products bow ties, which is very, very random. You can't be other business selling bow ties online and no repeat purchases. You'd have to build out like a sweet suits and all just very complicated. You could sell them but not really make any money.

Speaker 2:

So I was watching a random video on youtube, I believe, and it was from gary vaynerchuk and he was talking about subscription boxes and he had just invested in birchbox. I may be wrong here, it's a long time ago, but he was bigging up the concept and immediately a light bulb went off in my head and I was like, oh, this makes sense, you can afford to acquire a customer and there there is repeat purchases. So me and paul, my business partner, got talking and we decided we would try a subscription box. And there's a few different ideas on the table. One was a gym gym box, one was a dog box and I can't really remember the other one, but anyway, the dog box and the gym box. It definitely wasn't a bow tie box no, it definitely wasn't. But we spoke. We spoke for a while and we decided to go with the dog box. Then we obviously did our research. And who comes up? Bark box, because bark box were operating since I think it might have been 2012 and this has gone back for us to 2015, so they were gone for a few years at this stage immediately.

Speaker 2:

Do they ship to ireland? No, they don't ship to ireland. Do they ship to the uk? They don't ship to Ireland. Do they ship to the UK? No, they don't ship to the UK. Is there any other business that does what they do in Ireland and the UK? And there was and there is to this day there's many, many people who set up dog subscription boxes. They obviously think it's easy from the outside. Trust me, it's not easy to own a dog subscription box. But we found a few other companies that were doing it as well, but they didn't seem to be doing it great. So we were like, okay, this is a perfect opportunity for us. Barkbox have been doing this for a few years. They validated the idea. They're not in the UK and Ireland. Many dogs over here. People love their dogs. Let's do it.

Speaker 3:

That's great. I think that's really important and valuable context, because one of the things that we ask you know new customers is who's your north star, and so I think it's really important to have a north star. I think most people probably do have one or two or even three North Stars. They just haven't identified them yet or put on paper or really thought about them as being their North Stars or their inspiration. Great Okay, so that's great to know. You basically concluded that BarkBox was your North Star for BusterBox.

Speaker 2:

So it was just good for us to see that there was another company doing what we wanted to do in a different region, a different country, and we wanted to have our own brand, our own toys. Yeah, no that makes sense.

Speaker 3:

So when we engaged, you were looking for a solution to basically achieve that idea, that concept, that user experience, customer experience and you know there was nothing that was in the market Because you said earlier, before we started recording, that you had a you know a website.

Speaker 2:

I think before the, when you approached Sublylet, you had one that you wanted to launch with, but you knew that it wasn't going to hit yes, um, I created the first version of the website and it was absolutely rubbish, to tell you the truth, and it definitely would not have converted, because I was a website designer and back then I didn't really have much knowledge about how to get the subscription box website converted. So one of the best things we obviously did, we spoke to yourselves and we actually hired yourselves to build the first version of our website, and that really set us up for success. That gave us a lot of advantage in the early days because, like I said, we're not the only dog buying treat box out there. We are the biggest one in the UK and Ireland at the moment, by a long way, I believe, but there are many other ones, like even in Canada and Australia, many different countries, and a big mistake a lot of them had is their websites were just not up to scratch. They simply would not convert.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, I remember when you reached out to us and I think you were just desperate to find a solution and we, basically we were like to give people some context here we were version one of our checkout on subly we're on version like three or four at this stage and it was just me and this is the funny part of the story. It was just me. Uh, I was the support person, I was the programmer, I was the marketing guy. Um, actually, that's not 100.

Speaker 3:

True, there was somebody that worked with me before. I think he was still working with me when, when you reached out, but, um, we basically put a proposal together which was going to basically build the exact flow that you wanted, and it was essentially, it was a hack, right, we built it on top of the existing tooling of the checkout that we had, and you had that version for, I think, the best part of five years, if I'm not mistaken, like versions of it, but like the underlying code was, I'm pretty sure, four or five years. You had that running and so you're pretty confident that that's what let you get started successfully and have a successful onboarding funnel. Is that right?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, 100%. If we never had that, things would have been way more difficult for us up to start, way, way more difficult for us to understand, way, way more difficult to get any traction.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, and that's where the inspiration for this offer came from. So, for those who are listening, we have Subly just launched this new service offering called Launch with Subly, and basically what we're doing is we're taking, if you have a north star that you're trying to copy and you're pulling your hair out, tearing your hair out, trying to figure out how to replicate it and how to get something that looks similar, but obviously with your own branding and imagery um, but you want that specific flow. Uh, you know, it's really difficult. There's no like one size fits all for this type of thing, um, although we're on a mission to try and solve that. But we, um, you know, realize that there's a lot of people out there who are trying to get a specific flow and there's no pre-built tools for that. Um.

Speaker 3:

So we came up with this service offering, which is inspired by the story with buster box, where we will actually go and take your North Star examples and then we'll tweak it to fit your branding. Obviously, you provide the imagery and then we'll build it. We'll build it for you and we're calling it done-for-you websites, essentially. So we're not an agency, obviously, but we know our tooling and our technology better than anybody. So, essentially, we'll do a 30-dayday sprint. We'll take your north star example.

Speaker 3:

We'll we'll build out a new uh website experience, uh, an onboarding flow for you and, and it's five thousand dollars, so it's just like a one-time fee and, um, I think, uh, one of our team members reached out to you about this uh months ago to get your feedback on it. I think it was very reminiscent of the process that you went through with us at the very beginning and, yeah, you know, I think you were quite excited about the prospect and the offer, and so do you have any comments on that? First of all, do you think that's a great deal, or do you think that is something that people should pay attention to? Who do you think it's relevant to as well?

Speaker 2:

I think it is a good deal and I think it is something people should pay attention to, because I always say this to people when you're setting up your subscription business or your subscription box for the first time, like you want to. A lot of people set this up because they want to create a better life for themselves. They want to run the online business full-time, leave their job, all that stuff. If you want that, you need to have a website that actually converts. It will be like opening up a shop and people go inside and there's full of junk everywhere, like it's like a complete mess in the shop. And if you're not able to create the website yourself, maybe you are able to, and if you are brilliant, by all means go ahead and do that.

Speaker 2:

But a lot of people don't have the skills to build a website. At the start, I never had the skills anyway. I definitely never had the skills. So for us at the time, we we obviously invested in that to get the website built with yourselves and, like I've always said, it was a complete game changer. It got us going in the right direction very, very early on and gave us a big advantage. So if you are serious about going into your business full time and you want a great business and you can't make the website yourself, this is something you should highly consider doing.

Speaker 3:

Or if you just have the cash and you want to improve your website and it'd be worthwhile doing this as well yeah, yeah, to unlock that, you know, perfect flow that you've always wanted essentially, uh, perfect, uh, subscriber purchase experience, yeah, I, I think, um, I think you're right, you know, I would say, like, observing the market, like 80 of people, I would even say, have probably got websites that they're not 100 truly satisfied with, you know, and that's obviously going to be the case, I think, for actually 100 people.

Speaker 3:

They're never going to be the case, I think for actually 100 people they're never going to be 100 satisfied. There's always something you can improve, but just in terms of the actual like flow and purchase experience, there's there's probably, I reckon, 80 plus people who are just not like feeling like it's exactly what they have in their head and they're probably somewhat frustrated by that. I mean, that seems to be kind of a common theme. Actually, the price tag on this offer being the $5,000 as a fixed fee. That's probably comparable to what you guys actually invested in the beginning as well, when you factored for inflation, because it was nine years ago.

Speaker 2:

It was around that we were. I can't remember what way the payment terms were done, but it was around that amount. It was.

Speaker 3:

You know, and it is crazy that we haven't done this until now. It took us nine years to have the epiphany that we had the capability of doing this exact thing. Like, cause we'd done it before. We literally did it with you and then suddenly, nine years later, it was like. It was like oh wait, no, we can actually do that, whether it means configuring the out of the box tooling to match your, what you're trying to achieve, or if it means us going and you know, tapping into our developer resources to actually code it, or designer resources to design it and code it. Like it includes everything. It's done for you.

Speaker 3:

Uh, there's no guesswork, you're just gonna get the result that you're looking for. Here's the north star. We go, we go and replicate it, and I think that's as simple as it can get in terms of, uh, explaining what launch with subly is. Um, but yeah, I just wanted to kind of bust open that story and share it because I think you know it's it's essentially the, the, the origin of us coming up with this service offering, and I wanted to kind of get your honest, real-time feedback on it, but essentially also sharing the story with others to understand what it's for. So yeah, if anybody is interested, we are doing a wait list.

Speaker 2:

Do you mind if I share that information? Go for it. I was about to say that when can they go to actually sign up for the offer and join the wait list?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so it is a wait list because we need to limit how many people actually come through that process, that funnel. So if you go to launchsublyme, you'll be able to put your email address in and book a call and get on the waitlist. So that's just launchsublyme. Maybe you can put it in the show notes click over.

Speaker 2:

The link will be in the notes. Is there anything else you want to mention about the offer?

Speaker 3:

nothing right now. It's pretty straightforward. I mean, we are still figuring it out. We're very much. We're a startup. I know it's been a decade, but we're still a startup and we're constantly testing things in the market and this is our version of that, just like your audience, just like you. So launch with Subli is very new and we do welcome and invite feedback and, yeah, so essentially, the goal is for us to try and deliver your dream website essentially within 30 days. That's the objective. I mean, we can't guarantee it will be 30 days in every single case, because some of them are more complex than others. But, yeah, we're just filling up the waitlist right now.

Speaker 3:

Nothing else to really add. I mean, one thing I will say is we've got a bunch of announcements coming up on the assembly front which will be happening before Black Friday, cyber Monday, which is obviously a massive event. I'm sure you're going to have loads of content for your audience and your community relating to those topics, your audience and your community relating to those topics. But yeah, I would love to talk about some of the things that we're working on as well, which, again, actually ironically, are inspired partly due to the Buster Bucks team.

Speaker 3:

So you know, I spoke to Gary recently and maybe we could get him involved on another episode to talk about some of those things. I think it would be really good for your audience.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, definitely, definitely. I have a feeling what they are and that, yeah, they go down really well, so we'll definitely do another episode very soon to go through them that would be great.

Speaker 3:

Uh, yeah, I'd love that and, uh, appreciate the openness to doing that. Um, yeah, I'm really excited, actually, about some of the things that we're working on, but the launch launch for subli is one of them and, uh, I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to kind of reverse interview you on your own podcast.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, thanks. Thanks very much for coming on. That was an enjoyable episode. We will be back next week at the exact same time. If you have a question you want answered on the show, head over to subscriptionboxresourcescom, join the free Facebook group and post it there. Thanks very much and chat to you next week. Bye, bye.