Subscription Box Answers

How I Would Launch A Subscription Box In 2025

• Liam Brennan

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In this episode of Subscription Box Answers, I break down exactly how I would launch a subscription box in 2025. It’s all about verifying demand before you waste time or money—so you give your box the best possible chance of success.

Whether you're brand new or already running a box and thinking of launching a second one, this episode is a must-listen.

Got a question you want answered on the show? Head over to www.SubscriptionBoxResources.com, join the free Facebook group, and post it there.

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. Now, on today's episode, we are going to do something a bit different. I'm going to pretend I'm launching a brand new subscription box business in 2025 and I'm going to tell you everything that I would do before launch to ensure this business has the best chance of success. Now we obviously launched BusterBox back in 2016. And how we launched in 2016 is a bit different to how you would launch in 2025. The same structure is there. Okay, it's basically the same structure, but there are some changes that you need to be aware of, and on today's episode, I'm going to explain exactly what those changes are and exactly what I would do to launch a brand new subscription box in 2025.

Speaker 2:

And I hope this helps anybody who's in the beginning of their subscription box journey. Or maybe you're running a while and you're potentially thinking about launching another subscription. Anyway, hopefully this podcast helps you, no matter where you are. So let's jump into it. Number one and we've covered this in detail in the last few weeks, but that's pick a very specific niche Now we had Gerard on recently, who owns the chicken box, and he's just got that to a thousand subscribers. Okay, so chicken teacher subscription in a very specific niche, and if that's not proof about what we're covering here, I don't know what is. And if you haven't listened to that episode, I highly recommend going back and listening to that episode because you'll definitely learn a lot.

Speaker 2:

But basically, the riches are in the niches. That makes me roll my eyes, but seriously, it's true, I would not come in with a broad category in 2025. I will get really, really specific. I'm talking about snacks for type 2 diabetes. Definitely don't do a bog, standard, broad snack box. That is not the way to go. It's either snacks for type 2 diabetes, spiritual tools for busy moms, fitness recovery for runners. The more specific you can get, the better chance you have of success. But the caveat is there has to be hungry buyers there. If you get really, really, really specific and you get so specific you go into a market with no demand. That isn't going to work either. So the secret is get specific, but niche down to a market with hungry buyers. If you can do that, that's going to give you the best chance of success.

Speaker 2:

Okay, number two Verify demand and build the offer first, without wasting a lot of time and money sourcing products and getting set up on wholesale accounts. Before you spend anything on your first round of products or your box, cardboard boxes or anything like that, you need to verify demand or anything like that. You need to verify demand. So the easiest way to do this right is set up a simple waitlist landing page. Okay, set up some simple ads. Buy enough to set up a mock box with the type of products you might use. Buy some cheap boxes, amazon. Get a sticker as your logo if you need to Set up a landing page with a picture of that box.

Speaker 2:

Come up with a very appealing offer and run some simple ads. See if there is demand for your box and if people will leave their email. Look online in Reddit communities, creators in your niche Facebook groups, wherever your target customers hang out, and verify there's demand. Get in touch with creators if you have to Pay them to shout out your box and see if they can get people to go over and leave their email and post in Facebook groups. If you're not allowed, reach out to the admin and see if you can come up with a deal to make a post. You're basically looking to verify demand and you're going to come up with an offer. The offer could be double your first box to the first 100 people that sign up A free gift.

Speaker 2:

Whatever, the whole point of this is, you want to make sure that there's people who are there, who are interested and who will buy your box before you spend a lot of time and money going any further. Because, trust me, if you can't get people to leave their email on a waitlist page email on a waitlist page it's going to be, in most scenarios, it's going to be really, really tough to get them to actually buy the box. So if there's no market there, you want to figure that out quickly. And if you figure it out quickly, you can then make changes to your idea and move on. You don't want to spend six, seven, eight, eight, nine months developing this idea. You launch it and there's no market demand. But you don't need to do that if you just follow exactly what I said Okay, number three. So say you have verified your idea, okay, and you know there is market demand there and you're getting ready to launch your box. Well, my advice to you is go very lean with products and cardboard at the start.

Speaker 2:

One of the biggest killers of these businesses is cash flow. Okay, you may have everything in place right, but you're bootstrapping and that's perfectly normal for a lot of people who set up these businesses and you really need to watch your cash flow now. The way to think about it is right, even if it means sacrificing a bit of margin at the start. It's probably smarter to go local with lower lead times, instead of ordering overseas, where you have to order months in advance and you are trying to forecast what's going to happen with your business. If you're only getting started, forecasting what's going to happen with your business is literally just guessing. You may be lucky, you may get close to it, but the chances are you're going to either under order or over order, especially at the start. So the smart thing to do even if it means sacrificing a bit of margin, I think anyway is to go local at the start, with smaller lead times. That way, you can order closer to the point your box is shipping and you can get closer to your subscriber numbers and you're not left with excess stock which will drain your cash flow. And that's exactly what we did in BusterBox. Obviously, now we do order abroad, but for a long time, at the start, we were ordering from local suppliers. Local suppliers, yes, it meant we had a lower margin, but it gave us much greater flexibility around our payment terms and when we could actually order these products. And at the start, yeah, it's all about being on top of your cash flow.

Speaker 2:

Okay, number four this is really important keep up momentum and keep building your waitlist. So back at number two. I said it was really important to verify the demand of your product. Once you have verified demand, that does not mean you should stop growing your waitlist. You should push as hard as you can to grow that waitlist to the biggest size it can possibly be, because if you have a big waitlist and they're actually targeted customers and you warm them up properly, you are going to launch to a great platform you can build on.

Speaker 2:

Now one thing and I definitely know this from experience is a failed launch definitely does not mean your business won't be a success. When we launched buster box, the launch never actually went too well. We launched and we only ended up with I think it was 12 people signed up and we were planning for a lot more. But thankfully we had relationships with local suppliers and all of that stuff, so we never over ordered. But the point I'm trying to get is a failed launch doesn't kill your business, because we launched to a small amount and then we managed to grow from there. But the point I'm trying to get across is a successful launch can make things a lot easier for you and give you a great platform to build on.

Speaker 2:

So you should do everything in your power to have a very successful launch, and that comes down to building your waitlist, but not forgetting about warming up your customers. That's one of the biggest mistakes that people make. They put all the effort into growing their waitlist and then they send some rubbish emails or they don't send any emails at all and their customers aren't warmed up. You have to warm them up. You have to keep them engaged, email them regularly, keep them in the loop about what's happening with your business, ask them for feedback, build anticipation, urgency, scarcity, hit their emotional triggers, their logical triggers all that stuff and if you do that properly, you will have a successful launch. Now, when it comes to platforms, I'm going to be biased. There's a lot of platforms out there that people use, and Shopify will be one of them, but for us, we use Subli. I believe it has everything you need to grow a very successful subscription box business all in one place, but your platform choice is completely down to you. Different people like different platforms and different businesses can potentially perform a bit better on different platforms, depending on the niche and the features. But we use Subli and it works really well for us.

Speaker 2:

The next point picking a marketing channel. Next point picking a marketing channel At the start. I think it's very important for you to master one channel. Now, as you grow and you have more revenue and bandwidth and resources, it is a good idea to diversify your marketing. But at the start, when you're only getting going, it probably isn't a good idea to spread yourself thin across loads of different channels and do none of them well, because normally to get anywhere with any kind of marketing channel, it requires effort and time. And if you're just spread across loads of different things and you don't really have any experience around marketing a subscription box business online, you're probably going to struggle. You're better off to focus on one thing and if I had to recommend something to focus on, it would be meta ads okay, that's what I would focus on and specifically reels, and we've covered that on previous episodes. So if you haven't heard me go into detail about different reels and different hooks and all that stuff, go back and listen. But that's where I will put my time, money and effort into Metrics.

Speaker 2:

You need to understand your subscription metrics Now. You don't need to be like a world-class subscription expert at the start that's completely unrealistic but you should have a basic understanding of simple subscription metrics so you know you're moving in the right direction. And that's your lifetime value and your customer acquisition cost. Every decision should be aimed at either reducing your customer acquisition cost or increasing your lifetime value, because they're the two metrics that really determine how profitable and successful your subscription box business can potentially be. Now there are other things around payback periods and stuff like that, but we're not going to obsess over that too much at the start. But we are going to look at our customer acquisition cost and our lifetime value, and the purpose of this is right.

Speaker 2:

In the most basic way possible, you want to ensure your customer acquisition cost is lower than your lifetime value. You don't want your customer acquisition cost to be higher than your lifetime value, because if that's the case, it doesn't matter how many subscribers you get signed up. You're always going to be running at a loss, and you want to ensure it's your lifetime value, which is displayed in gross profit, not revenue, because you have to remember, you're running a physical business with physical costs the box, the products, the shipping, all that stuff. So you want to work out what your lifetime gross profit is. You want to ensure that's higher than your customer acquisition cost and ideally you want it to be three times higher. Now, when, when you're starting out, you're not going to have any data around this, but you should be aware of this and you should track it, and over time, that data will become available and you'll be able to make better decisions based on that. The whole point of this is you want to ensure you're building something that's actually sustainable.

Speaker 2:

The next point set clear goals and realistic goals that you can actually work towards. The worst thing you want is to be going around in circles for years with a handful of subscribers. Now, that usually happens when people don't have clear or realistic goals. When you have a goal, you can reverse, engineer the type of steps you need to make to hit the goal. So my advice would be set a goal of hitting 100 subscribers as quickly as possible, then 250, then 500. At 500, you might be happy and you might have a very successful business, depending on your niche and your profit margin, but set the goal of how many subscribers you ultimately need for your business to be a success.

Speaker 2:

A success in my eyes is having a sustainable business which can afford to pay you a great salary, which can obviously cover marketing and all the other expenses, and can also afford to hire some help so you're not running around like a mad person and you become a prisoner in your business. So you should set the goal of how many subscribers you need for that to happen and then you should reverse engineer what you need to do to hit that goal. And reverse engineering it will be things like what your average churn rate is, how much people you need to replace every month, how much people you need to get to grow every month, the total marketing cost, how much website traffic you could potentially need to grow, depending on what your conversion rate is. It's basically looking at all the pieces in your business and just reverse engineering exactly what you do to hit your goal. And if you can do that, even with small steps every single day, that will compound over time and you'll get to where you want to go. That's what gerald did a few weeks ago.

Speaker 2:

He said on the podcast, to hit a thousand subscribers. That's what I do all the time small steps every single day, and that's what a lot of people do to reach their subscriber goals. And one more thing and I've said this before and it's really true when it comes to launching a subscription box and growing, the same amount of work is required at a low number of subscribers compared to a big number of subscribers. Okay, if you have 50 subscribers, you still need to do customer support, you still need to source products, you still need to look after your social media, all that stuff. If you have 2 000 subscribers, you still need to do the same stuff, but the big difference is, at 2 000 subscribers, you have a lot more revenue. You can afford to pay people, hire, help, pay yourself better and do all the things you need to do to run a successful business. So the point I'm trying to make is aim to grow and get to where you want to go as soon as possible, because things will become a lot better then. That's my advice Now.

Speaker 2:

I hope you found this episode helpful. If you did, can I ask a big favor? Would you mind giving me a review on Spotify, on Apple or wherever you listen to podcasts. It just helps me get to show it to more people. And if you have a question you want answered, as always, head over to subscriptionboxresourcescom. Join the free Facebook group and post there. I'll chat to you next week. Have a great day.