Subscription box business idea

Giggidy

A friend and I would like to start a small subscription box business, only we don't have a clue how to go about starting this. I have googled as much as I can about it, there are online pages that offer help with running such a business such as Cratejoy and Subbly, but we would like to do as much of it as we can ourselves within reason to save costs.

Any tips please from anyone who may know anything about starting up a small business, what steps we need to take first, and so on?

00ec25

- you need a website
- a source of "product"
- a means to collect customer orders from the website, physically pack the products and ship them
- a means to take payment

if you have no idea how to do those then it sounds like you do need the helpers you mention?

Giggidy

For the design and build of our website and landing page, and logo creation we are considering using Freelancer or Fiverr to keep costs down. We have already made contact with suppliers about partnering up with us, some have shown interest but of course we need the above to get the ball rolling.

Do we need to set up a partnership or limited company? We will be packing boxes and curating products, ourselves so wont need staff.

martindow

Giggidy wrote: »

curating products

What does that mean? I thought curating happened in museums.

Giggidy

martindow wrote: »

What does that mean? I thought curating happened in museums.

Taken from Webopedia:

"...In electronic commerce (ecommerce) terminology, curated commerce refers to creating unique product lines that provide customers with a distinct collection not offered by other online retailers in a market. The demand for personalization in online shopping is a driving factor behind curated commerce..."

Basically, the whole point of a subscription box, finding or procuring niche products, so your customer doesn't have to 😊

FatVonD

Stylists are apparently calling themselves curators nowadays too.

Where will you advertise Giggidy? How will you be getting people to your website?

Is this going to be something like L00tcrate? It will cost a fortune to print boxes like theirs but maybe you could source quality plain boxes and then sticker your design or logo on?

Wix do ecommerce sites and have a good range of designs that are easy to tweak and, for a small fee, you can remove the Wix ads and use your own web address.

Instead of paying for a logo take a visit to font squirrel, type in the name of your company and browse what it looks like in all the fonts. They are all free, even for commercial use.

Mupette

We have a company that uses our products in their sub boxes.

Works well as we always ask for money up front. (we are a small business and don't do credit at all)

We tailor make their order to their specs.

Good luck, make sure you have the money to pay for products upfront

paddyrg

In order to commit to a subscription, I have to be sure I'm going to get great value in one form or another. How you do that is your whole business model, but if you're 10% cheaper than the high street but I only like 80% of the box, it's nothing to me. For me to commit upfront, I need you to dazzle me every time. What sector are you in? What can you get uniquely or at an amazing price that I can't otherwise get? And that amazing price has to be still amazing after postage.

Postage will be an absolute killer as you're growing the business to a price break, allow for it in your startup costs.

Giggidy

FatVonD wrote: »

Stylists are apparently calling themselves curators nowadays too.

Where will you advertise Giggidy? How will you be getting people to your website?

Is this going to be something like L00tcrate? It will cost a fortune to print boxes like theirs but maybe you could source quality plain boxes and then sticker your design or logo on?

Wix do ecommerce sites and have a good range of designs that are easy to tweak and, for a small fee, you can remove the Wix ads and use your own web address.

Instead of paying for a logo take a visit to font squirrel, type in the name of your company and browse what it looks like in all the fonts. They are all free, even for commercial use.

Thank you for all the useful info FatVonD! We were initially thinking of paid advertising on facebook, and also on the various forums we are members on ie curly girls etc. Also a referral scheme, which Shopify does automatically if you run your website etc through them.

We were thinking of a basic but sturdy flip lid box, but in a pretty colour and then perhaps getting stickers to save a bit on printing, but Im not sure if that would like cheap or not. Will have to try a prototype to see Im sure.

Wix and Font Squirrel look good, I was thinking of just creating our own logo with just a nice font, most of the boxes I have looked at mainly just have their box name in writing and not a logo or slogan on the boxes.

Giggidy

Mupette wrote: »

We have a company that uses our products in their sub boxes.

Works well as we always ask for money up front. (we are a small business and don't do credit at all)

We tailor make their order to their specs.

Good luck, make sure you have the money to pay for products upfront

Thank you Mupette, we have budgeted for buying products upfront, we have already asked some suppliers if they would consider selling at cost price, we are basically going to be advertising / marketing their product (customers would be directed to the supplier's websites to buy the products directly if they like it)

Out of interest, would you mind saying what products your business sells?

Giggidy

paddyrg wrote: »

In order to commit to a subscription, I have to be sure I'm going to get great value in one form or another. How you do that is your whole business model, but if you're 10% cheaper than the high street but I only like 80% of the box, it's nothing to me. For me to commit upfront, I need you to dazzle me every time. What sector are you in? What can you get uniquely or at an amazing price that I can't otherwise get? And that amazing price has to be still amazing after postage.

Postage will be an absolute killer as you're growing the business to a price break, allow for it in your startup costs.

Thanks paddyrg, we were thinking of pricing the box a bit cheaper than competitors but also add on a postage cost. Royal Mail do a deal if you post out over a certain amount of packages, they can collect for a small price and get business rates on the postage cost which will help