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A good potential subscription box service?

mikeobi

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Hello everyone, I wanted to run an idea here and see what the response is.

In my city there's this shop that has all these cool little handcrafted items from all sorts of countries like Madagascar, Sri Lanka, Russia, Tanzania, Peru etc. They carry things like small statues, figures, rare stones, wood carvings, jewelry and various collectibles. I recently read an ebook on subscription box services and thought offering subscribers a surprise item or two for a monthly price would be neat; a way for people to get their hands on exotic items from around the world. My target population would probably be more artsy/hipster folks. What do you guys think?
 
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wade1mil

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People would love that. Manufacturing might be difficult though. Can you picture an old lady handcrafting 25,000 units in a month?
 

mikeobi

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People would love that. Manufacturing might be difficult though. Can you picture an old lady handcrafting 25,000 units in a month?

Heck no haha, but the store owner brings in hundreds of new items every other day. The inventory list is quite massive as it is but maybe 25K is a high number. They have a few suppliers but I don't know how much they have in their own inventory.
 

Hyrum

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I remember talking with a person who wanted to start a box service that sourced artwork from local and upcoming artists. The problem that arose was the target audience has a limited amount of space to display said artwork, so giving them a new print once a month would quickly overwhelm them and inevitably cause high churn rates. I myself am seeing that firsthand, as my wife subscribes to a monthly box service that has us buried under a mound of t-shirts we hardly wear and a curio full of miscellaneous knick-knacks that we will end up throwing away since we have no emotional attachment to them. I can see the novelty of this box wearing out after 6-9 months when I run out of space to display these items.

Now, if the service only sent 4-6 boxes per year (every 2 or 3 months) and contained mostly consumables (pre-packaged food, bath & body items, etc) along with the handcrafted item, it might stretch out the longevity a bit. But then you run into the problem of mass cancellations if you have a "dud" box. So I suppose it all boils down to getting to know your audience extremely well and what they will and won't tolerate.
 
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mikeobi

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I remember talking with a person who wanted to start a box service that sourced artwork from local and upcoming artists. The problem that arose was the target audience has a limited amount of space to display said artwork, so giving them a new print once a month would quickly overwhelm them and inevitably cause high churn rates. I myself am seeing that firsthand, as my wife subscribes to a monthly box service that has us buried under a mound of t-shirts we hardly wear and a curio full of miscellaneous knick-knacks that we will end up throwing away since we have no emotional attachment to them. I can see the novelty of this box wearing out after 6-9 months when I run out of space to display these items.

Now, if the service only sent 4-6 boxes per year (every 2 or 3 months) and contained mostly consumables (pre-packaged food, bath & body items, etc) along with the handcrafted item, it might stretch out the longevity a bit. But then you run into the problem of mass cancellations if you have a "dud" box. So I suppose it all boils down to getting to know your audience extremely well and what they will and won't tolerate.

I hear you. i was also thinking candy from different countries but I need to find sources. There are a few Japanese candy subscription boxes but I'd want to do it international.
 

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