Hi All,
I had an idea for a subscription box business, so I thought I'd document my progress and process. The idea isn't groundbreaking, but if done really well it could work and help a lot of people.
At a very high level, my plan is this
Largely completed.
I've identified both direct competitors and indirect competitors and built their value chains and thought to myself (as MJ said), what value can I skew? What's really helped me in this is to look at reviews of competitors products and service. It's really interesting what people complain about and what they value. Amazing what nuggets of information you can get from something as simple as Trustpilot. Part of my box will also have own branded products and again, looking at what are competitors most popular products has been really helpful, and see what people like and do not like about them etc. I struggle with market research as for me it's really quite boring getting into the detail of it, but it provides invaluable insight.
I also ordered 10-15 different products from all of the above competitors and are testing them with my girlfriend, which has been fun. She's getting into the whole "how can we make this better"
2. Validate and test my ideas
I launched a survey 2 days ago, so far I've had 78 responses with some interesting results. I want to get at least 100 before I close it and analyse it properly. What's been clear from the early results is that my idea was largely in line with other people's thoughts, but also what came out of it was another concept I hadn't thought about which I also want two test. So now I have 2 ideas (centered around the same concept).
An early watch out for me is that from the survey, about 60% said they wouldn't subscribe to what I was offering. Now I don't have an issue with this, but I need to get into the detail so that any further testing is on the 40% that would subscribe! I think this might put some people off, but this could be a healthy business with 1000 subscribers and fastlane with 4000 subs. Whilst ambitious, for me it seems achievable.
Next step for validation:
I'm building two different landing pages to test the different ideas. I really want to work hard on making sure I get both landing pages looking good.
After that I need to have a good think about who I need to target, so will think about different audiences this might work for and do some further testing. One thing I've always been nervous about is stopping what could be a good business, because my testing was poor and targeting to the wrong people.
I'll post updates from here...
Feel free to ask me any questions!
I had an idea for a subscription box business, so I thought I'd document my progress and process. The idea isn't groundbreaking, but if done really well it could work and help a lot of people.
At a very high level, my plan is this
- Market Research
- Validate and test my ideas
- Source suppliers
- Develop branding, design and packaging
- Build a prototype box
- Build a shop (using Subbly or Shopify)
- Build a limited run of boxes
- Sell those first boxes
- Assess the results
Largely completed.
I've identified both direct competitors and indirect competitors and built their value chains and thought to myself (as MJ said), what value can I skew? What's really helped me in this is to look at reviews of competitors products and service. It's really interesting what people complain about and what they value. Amazing what nuggets of information you can get from something as simple as Trustpilot. Part of my box will also have own branded products and again, looking at what are competitors most popular products has been really helpful, and see what people like and do not like about them etc. I struggle with market research as for me it's really quite boring getting into the detail of it, but it provides invaluable insight.
I also ordered 10-15 different products from all of the above competitors and are testing them with my girlfriend, which has been fun. She's getting into the whole "how can we make this better"
2. Validate and test my ideas
I launched a survey 2 days ago, so far I've had 78 responses with some interesting results. I want to get at least 100 before I close it and analyse it properly. What's been clear from the early results is that my idea was largely in line with other people's thoughts, but also what came out of it was another concept I hadn't thought about which I also want two test. So now I have 2 ideas (centered around the same concept).
An early watch out for me is that from the survey, about 60% said they wouldn't subscribe to what I was offering. Now I don't have an issue with this, but I need to get into the detail so that any further testing is on the 40% that would subscribe! I think this might put some people off, but this could be a healthy business with 1000 subscribers and fastlane with 4000 subs. Whilst ambitious, for me it seems achievable.
Next step for validation:
I'm building two different landing pages to test the different ideas. I really want to work hard on making sure I get both landing pages looking good.
After that I need to have a good think about who I need to target, so will think about different audiences this might work for and do some further testing. One thing I've always been nervous about is stopping what could be a good business, because my testing was poor and targeting to the wrong people.
I'll post updates from here...
Feel free to ask me any questions!
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