Are subscription box businesses dying?

The gimmicky subscription businesses will probably lose interest but the useful ones will stick. As with anything else.

I've never been a part of a subscription box business as a user or seller. I get more excited from buying something on amazon and knowing it will arrive in 2 days than I would waiting for a monthly box to arrive at my door step - no matter how great or unique it was.

I think it's difficult for a box business to survive right now with the "i want it now" obsession in society. Why wait a month for something (or even a week) when I can get it now...even if it costs me a little more.

If a box company sends out 12 boxes per year, that's also a long time to keep someone's attention and desire to keep wanting your product. Yes, the industry leaders are doing things differently and offering something no one else can. That's different and more rare to achieve.

It depends on what each market wants, and how they adapt.

I don't see as many ads for Trunk Club these days, if any. Those have been replaced by Stitch Fix.

The problem that Trunk Club and similar services created was you had to subscribe every month, creating a bill every month. In comparison to Stitch Fix, you just order when you want.

Same with Netflix and how I used to get DVD's by mail. Now they're just creating shows every week.

From my perspective, I am having a hard time wanting to get even one of these subscription boxes, let alone more.

That's because I like to buy what I want and how I want it, not depending on some subscription service.

And I guess that's the case with the majority of people.

Subscription box businesses are not dying it's just changing to a new trend. Peoples love new stuff,if you're selling an old subscription box with the same product then it must gonna die. If you want to run your subscription box businesses then make your business up to date with the people's requirement.

I think in super niche categories, sub-boxes, are still the hit. My wife gets one with custom cosmetics, and I have has a bacon and several wine subscription boxes that I loved.

However, to the OP point, I do think the space has become saturated, (as often happens in many trendy type categories) and there is a consolidation and retraction that happens as a market matures.

Has anyone created a directory for sub-boxes? That might be interesting.

I once thought about wine subscription... I wondered why would anyone buy wine that way. The particular program that got me thinking was selling people on the idea that they would experience wines they would not otherwise, be surprised by choices, choices made by awesome wine connoisseurs.


I guessed that would be useful if you have no time to shop for, but the desire to get, different wines.


But the only way I would have gotten on board was if they added something I could not get by going to my local wine store... Something that only they, or only a few people, could have delivered.


Once, I went to buy to a wine store to buy a gift from someone and had the good fortune to be helped by the manager/owner, who knew wines.


Gave me comparisons on wines and liquors with a bit of history and some other info that you can get if you put some serious effort into looking for it. Felt like a lesson worth having.


I'd be joining for something like that... Otherwise, my local store is nicely stocked with more than I desire and, then, there's amazon.com too.

Nothing really dies, the winners adapt

Was wondering the very same question if subscription boxes were dead or not and came upon this post as my son had me sign up for 3-4 fishing tackle related boxes this summer and as a former FBA seller I got hit up by Amazon to look into doing a sub box as they have a whole marketplace for them now. I was just listening to a podcast where they were talking about the "Bark Box" brand and how the owners grew their subscriber base to over 20K and was able to get the pet companies to give them free product just to get samples out to 20K dog lovers. I think I still can work just might break even or take a slight loss depending on how you source your product and do advertising but the goal is to build that highly targeted list and eventually sell other related products or sell the list too. On that podcast they were mentioning that its not uncommon for a sub based business to go for 12-15x the annual profit vs a traditional business. Haven't validated that info but was just thinking if a sub box business was something that could work in 2020 with folks sitting at home due to COVID.

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I personally never saw the need to pay twice the price for something you can pick up on every corner

al