How One Change Doubled Their Subscription Box Revenue

Discover how Jane transformed a gap in the market into a thriving business, launched a successful subscription box, and doubled her revenue.

Starting, launching, and growing a subscription box business isn’t always about taking big leaps and making big changes. Sometimes one small change can make a big difference. 

Inside Launch Your Box, my subscription box coaching membership, we talk a lot about taking action. Making progress. How one small step forward followed by another and another will lead to where you want to go. 

We also talk about not waiting until things are perfect. So many people dreaming of launching a subscription box hold themselves back because things aren’t “perfect.” 

Today, I’m introducing you to Jane Wild, a member of both Launch Your Box and Scale Your Box, my membership for higher-level subscription box owners. Jane’s story is inspirational for a lot of reasons. 

Jane didn’t let not being 100% ready hold her back from launching her subscription box. She had an audience she wanted to serve and an idea about how to serve them well and she went for it. 

Later, when Jane faced challenges continuing to grow her business, she made one small change. That small change made a BIG difference. I know you’ll learn a lot from Jane’s story and I hope it inspires you to take one small step forward today. 

Finding a gap in the market and filling it.   

In 2013, Jane was a new mom with a corporate job that had her working more than full-time hours. She needed help juggling all the parts of her new life. 

Jane looked for a planner to help her get and stay organized. When she couldn’t find one that met her needs, she decided to create one herself. Sure enough, Jane’s custom planner pages helped her feel more productive, more in control, and more organized. In other words, feelings most new moms and working moms can only dream about! 

Why should Jane keep this goodness to herself? She realized that if she needed these planner pages, other women probably did, too. So she listed them on Etsy where they sold instantly. It turned out Jane was one of the only people selling disc-bound pages in physical form (the other was Martha Stewart🤯). 

Jane had found a gap in the market and filled it. 

By April of 2014, Jane quit her corporate job and went full-time in her business. She soon hired her first employee and rented a large warehouse space. 

Jane sold her planner pages and accessories exclusively on Etsy and Amazon Handmade until 2016 when they started a website. Jane admits her website was “not great” and it took a while for it to really take off. It now accounts for the bulk of sales. 

Serving her community & launching a subscription box.  

In 2020, the planner industry - and Jane - faced a challenge. People weren’t going anywhere. And they weren’t doing anything. Simply put, they had nothing to plan. That meant they didn’t need to buy planner pages and accessories. 

Jane got creative. 

She wanted to bring joy to the planner community during this difficult time. To serve her audience. 

Jane’s ideas for showing them unique, creative ways to use their planners and provide value would only work if she bought them in bulk. Jane decided to start a subscription box. 

So often, I see people inside Launch Your Box hold back from launching because they want to wait until everything is perfect. If you’re one of those people, read this next part carefully. 

When Jane launched her subscription box, she didn’t have anything fancy or ready to go.  

She and her team brainstormed 12 months of ideas for boxes, jumped in, and winged it. 

• Jane ordered one custom-designed sample box and used it for all marketing photos. (It was empty) 
• Jane used a stock photo of an excited-looking woman scrolling on her phone to get people on her waitlist. 
• Jane and her team used waitlist numbers to estimate the quantities they would need to produce. 

Like I said, nothing fancy. 

Inside Launch Your Box, I have extensive lessons on launching, including pre-launch, launch, and post-launching planning. And yes, I want my members to follow the training. But more than that, I want them to take action. To get their boxes out there. 

You don’t have to have everything in place in order to launch your subscription box. It’s perfectly okay to launch messy and then - the next time you launch - layer in more of the plans. The important thing - the most important thing - is to get your subscription box out there. 

So how did Jane’s launch go? 

She and her team set a goal of 50 subscribers. They decided they would be happy if they could get to 50. 

Jane hit 100 subscribers in the first 5 minutes! 

By the end of her launch, Jane had 250 subscribers. Her first-ever launch was fueled by an empty box and stock photo! 

Since Jane and her team make most of the items in-house, 250 subscribers - while fabulous - presented some challenges. 

And the next year or so presented more challenges. You may remember business owners of all types struggling with shipping, product shortages, materials shortages, and labor issues. 

Jane and her team continued to solve problems and serve their audience. And for the next 1 ½ years, the subscription continued to grow. 

Until they hit a plateau. 

Hitting a plateau leads to adding options.  

When Jane’s business reached about 370 subscribers, their growth stalled. They’d add just enough subscribers to cover their cancellations. But they couldn’t seem to gain any ground. 

Jane and her team felt they had exhausted their current audience. If anyone in that audience was going to subscribe, they already had. They wondered what to do next. 

Around that time, Jane heard me talk inside Launch Your Box about offering a lower-tier option as a way to retain current subscribers and gain new ones.

Jane had data. She knew subscribers who canceled didn’t do so because they disliked her products or didn’t think her subscription box was amazing. They canceled for one of two reasons. Either they couldn’t consume the products in the boxes or they were cutting costs. 

A lower-tier option would solve both issues. 

It was time for another launch. 

Jane kept her original box as is and added a lower-tier option. At the same time, Jane offered a deluxe option that combined the original and lower-tier boxes at a savings compared to buying each type of box separately. 

Jane worried her original box subscribers would cancel that subscription in favor of the lower-priced option. That did not happen. Instead, more than half of her original subscribers upgraded their subscriptions to the deluxe option! 

Most new subscribers started with the lower-priced subscription and then upgraded over time as they got more comfortable with Jane and fell more in love with her products. 

Reaching 500 subscribers… and beyond.   

During this launch - which was a lot more comprehensive than Jane’s original launch - she reached and surpassed the 500 subscriber mark! She also doubled the amount of recurring revenue her subscription box business brought in every month. 

Think about what 500 recurring payments every month could do for your business! 

For Jane, that increase in monthly revenue covered all of her labor costs. 

Jane’s subscription box business helps support her overall planner business. By nature, the planner business has very busy seasons and very slow seasons. Jane’s subscription box levels out the ups and downs of her business and provides stable revenue and stability for her staff. 

Now there are no slow seasons at Jane’s Agenda! 

Jane’s advice to people who want to start a subscription box but haven’t taken the leap yet? Just do it. Launch your waitlist and create a plan. More than anything, she says to “Go forth confidently. Customers can smell fear.” 

Jane continues to serve her customers, build her audience, and curate an experience for them every month. And her subscription box business continues to grow. In fact, she recently passed a huge milestone in her business - 1,000 subscribers!