This interview was a ton of fun. Here I had the honor of interviewing 8 subscription entrepreneurs from 6 DIFFERENT COUNTRIES OVER 3 CONTINENTS!
1. John Roman of Battlbox/Carnivore Club (USA)
2. Anthony Coombs of Splendies (USA)
3. Bili Balogun of Tribe Beauty Box (Nigeria)
4. Jon Butt of Blue Coffee Box (England)
5. Liam Brennan of Busterbox (Ireland)
6. Halim and Sherihan Hassibo of Av Tree (Egypt)
7. Olivia Canlas of Meowbox (Canada)
8. Ryan McKenzie of Tru Earth (Canada)
Transcript from video:
0:02 [Music]
0:15 hey everyone welcome here to this year's virtual 2020 sub summit uh i'm super excited to be the host of this event
0:21 called setting up your 2021 trends from an international pal panel of subscription box experts
0:29 so before i introduce my esteemed guests i want to take a quick second to introduce myself if you don't recognize me or my voice i am the host of the
0:35 subscription box show which is a podcast where i interview some of the most successful and brilliant minds in the
0:41 subscription business three days a week so make sure to subscribe and follow if you aren't already and stay on top of
0:47 the latest subscription trends you should also join our facebook group if you haven't already for exclusive
0:52 sneak peeks insights and giveaways but enough about me you're here for the panel uh and the guest that will help
0:58 your business and the latest trends tips and insights for 2021 i wanted to have representatives from all walks of life
1:06 from different countries all over the globe men and women that have seen and created success in all of their very own
1:11 niches so without further ado here is your 2020 sub summit international panel
1:17 of experts in no particular order feel free to raise your hand guests when you hear your name called
1:24 representing the United States of America John Roman of Battlbox and Carnivore Club
1:31 there's John Anthony Coombs of Splendies I should mention too um John you're in
1:37 Atlanta Georgia and Anthony is in Los Angeles California representing Ireland from Dublin Liam
1:44 Brennan of Buster Box representing Egypt Sherihan and Halim
1:49 Hassibo of Av Tree and Av tweens
1:56 representing england john butt of blue coffee box
2:02 and last but certainly not least representing my home country of Canada Ryan Mckenzie of True Earth
2:11 Olivia Canlas of Meowbox and Bili Balogun of Tribe Beauty Box
2:19 which Billy you're actually originally from Nigeria so is it fair to say you're going to be co-representing Nigeria and
2:24 Canada today yeah definitely it's yeah it's also a big hub for my industry so
2:29 it makes sense yeah for sure and actually just a side note on that i got a message today i think it was on maybe
2:35 in the facebook group talking about there was a lady from ghana that mentioned she listened to your episode and she was really um really inspired by
2:40 it because i've been getting a lot of um messages about that side note i actually got a consult from that episode so
2:47 thanks for putting 100 bucks in my pocket i bought this box
2:53 that's great pleased to do it it's all right so let's get right into it not all of you will get to answer each question rather i have
2:59 picked specific questions for each one of you kind of from what i know from you guys so if you feel like you really have something to add feel free to do it but
3:05 otherwise you'll each have your own questions so without further ado let's get right into it
3:10 question number one goes to Bili Balogun of Tribe Beauty Box Billy you're an expert when it comes to organic growth and intelligent ways to grow a
3:17 subscription box without a massive budget hence this is how you start your company
3:22 with just 300 and four years in a new country thousands away thousands of miles away from your home 2021
3:29 billy what do you see as the best way for someone that can go out about growing their business with a limited
3:34 budget or maybe if you want to say it in a different way organically yeah
3:39 um so thanks for the question i think that when people think growth they automatically
3:45 make it equal fast growth and sometimes growth can just be very steady growth that's still
3:53 you know it's still numbers are still increasing it just takes more time so that's where organic growth came for us
4:00 and what i did there is just leveraging a lot of community um platforms and i feel like in 2021
4:08 with an increasing number of people kind of feeling alone um with you know the with covid um some
4:15 people live alone like myself and um just in general having
4:21 less opportunities to go and go to events i think that platforms like facebook groups but more emerging
4:29 community um hubs like patreon are popping up
4:34 and um that is a hub that people are not looking into to market and a lot of
4:40 generations different generations are in platforms like patreon um and are just there to learn but there
4:47 that's also a place where you can um present your idea for lead generation so
4:52 that's one of the things that we're looking forward to doing for next year and affiliate marketing you know a lot
4:58 of people are looking for new ways to earn income and maybe they
5:03 have a blog that they never thought about monetizing more more people are putting what they have their resources
5:09 on the internet to monetize it um and affiliate marketing i believe is something that will see a boost um next
5:15 year um and then i think marketplaces as well are something that you should definitely
5:21 take advantage of um as of 2021 if you're not already
5:26 doing that we just got on amazon subscriptions and literally like two days ago we got 207 subscribers in one
5:33 day i don't know what happened but that was like the biggest like hike we've seen on that platform so
5:40 definitely take advantage of that because those platforms drive a ton of traffic to their own
5:46 um urls that you don't have to pay for all you have to do is be there and take advantage of it so we found that you
5:53 know amazon works well for us um and then i think that in terms of relationship building back to the point
5:59 of people um you know putting themselves more out there people are trying to start
6:04 businesses so if you as a business owner you can be a bit more transparent in your business practices i believe that
6:11 people will be able to relate better to you and almost be an advocate for your company because not
6:17 only are you selling your business and your product but you're also transparent about your business
6:22 practices which helps people really reinforce their loyalty to your brand
6:27 so those are the few things that we will be doing differently in 2021
6:32 and um try them out yeah lots of gold there so make sure i hope i hope you guys have your notes
6:38 your notepads because there's gonna be a lot of stuff to write down and um hopefully this is gonna be downloadable especially for the um the premium ticket
6:45 holders so question number two without further ado let's go to Liam Brennan of Busterbox Liam you have your own
6:51 mastermind your own subscription box academy for the experts and you're seen as a self-taught facebook ads expert
6:56 2021 will be interesting things have been affected and are affecting facebook ads in 2020 like the us election um that
7:03 won't be there in 2021 black friday and christmas will almost be a calendar year away so what are some of the things you
7:08 and your team at buster box are looking at to take advantage of in 2021 maybe when it comes to facebook ads
7:14 specifically so facebook have been pushing something called the
7:19 power five and for a while now it's basically the way they want companies to advertise
7:26 going forward on the platform so the power five is using five core
7:32 elements and when you use them together you get the best performance on the platform so those elements are auto
7:39 advanced matching simplified account structure cbo automatic placement and dynamic ads now
7:48 they won't be fully relevant for all subscription boxes and i'll give you an example with dynamic ads
7:56 that's really only beneficial if you've a big store and you've lots of different products and that you're able to
8:02 actually sell but you should try to base your campaigns going forward around the the lines facebook have hit so that
8:10 means switching from campaigns and going cbo when possible big budget cbo
8:17 campaigns with a open target especially if you have a seasoned pixel and you've
8:23 made a lot of sales over the last few years you're going to have a lot of data built up there and you won't even have
8:28 to put any targeting in facebook will be doing all the heavy lifting and they just want you to focus on the creative
8:35 so put some time into developing as many creatives as you can testing them and
8:41 making sure their creatives your target audience actually like and it's going to be a good user experience for people on
8:47 the platform if you can crack those things there's great opportunities around facebook advertising in 2021
8:55 love it good stuff thanks Liam question number three goes to john roman of battle box and carnival club john
9:02 with the rise of subscription boxes do you see many or more companies looking to sell in 2021 you guys cried
9:09 we all know you acquired in 2019 i believe it was carnivore club so as a acquiring expert if you want on this
9:14 panel if so what is the best way to go about acquiring a company so
9:21 i i don't think we'll necessarily see more companies getting acquired in uh 2021 i think we'll see the same
9:27 amount as as as this year um and last year i think you know this year you're right there
9:33 was a rise and there were a lot of new subscription boxes coming out um is very similar to 2015
9:41 which was like uh the first uptick of of or the second uptick of crazy when it came to the amount of boxes
9:48 what we saw in 2016 was a lot of them just went away right um they were they
9:53 were side hustles that people lost interest they were were more hobbies and not viable
9:58 businesses um so i think we'll see you know the unfortunate part of business i think
10:05 we'll see several subscription boxes go away um ones that just couldn't break it to
10:10 the the needed thresholds to be successful and be self-reliant and then we'll see
10:16 the some of the bigger ones fail due to the usual suspects of you know
10:22 improper forecasting um you know bad bad spending not really running a
10:29 business as optimally as you should um your second question when it comes to
10:35 where do you go like what's the best way to acquire one a subscription box
10:40 honestly i think it's it's your network and a combination of your network
10:46 and just cold outreach or getting connected to any um
10:51 subscription boxes you're interested in you know um there's dozens of those sites like flip
10:57 is the first one i think of where you can buy buy an e-commerce business or buy a subscription business
11:03 um those are i'd say and it's probably a bold statement but maybe out of 100 listings
11:10 97 of them are garbage right there's a there's there's a huge um reason that those 97 are selling and
11:18 most are not because it's for good reasons you're not trying to get out when it's when it's going like this right um there's normally a
11:25 huge fundamental issue with with the infrastructure or the business model um
11:31 or something with the business when they're selling um that's not to say there's you know that three out of a hundred that might be gems in the rock
11:38 fit that are a good opportunity um when i when i look back at the
11:43 um the the four the five acquisitions we made in in 2019 and 2020
11:51 um all of them came from from network um with the exception one was a network
11:58 it was it was it was called reach out and we said hey we're interested um there was an event at the business
12:05 that was pretty public so we knew that there was an opportunity um but you know those are the the five
12:13 that came from that looking at we probably met with ten from those those sites like flippa and
12:20 none of them none of them even came close to the finish line because there were fundamental issues
12:26 with with the business and and you know we're here on how we come up
12:31 with evaluation and they're they're here we're trying to go uh a small multiplier of ebitda and they're trying to get a
12:38 multiplier off top line revenue um so i think i answered the question
12:47 no you certainly did it was good good stuff thanks john question number four goes to Ryan McKenzie of Tru Earth first off Ryan
12:54 big congrats to you and everyone at your earth for recently being named Canada's second fastest growing company
12:59 Ryan Tru Earth isn't your first company this isn't your first rodeo for sure you've been around e-commerce since the
13:04 turn of the century so i'm dating you a little bit here what are you seeing as a trendy choice to start a new
13:09 subscription box you've started multiple um maybe as a niche or is it still wide open uh that anything could be
13:16 subscriptionized yeah i think this is kind of a bit of a a broad question there's a lot to unpack
13:21 but like you know i think i like to look at pretty much this space at least in my
13:27 head if i'm if i'm jumping into a new subscription box if i was um you know
13:33 there's a lot of boxes in a lot of different niches so instead of trying to specifically look at something that
13:40 might not be saturated i'd probably look at how you could do it differently a lot of people get into subscription boxes
13:46 because either a their identity is already heavily wrapped up in the topic or or b
13:52 it's something they want their identity to be heavily wrapped up around so looking at subscription box outside
14:00 of just receiving stuff in the mail like obviously people sign up for your box because they want their identity to be
14:06 tied to whatever it is that they're purchasing but for me i look at that as that's the first
14:12 the first foot in the door you want these people to like i'll give you a good example we have an outdoor
14:17 adventure subscription box and uh the box gets them to make the first purchase and then after that we offer them
14:24 weekly monthly quarterly challenges that basically allow them to further experience that identity they want when
14:31 uh when they eventually have enough stuff and they they don't necessarily need to receive the box anymore what
14:36 we're able to do is we're able to transition them into a lower priced
14:42 subscription where they get to maintain part of the community they get to continue having that subscription they
14:47 still get the service that allows them to fulfill their identity so even when there's attrition there's an opportunity
14:53 to continue having that person as a customer and increase your lifetime value so looking at the problem from
14:58 okay what's something that's not a red ocean like what's something that's not already busy versus like what else can i
15:04 do to to fulfill that person's desire for what they purchase this box for
15:12 yeah that's a great point love that great answer question number five goes to Anthony Coombs of Splendies ac you're a pioneer
15:19 in the subscription box industry and no different in your particular niche which is subscriptions for underwear you have
15:24 been able to not only grow despite the rise of competition in your particular niche
15:30 but also pivot when needed Anthony what would you say is the number one thing subscription box owners owners
15:36 should be worried about for 2021 sure thank you so much for having me on um without any question uh it's
15:43 unpredictability in 2021 uh because what happened with the worldwide pandemic of
15:49 covid which has been awful and ravaging communities and everything all over the world um
15:55 what you saw as a spike in e-commerce and in subscription boxes and so there's no way that you were going to know that
16:01 that necessarily would happen to the extent that it did for example for us uh we at one point had uh over twenty
16:07 thousand person waitlist um for our subscription box because we didn't have the inventory and so i would say
16:13 forecasting um for next year is gonna be extremely difficult it's gonna be
16:19 unpredictable but the ways in which you can somewhat combat that is if you're a company which has to
16:25 produce months and months in advance you may want to think about just having
16:31 excess inventory on hand um which can you know sometimes create cash flow issues but
16:37 that would enable you not to have to deal with what can be a stressful issue with a wait list or haven't forbid
16:42 having to turn away customers um and then if you're a smaller company which you can purchase more on the fly
16:49 where you can purchase maybe a month out maybe have vendors just available on the
16:54 ready that way if there's another huge spike you're able to say hey you know we've already
17:00 negotiated this we want to go ahead and get this product in uh right away because we don't know how long this is gonna
17:06 last we'd have no idea what it's gonna entail for the next year and so you just have to be aware that there are maybe
17:12 some very up months there may be sometimes when it slows down but you um are able to make sure that you're aware
17:18 of the unpredictability so you can hopefully um deal with that when it comes
17:24 yeah unpredictable is uh an understatement for sure it's been a quick 2021 hopefully things get a little
17:29 better in 20 or 20 20 for 2021. thanks dc question number six goes to
17:35 Olivia Canlas of Meowbox Olivia you work very closely with influencers in your particular space uh which if you
17:42 haven't guessed already by just the name yao box it's cats guys it's for cats where are some areas subscription box
17:47 entrepreneurs should be focusing on when it comes to influencers in 2021 and how do you approach influencers to get the
17:54 most out of them if that's even a fair thing to say yeah yeah uh thanks for
17:59 having me on um social media uh love this question social media marketing
18:05 um so for for influencers our big focus for next year is um going to be quality
18:12 over quantity um i've seen other companies and even ourselves at one point just sort of
18:18 getting as many boxes out there as possible and seeing what happens and we're going to
18:23 still continue with the volume of boxes that we send out um for influencers but sort of
18:29 more focused on people who um we can see converting for us better
18:34 um new area for us to explore for next year is going to actually be um always
18:40 we always focus quite a bit on instagram but we would like to explore tick tock so now that we know it's here to stay at
18:47 least for a little while longer um it's just such a new landscape uh we
18:52 don't know exactly how we're gonna do this but we're big fans of sort of trying and seeing what happens and going from there i don't even know if the
18:58 influencers in this space quite know how to um sort of i guess uh monetize um from supporting companies
19:05 like like us like mailbox and other subscription boxes but that's an area that we're really excited to explore
19:11 and then in terms of um creating relationships with new influencers one thing for
19:17 all seven years of of our company's life the approach that we've always taken um is to
19:25 develop real authentic relationships with the people who we're we're wanting to contact so
19:31 um we don't use contracts for probably 99.9 of our influencer relationships are
19:37 contract free and that has worked out very very well for us um so we continue
19:43 to do so so we don't ask people to post a certain number of times we don't share any sort of major
19:49 expectations or any expectations at all when we send a box of their way and
19:54 i feel like that's a more sincere approach and a better way to develop a relationship and trust with uh with an
20:01 influencer treat them like a person i'm a person they're a person um and uh that sort of give always given us the best um
20:08 outcome and we continue to have relationships with these influencers like through the years
20:14 yeah imagine that treating people like people that's a it was a great thing so thanks Olivia for that question number seven goes to
20:22 John from Blue Coffee Box John you've always been creating successful businesses for a long time you've personally worked
20:28 with Michael E Gerber of the e-myth revisited for the listeners if you haven't already please read that book
20:33 it's one of my top ones that i usually recommend but john blue coffee box actually came to fruition as a bed of
20:39 sorts to your podcast listeners um side note john has over 600 episodes on his podcast by the way so i feel a little
20:46 underwhelmed being the host here um but john for someone who's overthinking their idea
20:52 is whether it's analysis paralysis whatever we've heard all the terms how would you get them started if you were to start a
20:57 new subscription box in 2021 how would you go about it and i know it's a loaded
21:02 question but i guess try to if you can maybe yeah um yeah
21:09 so most people who've not had a business before get a bit worried where they
21:14 start what if it all goes wrong so so one thing to bear in mind when you launch your business
21:19 no one's looking no one's heard of you except your mum you know your mum will buy one that's
21:24 not gonna help you so so don't worry nobody's looking you can improve it once
21:30 you've got something going you can make it better in fact in in my businesses i always explain to my staff
21:36 that that there's nothing wrong no one can ever do anything wrong you know they look up to me and i've
21:42 been doing it for ages when i started i was a complete idiot i knew nothing so so uh but i had no one to tell me so we
21:50 have two states we have good enough for now better and we're constantly trying to
21:55 move good enough to now to better and that then becomes good enough for now better there's that's all there is
22:01 so everything can be improved but there's good enough for now so when you start the most common question
22:08 for people is what do i use do i use crayjoy or shopify we know what platform
22:14 most people make the mistake of asking everyone else they never qualify that
22:20 person's expertise so you'll get a load of people who'll say you should use
22:25 woocommerce um and uh or you should use wix i use wix um have you you never see
22:32 that person say how many subscribers have you got um so so get over the platform
22:39 customers marketing is where you need your expertise so pick something that's
22:45 simple i started with cratejoy because i figured uh it is it just does the job we
22:52 didn't have to hire a programmer we originally thought we were going to have to hire a programmer then we found craig
22:57 joy it's like 40 odd dollars a month you think really um and there's suddenly if you if you get i've so i can only ever
23:05 talk to you about crate job because i've only ever used it so don't ask me my opinion on shopify i have e-commerce
23:11 sites there was no shopify when i started we're fine with ours so crate joy works and and we get on
23:18 with marketing so pick something that is designed for the job unless you are some kind of
23:24 programmer and if you are some kind of programmer you are never going to sell a thing because you're going to spend all
23:30 your time programming a site that nobody is going to see because you're going to spend time programming it and not
23:35 launching it so you've got to get launched you cannot do it wrong it may not look
23:42 great go back and look at go back through the archives look google
23:47 it and look at what the original google page looked like look at what the original amazon website looked like
23:53 think of any great website and you can find the original version
23:59 those were good enough for them and they improved as they got customers and could afford to improve
24:05 so you have to get launched and you have to spend 80 percent of your time getting customers and marketing
24:12 otherwise there is no business that's right that's a great point
24:18 uh finally for the first round of questions the question number 8 goes to Sherry and Haleem from Av Tree and Av
24:24 tweens you guys when you start a subscription box in a market where there were no subscription boxes you guys are the
24:30 first one in Egypt i think it's still not a really a big thing there it wasn't a thing in Egypt anyways when you
24:36 first launched so you guys are planning a lot more obviously sherry or helene whichever one
24:41 wants to answer this one here what would you say to someone who thinks a subscription box would never work or in their country or maybe in their
24:48 particular niche uh i'd actually say go for it
24:54 a virgin market is actually more of a rather an opportunity than a difficulty
25:00 as long as the challenge your subscription service is about to solve is present in your market in a very
25:06 obvious way obviously your brand you have a great chance to highlight your brand and an even greater chance to
25:12 uh to market your service uh so with the proper research uh preceding the launch
25:19 of the idea itself and the relative market testing uh you would succeed in placing your
25:26 subscription service easier i would say easier easily um
25:31 not easily but easier so for either av3 which is our main box the
25:37 beauty subscription box or for av tween that we are about to launch now the the
25:42 tween's essential box we take our time really researching and creating like the proper accurate analysis of the market
25:49 and then each we're about to address first we give it a time frame of at least four months just doing that before
25:56 putting the idea into any kind of action and this validates the idea enough for
26:02 us to to help us tremendously one put our minds at ease that this idea is not
26:07 going to fail even if it doesn't do the it doesn't reach the the best case scenario but it
26:13 will not fail and uh the second thing is of course to ensure that we are going to make profits
26:22 in an early stage that it doesn't affect our growth plans um and so yeah i'd say go for it but
26:29 with the with the right um research of the idea validation of the idea before you go
26:35 yeah validation what a key um key point for sure i mean that's obviously number one when you're launching any
26:42 business let's get back revolt as you guys have all had the chance to answer one
26:48 question so thanks for that we're gonna get kind of into the uh the second round question number nine goes to liam brennan of buster box you're gonna lead
26:54 us off in the second round here liam how important is it to be part of a community of like-minded individuals
26:59 and are there any tips to engaging in masterminds or groups maybe specifically in our subscription niche uh do's and
27:06 don'ts if you will yeah i think a masterminds give you a massive advantage
27:13 and it's just a great place to be part of because everybody in the particular mastermind will all be looking to reach
27:20 the same goal and we all might be different experts and in different
27:25 stages of advertising like i might be good at facebook somebody could be good at
27:31 influencer marketing some somebody could be doing really well with google ads somebody could be getting thousands of
27:37 people signed up through affiliates if we all meet together and combine that information
27:42 it improves everyone and in the group and the deals and don'ts i'd probably
27:47 say if you are getting involved is don't take more than you give and don't be
27:53 silent actually participate you'll be surprised at how much information you know even if you feel like you're in the
28:00 early stages and because you'll probably have some information that will be able to help other people solve a big problem
28:07 in the mastermind yeah it's pure gold i think what was it give more than you
28:13 take that's that's so true and i think not to be silenced is another huge one i've been part of a few masterminds where you barely know one person but you
28:19 know that it's too bad because they're not really taking full advantage of that of that community question number 10 goes to anthony combs
28:27 of splendis anthony in your opinion how can subscription box entrepreneurs best utilize paid that
28:33 paid ads picks videos carousel now i'm hearing is a popular thing on facebook for the ads or maybe it's an error they
28:39 might not have thought of such as tick tock or pinterest kind of like what maybe olivia mentioned are there certain
28:44 trends you see coming in 21 that folks can take advantage of uh sure so uh as olivia said tic toc is
28:52 definitely something that a lot of people are getting into and should be but across all platforms um the content has
29:00 to be good that's one of the biggest mistakes i see it's it's like day one line one but they'll put out you know
29:06 photography which isn't professionally done and be like my facebook ads aren't working and it's like well you know here
29:12 you go here's why um and then also short videos i mean like everything in the world is getting shorter and so you want
29:19 to you know we when we first started we could do five or six minute videos um and no
29:25 one's watching a five or six minute video anymore so now we're looking we we whittled them down to about three minutes and now we
29:31 are about 15 seconds or less so um can you convey what you are offering in
29:37 five seconds it's hard but that's where pretty much everything's going and the other thing i would say um as far as
29:44 a big mistake that i see a lot of first-time entrepreneurs do is that they try to master every single platform and
29:51 that is near impossible um we know this for a long time and you know we maybe only have a couple down pretty well
29:58 if you can figure out one and do it really really well congrats and then just double and triple down on that and
30:05 you can do really really well as opposed to trying to spread yourself so thin to where you're trying to do
30:12 just okay or just doing a mediocre job on many different things find the one that works and then just go for that and
30:18 short videos and good content yeah know where your customers were hanging out right and kind of maybe double down on that one is that sort of
30:24 fair to say yeah triple down triple down love it uh question number 11 goes to olivia
30:31 from yao box olivia you originally spent a lot of money on your domain or what seemed to be i guess a lot of money back then which is actually even today would
30:36 still be enough going forward how important is it for subscription boxes to have a really
30:42 catchy domain is it a problem if they don't barkbox mailbox or whatever your niche is dot com is most likely already
30:49 taken and maybe if you want to touch on social handles at the same time if that's a way to gauge how to go about a
30:55 domain um yeah back when i first purchased the domain it was
31:01 a lot of money especially for a company that was not even a year old but um but i knew that the name meow
31:08 box as opposed to get meow box or my mailbox was gonna be key um and so i invested in it so if i
31:17 recommend if if you've proven concept and you have an opportunity to purchase a nice clear
31:24 simple domain name to go for it um i definitely don't regret it but like
31:29 you mentioned um those names might not be they might not be available anymore or they're going to be a price that's
31:36 going to make it so you can't continue to do your business so i think that if the catchy names not
31:43 out there and you decide or if there is and it's too expensive um that consistency across
31:50 your um uh platforms is key so if let's say for meow box i could
31:56 only get um my mailbox then i would want to make sure that it's the same handle
32:02 that i'm using across twitter across facebook uh instagram just too many
32:07 times um when i'm looking for a company's information online or on
32:13 social i'll notice that it changes um across different platforms and that's confusing especially with the saturated
32:19 market you think okay maybe this is a different brand that i'm looking at of course if your branding is clear
32:24 across the board that helps but i think in terms of if you can't get that short sweet catchy
32:30 name then at lea at the very least to make it consistent across all of your um all of your platforms
32:36 um and then so so yeah like in in terms of um like you mentioned on social for us
32:43 we sort of at the beginning we we switched we had like mailbox canada
32:48 get mailbox my mailbox and then eventually we did everything we had to do to make it all the same and i think
32:54 that's that's key yeah i couldn't uh i couldn't agree more
32:59 on that one for sure to make it easy for people to to find you question number 12 goes to john of blue
33:06 coffee box john you started blue coffee box when you could argue coffee is one of the most saturated or red ocean
33:12 niches yeah you once mentioned to me google adwords google adwords how much
33:17 should subscription businesses regardless of how saturated their niche is pay and pay attention to google
33:22 adwords in 2021 um a lot but it does depend very much on what
33:28 you're selling because so hello millennials um yes you all think that facebook is an instagram of the only
33:35 things we used to run businesses uh well some of us great uh used to run them before
33:41 the internet but uh but businesses were fine before twitter before facebook
33:46 there was a time uh but when you're searching when you're on facebook so you're sitting in your office you're
33:52 scrolling down you are not looking for stuff you are trying to avoid what you're supposed to be doing it is a
33:58 distraction so the ads cleverly are distractions in fact you don't even like most people don't even know their ads do
34:04 they but on google google is intent if you want to buy coffee you're not going
34:10 to go onto facebook you are going to go on to google and look up coffee
34:16 now we happen to have a like a single product so if you are a surprise
34:24 subscription people are not looking people don't look to subscribe to stuff
34:30 because subscribe sounds like whoa i'm never going to be able to get out of paying for this
34:36 it's a product so like like liam you're selling dogs treats you know and anthony
34:41 you got underwear so these so certain certain niches will work on google but
34:47 if you have a surprise box i mean probably like on a loot crate and unless
34:52 you're looking for a surprise box or a surprise gift or something like that but gifts attract more expensive ads so
35:01 there is massive intent on google uh but
35:06 and it's still there and it's not going away google you know a lot of people would think well google's market share is going down
35:13 and it's going to go away it's quite a big company they know what they do they'll just buy up
35:19 the next thing but um but i think you should become an expert
35:24 at google ads and you should give it time so many people i mean liam you'll
35:29 see this on facebook ads people say oh i've just run these ads and i didn't sell anything and
35:36 and you want to look at it you say well your website is awful would you buy from it but they haven't got a clue because they
35:42 haven't studied everyone expects to be an expert from day one you've got to take your time when i started google ads
35:48 i followed uh somebody i followed a course and i just did exactly what they said simple as that i didn't i didn't
35:54 think i won't do that because that doesn't look very interesting i just did exactly what they said and i was selling
36:00 fire extinguishers and uh that's 2007 or something like that
36:06 and um and now we do it with coffee once you become an expert something you you get quite confident but
36:14 google is the intent engine so if you want to find out information or you
36:20 they they're not necessarily going to buy they want to find out about something and you happen to be there give them the information and whoa they
36:27 can buy it too make it easy to find for sure yeah absolutely
36:33 question number 13 goes to Bili Balogun of Tribe Beauty Box Bill you literally learned everything for your business by
36:38 searching online a lot of the stuff probably on google reaching out to hundreds and hundreds of suppliers going to conferences trade shows and being
36:45 willing to be a student of the industry with the possibility of more and more conferences being shut down in all
36:51 industries and seeing how important it is to physically shake hands and meet some people how are you personally going
36:56 to stay on top how are you personally going to stay top of mind with your suppliers customers and colleagues in the industry for 2021
37:04 um yeah thanks for the question so i actually think that it might become a bit easier now because people have no
37:11 other means of communication with uh potential purchase orders and sales
37:16 orders but to actually respond to their emails um so i'm finding that sales reps
37:22 are way more responsive now even if it's just to like the first call it may not
37:28 work down the line but at least they're responsive um we've been doing a lot of linkedin reaching out as well
37:35 um i think that it's it's it's a good place to start you know looking for the buyers or the pr person in that company
37:42 that's something that we've been doing you know you can't always access people's emails but that's what we're
37:47 going to be doing for 2021 so i'm almost more excited um with the possibilities
37:54 of the kind of brands that we can reach out to uh because they're getting paid tours to respond to these emails you know
38:01 they're not only looking forward to the trade shows now um so it's it's great and obviously uh
38:07 building good relationship with brand owners a lot of the brands say we get like six brands
38:13 um when we have good relationships with those we can have you know six more
38:20 uh brand relationships because we've had good relationships with the first six and then they refer us to other people
38:25 so keep that in mind um you know if you for example there's a brand we worked with like a year like two years ago we
38:32 noticed you know they released a new eyeshadow palette and the lady also just had a baby so we sent like those uh
38:38 flowers um that like eternal flowers that represent you know like her bond with
38:44 her child but also matching the colors of the new palette so little things like that and now we're the only subscription
38:50 box that she works with um little things like that go a long way yeah getting past the gatekeepers is
38:57 gonna be key for sure at any time especially now with the more focus on emails and reaching out and linkedin you
39:02 mentioned is probably a good one to go through so good tips there for sure question number 14 goes to sharihan and haleem of av
39:09 tree maybe i'm not fisher if it's haleem's term here but you start multiple subscription boxes in different niches
39:16 and continue to innovate the egyptian market for someone looking to expand on a new market what is the best advice
39:21 you'd give them for actionable things to start doing in 2021
39:26 well um expanding is a very risky step especially in the vision market like
39:32 egypt uh when you are targeting consumers or uh audiences that they it's the first time
39:40 for them to hear about the subscription business so
39:46 since a new service can affect one that's already running
39:51 successfully if it's not done right uh for example uh
39:57 our the new av tween box that we are launching uh it's in the pre-launching phase now uh we started to announce it
40:05 uh as it's one of the avail three boxes uh why we did that because uh already
40:11 ev3 is running for one year now and we get the credibility in the market so we
40:16 engaged or we related that the new box uh with the old one that's already running
40:22 successfully but it's it adds a lot of pressure uh because we have to keep we
40:27 need to keep the the same [Music] this the same flow and the same success
40:35 successful things that we are doing in the in the old box or in the already running box to the to the new one
40:42 uh so my advice is uh the innovation this is the key that we
40:49 are we always distributed the company here you have to innovate uh
40:54 to keep customers want your service for example in 2021 we are going to
41:02 engage our customers with adding the virtual uh the ar experience in the in
41:08 our boxes though that they can uh see the products that they receive or how to use it
41:14 in an ar experience that keep the engagement higher and the expectations
41:20 exceeded good and for the ones who might not know ar experience you want to just maybe quickly elaborate on that
41:28 uh aix is is something like the virtual reality or augmented reality
41:34 uh when we send a box to our members in egypt here now it's a beauty box so
41:40 there is a fly that inside the box that shows the the products the retail price where to buy how to use and all of this
41:46 stuff it was printed at the beginning then about two months ago
41:52 we we developed the idea to be a digital version so they receive a barcode or a qr code in the box so that they can scan
42:00 the qr code and they download the pdf is it it's an engage it's an interactive
42:05 pdf so if they decided to buy they click on the product they need it will direct
42:11 them to the website directly so it may it made a
42:16 a level of engagement more than the printed one uh and in 2021 we decided to
42:22 make the ar augmented race so that they will be a flylet but when they scan the products will pop up in a 3d
42:30 3d 3d image or something the information gum comes out from the
42:36 product in an interactive way it could be a video of someone using this product
42:42 so that gives them a an idea of how to use it or the best ways to to mix it with other products exactly so enhancing
42:49 the unboxing experience and maybe just quickly show of hands of those who have uh maybe invested for their own
42:54 subscription box something like captivate or the incredible unboxing something like that where you're enhancing the unboxing experience or
43:01 maybe planning to maybe just a show of hands to see out of the nine here how many have that
43:06 yeah you guys are lucky we don't have anything like everything ourselves yeah well there's
43:12 any subscription boxes you know affiliate businesses that can help with stuff like this yeah the only reason i
43:19 mentioned those two specifically captivate and incredible unboxings because they were both on the show and that seems like it's a it's another
43:25 uptick in things that people are doing to just separate themselves from their competition is elevating the unboxing experience through video with your voice
43:32 those kind of things so thanks guys uh number 15 goes to ryan mckenzie of true
43:38 earth ryan you're famous on the subscription box show anyways for saying that copy is just the seasoning to the
43:44 offer we've talked about that on a couple occasions actually what are offers that you see working well in 2021
43:51 whether totally discounted percentages adding products or some months that are free maybe the first month for you that sort of thing
43:57 yeah i mean i think really like what's more important uh with these
44:03 offers are that they're like they're matching the correct segment of of your audience so if somebody's top
44:10 of funnel and never heard of your brand before what can you do to reduce the friction to have them try your brand you
44:16 know in that case a first month free uh i know a lot of people that are having a
44:21 lot of success with that um things like uh 10 off with uh when they sign up for sms
44:28 works really well although i'm not really a big fan of discounting like the this is the top of funnel layer um for
44:34 people that are already customers where you want to uh drive up that lifetime value or increase their commitment um
44:41 i i have something that i call like uh um like a second helping type offer where
44:47 what we'll do is we'll incentivize them to change from a monthly subscription or quarterly subscription to an annual
44:53 subscription and there's a slight discount when you buy a larger volume but we try to
44:59 like day to day we don't offer any additional bonuses but when when we do sales instead of
45:05 instead of heavily discounting anything i i just include a high margin item uh
45:11 for free with those annual subscriptions and what winds up happening is we convert so many people
45:17 to that particular offer just because first of all they love our product already um and then they see the value
45:23 in getting the bonus they're saving a little bit of money and they're getting a bonus um that's really working really well bottom
45:28 of funnel and believe it or not even even uh when we do these promos like
45:33 every couple of months and we offer these packages a lot of people that have kind of been following along um or
45:41 have you know watched some of our videos or have engaged with our page they're even taking that offer because they can
45:47 see that it's it's it's a good deal and um they've been kind of like sitting on the
45:52 fence for months waiting to take action this finally the thing that puts them over the edge
45:57 nice thank you for that and finally kept the last question for good buddy
46:03 number 16 question number 16 goes to John Roman of Battlbox and Carnivore Club John being the CMO at Battlbox you
46:10 see first and foremost marketing and the challenges associated with that being a CMO so the Chief Marketing Officer at
46:15 Battlbox twofold question for you John in 2021 what do you forecast being the
46:20 hardest challenge when it comes to marketing or getting in front of your audience and how would you go about it if you were a
46:26 a new bootstrap business or b an established an established business
46:32 so i think the the the answer to both about the biggest challenge is the same um it's already been touched on now
46:40 three times um on this panel customer experience
46:45 um competition everyone is just consistently moving the ball forward and moving that needle of of expectations
46:53 and just what comes what happens in addition to the box right whether it's
46:58 one of the the amazon unboxing thing you spoke of um to community that that comes along
47:06 with your subscription to the experience of the unboxing there's so much that goes into the
47:12 actual all-encompassing experience um from innovation to ar
47:18 i think that's the biggest challenge is that we're seeing
47:23 really the envelope continue to get pushed further and further so it's it's
47:28 competitive and whether it's a direct competitor or it's just another subscription box the
47:34 end of the day there's you know we're all fighting for that wallet share so i think that's the biggest challenge is is
47:40 how can you push your brand uh to having a better experience whether it's through ar whether it's through qr
47:47 codes or community that's that's the challenge and i think everyone's going to face it and um
47:54 i think you'll see several companies dozens of companies next year that
48:00 embrace it and are bleeding edge when it comes to experience and thinking outside the box um on concepts and ideas they're
48:08 they're going to be the ones that that you see with that exponential growth and just really they'll be the trailblazers
48:16 yeah yeah great points for sure so that kind of makes the end for this kind of segment which is the questions you guys just got a chance to answer two
48:22 questions uh this is a surprise little lightning round i did not send to any of you just because i wanted you guys to just answer quickly and anyone so you
48:28 can all unmute your mics anyone can just pipe in it's just it's gonna be basically yes or no questions
48:34 um so here goes the rapid fire round
48:40 if you could only spend money on one marketing avenue in 2021 what would it be
48:48 marketing okay google ads
48:54 that's such a tough question first thing that comes to mind you can only spend it on one one thing
49:01 insert marketing still facebook
49:09 do we all have to respond no you know you don't have to i think here in egypt in 2021 we will
49:16 spend on tick tock tick tock yeah i say facebook and as i say it a little
49:22 part of me just dies inside me meet me too john me too
49:32 35 days [Laughter] favorite influencer size nano micro or
49:38 macro micro micro micro micro all day micro aldi
49:46 micro i was hoping someone would say nano because it's cheaper for me but okay micro is
49:54 free shipping or paid shipping are you really asking that
50:00 i i am yeah quarterback built into the price
50:06 we don't have free shipping on anything which is like crazy right right
50:11 we have free shipping free shipping makes a big difference for us because nothing is on free shipping in egypt so
50:16 when we say free shipping already we are so different yeah no that's right and just funny story like their episode's
50:23 not out yet but when i interviewed uh sherry han and helene they said that when they shipped out their free their box it was free shipping people at the
50:29 door were trying to pay the courier and the creator was like no no it's free and they're like what they're trying to chase them
50:35 i can't believe it's free shipping um next one quarterly then this is for 2021 keep in mind quarterly or monthly
50:42 subscription on weekly if i were to if i were to ever start a
50:47 new subscription i want to do a quarterly uh without question because it just gives you so much time to plan and
50:55 it's from what i can see a lot easier um so i would say quarterly if you're gonna
51:00 start out if you can do it yeah i i would say this too but i'm not
51:05 sure i would love to do it for the same reason by the way quarterly if i'm going to start over especially with the
51:10 covered 19 circumstances but i'm not sure if quarterly would make you lose interest of your um
51:17 customers that's the challenge right just keeping them engaged
51:22 yeah and this is a bit of a trick question here what was the first ever subscription box
51:29 does anybody know ever first ever
51:48 well you're all wrong so there you go i think we read before that uh the subscription business started around 50
51:55 years or 60 years ago in concert not a subscription box but the concept of subscription boxes or
52:01 subscription service you're close you're yeah you're probably the closest so i did a little bit of
52:06 research on this and some say that the book of the month club which was started back in 1926 by harry sherman
52:12 um was the concept that kind of was their first one but there's others that say the sampler which came out in 2004
52:19 that's uh ryan mckenzie circa era there do you remember that one ryan the sampler i don't but what about like
52:26 columbia house records and oh vhs yeah i i seriously i cloned my mom
52:33 into signing up for columbia house like eight times i don't know how like i have so many shitty cds i'm sorry
52:42 you could get like 12 cds for a dollar or 99 cents on the industry yeah yeah they were like a penny each and then you
52:47 had to pay 20 like something bucks a pop for the next nine well i'm gonna date you all because i
52:53 used to collect columbia house tapes so [Music] i beat you olivia's laughing are you
52:58 come on anybody else with the tapes right now yeah there you go um
53:04 okay and finally this is just for you guys here i guess what's the best place for people to get a hold of you let's just quickly plug each box i'm gonna
53:11 just name you so we don't all set the same time so let's start with ryan best place to find true earth in yourself uh www.tru.earth
53:19 um and you can find me uh on facebook i think my url is ryan.mackenzie
53:27 mckay mckenzie or you can search me on linkedin
53:32 uh next up is go john from blue coffee box so there you go blue coffee box dot com
53:40 and for all those who think they don't like it bluetbox.com um and that is the way to find me i'm
53:47 around but i'll be there okay sounds good sherry and helene best place to get ahold of you guys or av
53:53 tree and soon to come av tweens yeah it's
53:58 basically av3.com avtween.com and to reach us personally
54:03 we're active on linkedin of course the names are not familiar i'm
54:09 not sure you'll even know how to spell that hopefully it will be written somewhere
54:14 hopefully for sure yeah liam from buster box and you can find booster box at
54:21 posterbot.com me personally you can find my blog at the michael brennan.com or my
54:28 subscription box group subscription box resources on facebook
54:34 yeah great group for uh people who want to join um facebook groups when it comes to subscription boxes liam's got some
54:39 great stuff in his group a lot of great uh content always being shared there uh next up olivia with mailbox
54:45 um across any platform you can find us at meowbox whether it's twitter instagram.com
54:52 and all of the above and to get a hold of me you can probably literally just mention my name on any of
54:57 those platforms and the message will get to me or just email me olivia myanbots.com awesome
55:03 anthony coombs from splendi's uh yeah uh splendies.com and uh can
55:09 always be reached at team splendis.com thank you billy balogun from tri beauty
55:15 box hey you can reach out to me at create try beautybox.com by email and
55:21 the website is tribe beautybox.com sounds good last but not least John
55:27 Roman from Battlbox and Carnival Club maybe you want to plug both johnny sure uh battle box uh b-a-t-t-l-b-o-x
55:35 dot com there's no e in it and then carnivore club dot c-o
55:41 uh you can find me probably best on linkedin uh just john-roman
55:47 sounds good so i just want to thank you guys all for coming on to this panel i reached out to you and not one of you blinked and i so really appreciate
55:53 having all of you guys come on this has been a lot of fun and being part of the international panel of experts for this
55:59 sub summit 2021. i just want to finish off by saying that when paul chambers of sapta originally asked me to be part of
56:04 this amazing event i felt humbled and extremely honored so big thank you goes out to paul and everyone at sapta who
56:09 helped put this together lauren jennifer chris george chris chambers and of course the hajj father
56:15 John yes you gotta you're gonna keep you're gonna keep going with that i'm yeah i'm kind of like that guy in
56:21 high school that had a nickname for everyone and i'm gonna keep it going in this uh in the subscription space so expect some nicknames coming from you
56:27 guys too soon i'd also like to thank my amazing editor junard asiva uh he does
56:32 all the editing for the subscription box show as well so thanks to junard and of course it cannot have been possible without the amazing guests you guys
56:39 ultimately are the reason everyone else is listening to this so thanks to all the panelists who took time out of their
56:44 busy queue for schedules to do this uh for the listeners of the subscription industry so huge thanks to you guys
56:50 thanks guys for taking part and um we'll see you around for the next couple days around sub summit here so
56:56 cheers thank you for having us
57:06 [Music]
57:15 you
