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Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

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11–20 of 131 posts

Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

#11
post #3

maybe if you made it not just japanese candy but candy from all over the world, it just seems like a service that could work.

Thanks! Perhaps other countries could be added and there could also be an overall subscription to get from any country, it's a good idea. I do feel I should get this working well for Japan before expanding.

Also, the price is a bit high for candy... have you tried a one envelope a month subscription?

Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

#13
post #8
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~300 subscribers without much labor from you anymore isn't working well? Edit: Checking out the website, from a sales funnel / marketing perspective, there are many things you could do to increase the sales just from the current traffic you're receiving - and would likely reduce the new customer acquisition cost from $60. Edit2: Other things can be done to reduce churn rate as well.

Yes, it would be great if it could continue like that, but extrapolating a bit from that chart it seems this service could experience a slow death unless I can figure out a way to market it (and reduce churn).

Well, there are plenty of things you can do if you understand nuances of marketing - just with the design, sales copy (text on the page), and other marketing pieces. You have a good start. And really I'm jealous of what you've accomplished so far. You could make this 10 times bigger with little effort, and time.

Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

#14
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! Perhaps other countries could be added and there could also be an overall subscription to get from any country, it's a good idea. I do feel I should get this working well for Japan before expanding.

Also, the price is a bit high for candy... have you tried a one envelope a month subscription?

This is a good idea.

Another one would be a one-time purchase that is slightly more pricey but gives more. I don't want to commit to a monthly thing, but I'd pay $40 to get a single, larger package for my Japan-obsessed daughter's birthday and Christmas.

Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

#15
post #10

Candy, coffee, cigars, women's shoes/accessories... There seems like a ton of subscription businesses around and I almost feel there might be room to create a white/gray-label platform that can handle the website, subscription management, payment and shipping labels to potential operators of these kinds of services. Wondering how big the addressable market is. UPDATE: http://member.ly already does this according the…

god, we programmers love to abstract things.

Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

#16
post #10

Candy, coffee, cigars, women's shoes/accessories... There seems like a ton of subscription businesses around and I almost feel there might be room to create a white/gray-label platform that can handle the website, subscription management, payment and shipping labels to potential operators of these kinds of services. Wondering how big the addressable market is. UPDATE: http://member.ly already does this according the…

Yes, that could be useful and I could consider switching to such a service if it was available. I would worry though about giving total control over my subscribers to some outer service that might hike up their prices suddenly.

It would be nice though if someone else dealt with all the different payment buttons, subscription management and just wired me a lump sum monthly and sent the PDF for address labels that I need to print out for shipping.

Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

#17
post #10

Candy, coffee, cigars, women's shoes/accessories... There seems like a ton of subscription businesses around and I almost feel there might be room to create a white/gray-label platform that can handle the website, subscription management, payment and shipping labels to potential operators of these kinds of services. Wondering how big the addressable market is. UPDATE: http://member.ly already does this according the…

god, we programmers love to abstract things.

Well, it could be like an Etsy of subscription services where anyone could easily start one.

Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

#18

Why don't you buy candy directly from one or two Japanese suppliers rather than pay for the supermarket's margin? Although that wouldn't address your decline in subscriptions it would improve your bottom line.

I do get a bit of discount from them (5%). Mostly it's just really convenient since they save me a lot of time by doing the packaging on site. Maybe if I reached really big volume then it would start making sense. The price of product is only 23% of the cost even now. Shipping is the biggest one at 33%.

Re: Shipping $36000 worth of Japanese candy

#20
post #7

I had heard of your service before and thought it was a really neat idea! I wished there was a service like yours for getting paprika chips in the US. For some reason, it is nearly impossible to get them here. At one point I even thought I'd start a service that regularly ships just these chips to people in the US/Canada. When I looked into the import laws though, I was very confused how to navigate through them. I'v…

Afaik if you send directly to someone abroad, you are not the one importing it, rather the recipient is.

I did look into importing a bulk of product to US and then shipping from a hub there. I got as far as the FDA page where I was supposed to register my product. The FDA site requires you input the code of the factory the product is produced in. I tried asking the manufacturer for the factory code, but they weren't interested in helping me.

At my scale it probably doesn't make sense yet, anyway. But since you asked, you at least need to get that factory code and fill some forms on the FDA site.

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