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Candy Japan 2013 Year in Review

candyjapan.com

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Re: Candy Japan 2013 Year in Review

#3

Post by lxmorj »

Hey Bemmu! Glad things are going well, man. I have a suggestion for your time-to-first-product problem. Find a candy that has a long shelf life, and during your normal packing process, pack and set aside shipments to be used as 'Welcome Bags'. Then, all you need to do when a new customer signs up is label and ship them. Even doing this once per week on your non-shipping weeks would significantly improve the average purchase-to-candy delay. Then, to avoid shipping them 3 packs in one month, you can just omit them from the very next ship list. What you're effectively doing is splitting the purchase delay into two chunks instead of one long one. This also means people's experience will improve over the first two months - they'll be getting candy more and more frequently for the first 3 - 4 shipments.

Re: Candy Japan 2013 Year in Review

#4

Post by mildtrepidation »

Thanks for the update! I've seen this as a pretty inspirational "lifestyle business," particularly since you seem to be doing well with it despite having to deal with a physical product.

The "welcome envelope" was what immediately came to mind while reading about your initial delivery delay, but you make a good point, that extra cost could definitely cause margin problems. Also, it potentially opens you up to people taking advantage of that up-front freebie by signing up multiple times with different information.

Since it sounds like people are interested in potentially paying more for premium candy, perhaps rather than (or in addition to) multiple subscription levels, you could consider allowing customers to purchase much pricier one-off high-end products. Running those once a week, assuming the volume was fairly low, would only add a couple relatively mild days of work per month, for something with a potentially higher margin.

Re: Candy Japan 2013 Year in Review

#7

Post by bemmu »

mildtrepidation wrote: post #4

Thanks for the update! I've seen this as a pretty inspirational "lifestyle business," particularly since you seem to be doing well with it despite having to deal with a physical product. The "welcome envelope" was what immediately came to mind while reading about your initial delivery delay, but you make a good point, that extra cost could definitely cause margin problems. Also, it potentially opens you up to people…

Thanks,

It helps that I see some romanticism in shipping physical goods. As a kid I saw an ad in a magazine for a book on "how to start your very own far east import business". My parents would not buy it for me and it was probably some sort of scam, but the idea stayed.

Having a shop is definitely something I want to do, but I think I try to bring the subscriber count a bit higher before embarking on it. Other subscription businesses seem to make about 25% of their sales from products that people purchase more of after being introduced to them via the monthly packages.

Re: Candy Japan 2013 Year in Review

#8

Post by Joona »

mildtrepidation wrote: post #4

Thanks for the update! I've seen this as a pretty inspirational "lifestyle business," particularly since you seem to be doing well with it despite having to deal with a physical product. The "welcome envelope" was what immediately came to mind while reading about your initial delivery delay, but you make a good point, that extra cost could definitely cause margin problems. Also, it potentially opens you up to people…

And I guess the same goes the other way... Every time I see the site, I want to subscribe, but I simply can't pay $25. :(

Re: Candy Japan 2013 Year in Review

#10

Post by bemmu »

Joona wrote: post #8
mildtrepidation wrote: post #4

Thanks for the update! I've seen this as a pretty inspirational "lifestyle business," particularly since you seem to be doing well with it despite having to deal with a physical product. The "welcome envelope" was what immediately came to mind while reading about your initial delivery delay, but you make a good point, that extra cost could definitely cause margin problems. Also, it potentially opens you up to people…

And I guess the same goes the other way... Every time I see the site, I want to subscribe, but I simply can't pay $25. :(

What kind of option would you prefer to have?
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