Why a Cryptocurrency Subscription Box Will Work Wonderfully
When a fellow crypto-enthusiast (Al Chen) and I were discussing opportunities to build a company around cryptocurrencies, we naturally started talking about our pain points with the ecosystem. These were the 3 biggest inefficiencies we personally felt:
- It takes hours/days to find the information needed to confidently purchase a token.
- Purchasing a small token is really difficult and often distributed through foreign, obscure exchanges.
- There are just way too many tokens and nobody has the time to research everything to find the diamond in the rough.
After some brainstorming we were struck by a compelling, yet strangely obvious solution to all three issues:
What if there was a monthly subscription service that did all the work? A service that would handpick cryptocurrencies, send it directly to my digital wallet, and provide an in-depth analysis on why the specific tokens were picked that month.
It felt like something that could work. But it also felt like a potentially meaningless amalgamation of two completely disparate ideas. I had to dive deeper to find out if the idea had legs.
The State of the Subscription Box Model
A simple googling will reveal the current sentiment around the subscription box model. Do we really need 2,000 subscription box services? Has the subscription box boom turned into a bubble? Why the subscription box craze may fade, are some of the article headlines you’ll find signaling that the good times for subscription box businesses has passed.
A very telling chart from Quid shows this reality with a massive drop-off in subscription box investments in 2017.
The reasons for the decline are generally the same across various sources:
- The high shipping and labor costs makes subscription boxes an unprofitable business.
- You need massive scale and deep relationships with suppliers to make the margins work.
- The ‘give a sample’ model hasn’t translated into customers purchasing the full price item — causing suppliers to be hesitant about using subscription boxes as a marketing channel.
- A monthly recurring model simply doesn’t work for all products. Unless it’s for something that needs replenishing (household items, diapers) or something bought recurrently (makeup, wine, clothes), the model doesn’t work.
Traditional Issues Don’t Apply to Cryptocurrencies
This laundry list of problems might make one wonder why we would pick the subscription box model as a means of distribution or as a business model at all. Fortunately, many of the trappings of failure simply don’t apply to digital assets.
- There is no shipping costs and minimal labor costs as the distribution of tokens all happens digitally.
- Order fulfillment for one customer is the same as for a million customers, and doesn’t require any special relationship with a token supplier to make it work.
- There’s no such thing as a sample token, so customers would receive the actual cryptocurrency assets.
And while cryptocurrencies are not a replenishing or recurrently purchased product, the subscription box model is the ideal way to introduce and educate subscribers to new cryptocurrencies without forcing someone to spend hours researching.
Customers need an option to be passive with certain purchase decisions in life, and a subscription box model for cryptocurrencies allows for this. Katia Beauchamp, the co-founder and CEO of Birchbox said it beautifully as she talked about the evolution of eCommerce:
I am a believer that some form of subscription — allowing consumers to be passive with their consumption — is a game-changing evolution for retail.
Currency Crate — The First Cryptocurrency Subscription Box
We launched a sign-up page on currencycrate.com in November 2017 with a very simple introduction:
Every month, our trained experts send handpicked cryptocurrencies straight to your digital wallet. Based on your subscription plan, you’ll receive a crate of 1, 5, or 10 undervalued and promising currencies — along with an in-depth analysis on why we picked it.
Without going into any details beyond this, we were able to get hundreds of email addresses from interested people who wanted to know more. We have a lot of very exciting things planned for this product and it will be launching very soon. If you are interested please join our mailing list at CurrencyCrate.com and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
