Ask the experienced folks in the industry and you would be quick to realize that many do not believe in the concept of monthly subscription boxes.
The signs are clear: Vanity Trove, the once popular poster child for beauty boxes in Singapore, pivoted into a beauty social network. Those in the know say that the margins for monthly subscription boxes are low, and the surprise factor which comes along when you unbox these subscription boxes will wear out after the second or third boxes, simply because new interesting products in the market that could be included in just don’t come around that often.
There are many other subscription box services which disappeared with time over the past few years too, but that did not hinder Walter and his team from starting BoxGreen, a monthly subscription box service for healthy snacks. At S$19.90, BoxGreen delivers a box of healthy snacks to your doorstep.
“We’re on a mission to help you discover and try delicious and healthy snacks, all at your convenience.” – BoxGreen
Five months in, BoxGreen managed to deliver over 1000 boxes to health conscious consumers around in Singapore, which prompted us to check in with the team.
What we received in return was a box of the month’s BoxGreen delivered to our office.
Admittedly, while we did not enjoy the apricots, we loved the sunshine chips, which cofounder Walter shared was the month’s biggest hit among its customers. Other than the sunshine chips, other well loved products are the Mcritchie Midnight as well as the Cheng Tng, which can now be purchased individually from BoxGreen’s own marketplace without being a monthly subscriber.
Though the packaging of the box is simple, probably to keep costs low, it came with a note from a team as well as a card which described the snacks. The team at BoxGreen is targetting health conscious consumers, and they noticed that most of their boxes end up for self consumption rather than gifting.
“People are looking for more healthier varieties of snacks on top of nuts and dried fruits, and we are getting our products from everywhere you can imagine, bringing them to our customers in Singapore,” shared Walter.
And people are responding well to BoxGreen: a quick search on Instagram, as recommended by Walter, shows that people are enjoying the snacks curated relentlessly by the team every month:
With 1000 boxes delivered in just 5 months, we asked if Walter thought the monthly box subscription business is a viable one in Singapore. While there are unsuccessful companies in this space, Walter is quick to point out that there are also successful ones, citing BellaBox and The French Cellar as examples that cater to niche markets.
The BoxGreen team are working hard to make sure that the model works, and that they do not follow the fate of some of the failed companies in the past.
“Getting to 1,000 boxes is not the biggest challenge, scaling from 1,000-10,000 is!”
Hopefully that doesn’t drive the team nuts.
