The Weekly Subscription Model Applied to Various Industries
Blue Apron is a company that delivers fresh ingredients for two to four recipes, pre-portioned and ready to cook, right to your doorstep every week. It was one of the early companies in this most recent round of subscription businesses, along with others like Birchbox, Harry’s, StitchFix, Daily Harvest, Bespoke Post, Trunk Club, MeUndies, NatureBox, Scentbird, Graze, Try the World, Lick My Dip, Quirky Crate, Escape the Crate, Globe In, The Monthly Burn, Hygge Box, Lola, MyBookBox, SurpriseRide, KiwiCrate, and BarkBox.
The basic premise with all of these companies is pretty simple: you sign up, and every week (or month, or quarter, or equinox, or whatever) you get their product. Unceasingly and without end, in perpetuity, for ever and ever until death do you part (or you decide to skip or cancel).
However, there are still some industries untouched by the subscription model that are ripe for disruption. Below are several ideas a gregarious entrepreneur can take looking for their next unicorn.
Musical Instruments
Learning a new instrument is a classic way to keep yourself feeling young and your mind sharp. With Savant, you’ll be sent a brand-new musical device and a “for-dummies” book on how to play it every Thursday, perfect for you to pick it up before that open-mic night the following Wednesday. Savant gives you the opportunity to play such exotic instruments as the djembe, ocarina, sarangi, hammered dulcimer, triangle, or sitar! You’ll also get the classics you’d expect like the lead guitar, bass guitar, drums, vocals, and keyboard. You’ll be a one-man band before you know it!
Furniture
In Marie Kondo’s classic “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up”, she encourages readers to declutter their lives by gathering everything one owns and keeping only those things that “spark joy.” That’s a great method, but you need a bunch of stuff in order for that to be effective, right? With the DecoCrate, you can now have well designed and affordable home goods delivered to your door every week.
Need a new couch? Perfect, one is coming next Tuesday. What about a mid-century modern coffee table to match? Also in luck, DecoCrate is sending one the following week. But how are you supposed to fit 52 pieces of furniture in various sizes in your small studio apartment? Great question! I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Pretend your home is actual Tetris (DecoCrate does not guarantee a level filled with their furniture will disappear).
Air Travel
Many people like traveling these days. I recently came back from a vacation, and can’t wait to plan my next one. But what if I didn’t have to? What if there was some service, Flightly, that I could sign up for that would automatically purchase plane tickets for me, every week?
Can you imagine how amazing that’d be? Flightly sets up your weekend getaway automatically using their patented BestFlight® personalization algorithm. Every Friday at 5, I’ve got a new destination lined up whether I want to travel or not. Visit such exciting places as Fort Wayne, Indiana! Morgantown, West Virginia! Jacksonville, Florida! and more! All you need to do is show up at the airport, and Flightly will have your boarding pass ready to go! No worries if one location is a bit of a dud, because it’ll be somewhere different next week!
Blankets
Remember making blanket forts as a kid? And how you always wanted one more blanket? SnuggleBox has you covered. You’ll receive a new heavy blanket every week, ensuring that you’ll always have layers upon layers to hide under. With blankets from exotic materials like wool, cotton, fur pelts, merino, denim, satin, gauze, canvas, silk, polyester, polypropylene, cotton-poly blends, corduroy, burlap, lace, linen, percale, parkay, tweed, tartan, terry cloth, taffeta, and yarn, you’ll always have a new texture to under which to bury your body.
As an added bonus, many of these blankets can be used as building materials for an actual fort! No more having your big brother ruin all the fun just because he’s four years older and much stronger. Your mixed-material blanket fort, powered by SnuggleBox, will be both the envy of the neighborhood and the postmodern sculptural movement.
Cars
Nothing like that new car smell, right? Why even bother driving an old car when you can put yourself behind the wheel of a fresh ride every single week? With the Wheels app, you’ll automatically purchase a new, never driven, two or four door car every week and they’ll hand deliver it to your personal home, summer home, or local automobile club free of charge.
Automakers release a new version of their cars every year, and with Wheels you’ll get to try almost every single one available in your locale. And for whichever ones you don’t like, send it back for a nominal restocking fee.
Hotels
Tired of sleeping in your too-cluttered home? Just want to spend a night in a moderately well-designed room where you don’t have to clean anything yourself? With Room-a-Week, you’ll get pre-booked to a random hotel for either the weekend or weeknights depending on your preferences! Simply set your approved metropolitan areas, preferences for nights, and viola! Never sleep at home for more than a week again. Take that staycation to Milford that you’ve always dreamed about! Lock yourself in a room and binge on Netflix all weekend without feeling guilty! The possibilities are almost endless.
Plus, with their new partnership with Flightly, you’ll never end up stranded somewhere without a place to sleep! Room-a-week promises to find successful matches for up to 80% of locations served by Flightly!
Televisions
Viewership of movies and television has risen dramatically over the last decade as we’ve entered the Golden Age of Streaming. But with so many good shows on, how is any one person to keep up? The answer, of course, is more television screens. With BlackBox, you’ll get a new 47" television delivered right to your door every week, pre-configured to watch only the content that came out the previous week. The best part is that the entire TV is a new and different model, so none of the remotes work with any of the other TVs. When you’re done watching it all, you simply throw your TV out on the street. Someone will pick it up eventually, probably.
Homes
Most people see buying a home as something that happens only a few times throughout their lives, but with DifferentHomeEveryWeek you can buy a new home every week! DifferentHomeEveryWeek has streamlined the home buying process so you can get it done in less than seven days, mostly because you have no idea what you’re buying! And a bigger benefit is that you only stay in it for a week, so if the home has mold or the neighborhood isn’t great, you’ll be out of there before you have a chance to unpack. Experience the joys of packing and unpacking every week!
Plants
Pollution is a big concern for the modern urbanist, and GreenThumb has a solution. With their subscription, you’ll receive a new medium to large size plant every week capable of converting 1 pound of CO2 per year to fresh, delicious, brain-indulging medical grade oxygen. Get rid of that nagging cough and generally poor humour due to the months long inversion and help the environment too! GreenThumb sources all their plants from sustainable plant farms, ensuring that your plants had a humane experience until they arrived at your home. Your neighbors will be green with envy!
