Unboxing Experiences For Moms

Some entrepreneurs take a path that is different from inventing a new product: They take a curated selection of their favorite products and share them with others. The co-founders of subscription box service Mom Things, for instance, put those items in front of moms to pamper them or make their lives a bit easier. Co-Founder Julie Powers told PYMNTS in an interview that the company’s mission is to make “busy women and mothers feel special by giving them an experience.” When consumers open a box, they find a particular quote that changes each month — “a pretty unique concept in the subscription box industry,” said Powers, who co-founded the company with Brooke King.

The boxes themselves come with five to seven items, which Powers said are items the co-founders love, trust, use every day and want to share with the community. The company offers subscription packages for one month, three months or six months that consumers can purchase online. And Mom Things is hardly alone in offering different choices for subscriptions: According to the PYMNTS Subscription Commerce Conversion Index, 95 percent of the top 20 performers in Q4 2018 offered plan options. For payments, the company accepts credit card, debit card and PayPal.

The curated boxes feature a different collection of products each month in various categories. For instance, the co-founders like to choose a practical item from the kitchen (one pick, for example, was an onion chopper). They also like to include an item from the pampering side, such as clay masks along with lip glosses. The company offered sunglasses that retail, in one case, for $48, while their box retails for $34.99. They also have clothing items, which they call one-size-fits-most, such as, say, leggings. In the June box, they plan to have a product in the clothing category as well.

Since the company is called Mom Things, the co-founders understand that they may reach moms with their name. But the concept’s market is also very much busy women in general. At the same time, the co-founders realize that not every single item they include in the box will appeal to each of their customers. For that reason, the company encourages its customers to give a selection that might not speak to them as a birthday present, Christmas gift or a birthday gift for someone at work. (That way a woman is always prepared.) The company also offers an option for customers to buy their box subscriptions as gifts.

When it comes to logistics, Powers and King handle the preparation themselves. They get together a couple of times a month to separate out the items to pack and ship. Boxes are always sent during the first week of the month, which Powers said is excellent for planning because they can focus their ordering around that schedule and assess how much they need as well as prepare for the end of the month. Beyond the subscriptions, King noted that the company has an online store with products that it might have ordered extras of knowing that they would make great gifts at a later time. The company also features one-time offerings like a Dad Things Box on that page.

The Subscription and eCommerce Market

Powers said this is the perfect time for the Mom Things concept. For one thing, she pointed out that “subscription boxes do make life so easy on so many levels.” Consumers, for instance, don’t have to go to a brick-and-mortar store for some items. At the same time, online shopping is gaining steam: The Commerce Department reported in May that eCommerce sales were up 12.4 percent from last year to $127.3 billion, measured in terms of non-seasonally-adjusted data.

Beyond Mom Things, players such as FabFitFun offer products from a variety of categories in their boxes including beauty, fashion, food, wellness, technology and home products. With FabFitFun, for instance, each box contains eight to 12 products. The company’s media business puts a magazine in every subscription box and publishes five to 10 pieces of original content per day. It does its boxes a bit differently, however — they come once a quarter instead of once a month.

With the help of eCommerce, players such as FabFitFun and Mom Things are looking to provide the variety and convenience of subscriptions in regular shipments of home and beauty goods.