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I actually did one of these (oyatsubox) for about a year, and if you want my unsolicited feedback it'd be that it got old after a year. The DIY candy was fun (although deciphering the directions was a challenge in itself) but it all tastes the same. The Hi-chews and pocky and odd gummi things are good but I can get similar things here for cheaper if I wanted to do that regularly. I really did like the random flavored savory chips and things though, but I imagine these are not so cost effective to ship.

I don't know if it was an issue of scale and/or other folks' tastes (e.g. could they only buy "safe" flavors at scale?), but after a while I felt like I had "tried it all" and it was increasing hard to justify spending that much every month.

So if you're not planning on cutting a profit until you hit scale in a competitive market, I just wanted to provide the data point that LTV may not be as high as you hope and you might want to plan accordingly.

I'm sure you've thought a lot about these issues, but since I can provide feedback from the customer perspective I thought I'd share as an N-of-1 sample.

Good luck!

thank you so much, i sincerely appreciate these useful and constructive feedback from paying customers, even if it's not me they're paying!

one of the things we also plan to do is, because our order fulfillment center is in Singapore, we have access to a wide variety of limited edition or seasonal flavors of particular products. e.g green tea sakura kit kat, peach and sakura hi-chew, etc. these are often not available in western markets. we also try our very best to rotate the types of flavors and textures of products we ship out so as not to fatigue our customers' tastebuds.

without giving away too much of what makes our business model novel, our intention is to achieve a minimum scale where we become interesting as a distribution channel to other products, ideally complementary ones. this means even when at scale we are able to achieve profitability with candy sales alone, we may choose to forego the profit and continue increasing the value we ship to our customers. we believe there is plenty of profit to be made outside of the candy itself, which is why the value of our boxes will only keep going up as our costs goes down.

To give you a single perspective from the type of person who does occasionally sign up to "novelty" food subscriptions... I'm just not that in to candy.

I'd pay $10/25 a month for the savoury snack equivalent, or for maybe a condiment/spice selection, or for some really high quality dark chocolate, but I wouldn't sign up for something which I mentally perceive as a box of unhealthy sugars (even though it may be high quality / great tasting sugar).

ooh yeah i'd sign up for that

frankly, unless you're genuinely willing to pay just for the novelty of the snacks, you'd be getting tremendously low value if you subscribe to most of the current available subscription services for such products. shipping often more than doubles the cost of these snacks due to the large amount of air in the bags.

which is not to say i'm opposed to it. if, indeed, there is a large interest in salty snacks as a box offering, we can definitely do that. as part of our sourcing for candies, we of course also come across salty and savory snack products so we already know where to get them. i'm just very skeptical that customers have such strong preference for novelty over value.

that is fair, not everyone enjoys candy on a regular basis.

i can see the appeal of offering a savory snack box, like many other of our competitors, because there are just so many interesting snacks in asia but the value just won't be there. we did attempt to put together a salty snacks box, but it was very difficult to put together one that not only contained a reasonable quantity of snacks, but could fit inside standard sized packaging and fit within shipping weight brackets. we found that majority of the boxes we could put together to ship out had such low commercial value that the price point simply didn't make sense for us. i'm confident that most of our competitors shipping out salty snacks are laughing to the bank that their customers are paying so much for shipping air. candy, on the other hand, are typically far denser so shipping cost-wise, it is far more economical.

this is certainly not a subscription service for those looking to cut sugar from their diet. we hope to aim at people who order these things for their families to try together, or people who bring these boxes to office for their colleagues, or even people who simply enjoy candy so much they'd like a regular supply of delicious and interesting candy.

Thanks for posting the link. I'll take that as a sign that you're open to some feedback and pursuing this conversation…

(First, as a bit of background, I'm a cofounder of Svpply, a fashion/aspirational-consumerist startup from about seven years ago. I've spent a lifetime thinking about why things like Lot 2046 are catnip to some folks and repellent to others. You can guess which side of the divide I fall on.)

The clothes people wear (and, to a just barely less obvious extension, all purchases people make) reinforce identity. The quick and easy stereotype is that people who buy expensive clothes are snobs; I would proffer a more generous depiction, that they are people who love beauty and want to be part of a beautiful world.

What most people miss (and I'm referring to both the beautiful people and their critics) is that folks on the opposite end of the spectrum are also engaging in reinforcement of identity. This thread is full of people talking about Hanes and Gilden t-shirts. They are projecting an identity of down-to-earth pragmatism. They are every bit as engaged in a game of ego and showmanship as that douchebag who stepped out of a GQ photoshoot. Normals and slobs spend way, way more time looking down on fashionistas than vice versa.

All consumption is conspicuous. Repeat that a few times. All consumption is conspicuous.

Lot 2046 is threading the needle of an of the hacker genius startup design savant. The punk cowboy of Neuromancer, the startup founder credo of decision fatigue, and the clean white workspace of Jonny Ives. The appeal of Lot 2046 is specific but deep.

Now I'm looking at your site. The physical goods that you're selling are pretty great! The experience and identity that you're selling is nonexistent.

Just take a look at the wrapper of the “Tokuno Milk”, or ponder the name “Hi-Chew” (I stuff my sister’s kid's stockings full of this kind of stuff every xmas, by the way). These candies are tasty and exotic and weird! And when I indulge in this kind of thing, I'm incidentally reinforcing a self-image of being a person with exotic and fun tastes. When I share these kinds of things, I'm giving the gift of exposure (there is fun weird shit that you can enjoy too), and also projecting that I am a gateway to fun, exotic, weird things.

I don't mean to give you the impression that this is the POINT of enjoying those things. The point of good food and good clothes is that they are good and beautiful and fun. But again, all consumption is conspicuous.

Another way of thinking of this is, why does every product you carry come in the wrapper that it's in? Now extend that to the space the item is sold (in this case, your site). Then look at the product Lot 2046 is selling, and how the store selling that product extends that identity.

The difference between Lot 2046 and Supercandyshop is that he understands his target demographic's subconscious aspirational identity, and you don't. All you're selling right now is a product. I can get products anywhere.

You need to target yourself somewhere between Lot2046, https://www.lootcrate.com, and Sanrio.

Hi Eric,

Thank you so much for your thoughtful and detailed response. I truly appreciate your feedback and will definitely take them into consideration.

I agree that we have yet to form an identity and that Lot 2046, as you said, has a very clear target audience. I'm not much of a designer, so I tried to keep the site looking as clean as possible. I did not want to go the cliche route of being overly colorful and child-like for a candy store, and wanted to maintain a clean neutral aesthetic. I personally dislike the noisy look of most other candy sites and prefer to keep it clean. Perhaps, like you said, I need a better understanding of my target demographic so I can tweak the design to align with their taste.