Hacker News Reader

Comment by apacheCamel | Hacker News Reader

I am not entirely sure how I feel about everything becoming a "subscription". On one hand, it is great for people new to an area to just jump right in, on the other, do we really need to pay someone to ship us plants every so often? Not just plants, but other things too. It is getting harder and harder to find something you can't get in subscription form.

I guess if it is working, keep at it. If anyone has the resources, a list outlining all these niche subscription services would be neat to see.

View on HN

I’m sure this list isn’t exhaustive but My Subscription Addiction[1] has 97 pages of available boxes. There’s everything from the aptly named “The Opulent Box”[2] a luxury jewelry subscription at the very unaffordable price of $25,000/month, to just about every “Dollar ____ Club” you could dream up. And, of course, everything in between.

[1] https://boxes.mysubscriptionaddiction.com/

[2] https://boxes.mysubscriptionaddiction.com/box/the-opulent-bo...

That's sad and funny. Props to you for finding a way to make a buck in that market without creating yet another box. Though you might be the best person to see there's not a subscription box for something, and create it yourself and start your own subscription box company.

Thankfully, it's not my site - the name just happens to be "My Subscription Addiction" and I suppose I'm more of a hate-follower than a fan. Like many other women in their early-20s I subscribed to Birchbox when it first came out ~2012. Eventually I cancelled and told friends that it kind of felt like low-stakes beauty sample gambling. Of course they thought I was nuts so I googled "subscription box gambling addiction" and stumbled upon this site.

None of my friends still have Birchbox subscriptions but following along on MSA I do think the boxes "target" a certain type of people/part of the brain. I get the impression there are a small number of people who spend a lot of money on several boxes as more of a hobby or entertainment than a convenience thing. They subscribe to a handful of boxes but only for 6-12 months before switching to a new box.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I bet a subscription box of random subscription boxes would actually do really well...

I think this subscription service could be useful to me to find what I like/what works for my home, end the service, then go purchase the plants I like.

The one subscription i've been tempted by is the Tiki Cocktail Box:

http://tikicocktailbox.co.uk/welcome.html

You get some bits for making tiki cocktails. Each box has the things for one cocktail, but as your collection grows, you get superlinear growth in the number of possible combinations. That, and the fact that the stuff in the box keeps for a good while but isn't immortal (assuming you can dispose of mugs somehow), means you shouldn't suffer from an overload of stuff. Also, it only comes every two months.

Sadly, it seems like it's on indefinite hiatus.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com