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Comment by breakpointalpha | Hacker News Reader

Without reading the article, this is exactly why I gave up on my last side-project.

The subscription box business is great for consumers, but nearly indefensible against competitors.

Dollar shave club was hugely successful because it was a first-mover. Now Gillette and others are offering direct subscription services.

There simply is no moat if you don't own the base materials in the package and can control for manufacturing costs.

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I suppose that depends on what your goal is. If you're hoping to create a product segment that didn't previously exist, I think Blue Apron succeeded. If the goal is to make money, then I think the Blue Apron founders / investors were also able to cash out from an IPO when they saw the writing on the wall.

I'd encourage you to re-think this. Blue Apron fails because it is higher cost in a VERY low margin business, combined with a mandate to scale. Simply put, their value was mostly saving you time, with a novelty twist. But you have to start getting close to upper middle class to make up for the premium paid. Shame on VCs who didn't understand this, or did but knew they could push the stock all the way to IPO.

Anyway, plenty of subscription businesses that can be sustainable at a smaller scale.

Or, possible have a white label option in place from day one. Would an easy franchise/affiliate/brand-able option result in less copycats and more sales partners?

DSC wasn't a first mover there were other people in the market including amazon subscriptions. You defend yourself with brand and scale. Thats the Amazon moat. Biggest costs for these food in a box companies is shipping and packaging which are solved at high volumes.

There were people online who recommended using dorco blades as they were cheaper than other shaving brands (blades have been overpriced). DSC took advantage of that idea and used good marketing to build their very profitable business.

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