Compulsive Creative Monthly Subscription Boxes

Monthly Permission for Self Expression and Exploration

Compulsive Creative subscription boxes are monthly alternative art projects for those compelled to create.

We are a subscription box company for alternative art projects. People subscribe and pay through our website. Then they receive a package every month with equipment and instructions to make fun and unusual art.

Our product provides a fast and simple solution for creative people and families to experiment with new artistic outlets.

“DIY art projects that a family could do with kids would be awesome! How fun would it be to get something like that in the mail each month and make something with your kid?! I think it’s cool! An exciting surprise, a quality time activity to do with family, and someone else comes up with the idea… Perfect!”
– Kristin Fondriest (future Compulsive Creative Subscription customer)

Currently, there are no subscription boxes that focus on alternative art. There are ones on drawing, painting, knitting, and other traditional arts and crafts. Our art projects allow for more creativity and experimentation.

Examples of Alternative Art Projects:

• Crayon sculpting: creating sculptures from crayons.
• Zines: simplified comic books using a variety of techniques.
• Altered Paintings: take a classic painting and paint in new objects or design.
• Found art: using discarded material to create pieces of art.
• Experimental Animation: short stop-motion videos without narratives.

Risks

Our biggest risk is balancing expenditures of the items in the boxes, packaging, and shipping with the price of the subscription. There would be a threshold of subscribers needed to be profitable, and we would need to reach that number before sending out our first month of boxes. Our goal is 100 subscribers for the first month.

We have done early market testing on the product using Kickstarter.com (a crowdfunding website) to pre-sell our Learn to Animate Course. This digital book/course will be available as an add-on to the subscriptions.

With our “Learn to Animate” crowdfunding experiment, we were able to test the marketability before time was spent creating the product. We were successful with over 250 copies of the eBook and video course sold and received 110+ surveys from those who purchased. This gives us detailed information about our customers and a list of buyers to email when the Compulsive Creative subscriptions are ready for sale.

During the last quarter of 2016, we will determine if focusing on one segment (such as creative families) or multiple segments are more profitable. We will do this through customer interviews, market testing, and another Kickstarter campaign. The Kickstarter campaign will also allow us to meet the minimum threshold of subscribers before spending the money on materials for boxes and supplies while further confirming a need for our product.

The Team

Jason Love has been a professional entertainer, educator, and artist for over a decade. His undergraduate degree is in Psychology from Northland College, and he earned his MBA from UW-Parkside. Jason learned web/graphic design and Filmmaking at UW-Parkside and UW-Milwaukee. He has also taken online business courses through a variety of educational programs.

Jason will be using his skills to run the website and market the alternative art subscription packages. He also has access to promote Compulsive Creative to a few thousand families yearly through his performances, workshops, and conventions.

Leah Love is an artist and animator who received her undergraduate degree in illustration from UW-Parkside. She has a wide variety of experience as a freelance graphic designer. Leah will be in charge of branding and assembling the kits for each package.

Advisors

Fizzle.co: courses for professional bloggers, podcasters, and independent entrepreneurs. They specializes in traffic generation and marketing for online businesses.

Internet Business Mastery: Specialize in systems development for online businesses.

Proposed Business Model

Customer Segments

In our Kickstarter experiment, we found the following data about those customers.

Based on these previous experiments, we hypothesize the following about our customer segments:

• Creative people who feel like they want to create more, but don’t have the time.
• Families looking to create things together.
• Homeschool families looking for art curriculum.
• Educators
  • Note: Our product has the ability, with very little effort, to be adapted for educators to use in their classrooms or other educational organizations. With the “Learn to Animate Course”, we found from surveying those that pre-order that 10% of those that purchased were educators.

Value Proposition

Those that buy our product see themselves as creative people. They consider it part of their personal identity, but often feel too overwhelmed to find new projects, learn how to do it, and go buy the materials needed.

“I love it! I really would like it as someone who needs an extra little nudge to do creative things. Please do this😃 “
–April Morris (future Compulsive Creative Subscription customer)

While it is hard to say the market size of creative people or families looking for creative projects to do together, we do know that homeschoolers will be included as a sub-category. According to the National Home Education Research Institute, there are about 2.3 million home-educated students in the United States alone (http://www.nheri.org/research/research-facts- on-homeschooling.html).

Competitive Advantage

Our advantage in this industry is that no one else is doing alternative art projects with this subscription model. All other subscription boxes focus on traditional art (painting/drawing), crafts, etc. We provide diverse projects that offer a variety ways to explore creativity.

Channels

Another major competitive advantage is our connection with artists across the globe. We have a podcast where we interview a variety of professional and semi-professional artists. This podcast gives us direct access to their fans.

We also have access directly to our customer segments through our blog (1,500 monthly visitors), Twitter (22,800 combined followers), live events, etc.

Key Partners

To be successful, we are building relationships with manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, and artists to decrease costs related to filling each month’s subscription boxes.

To help with marketing, we are partnering with successful content creators (bloggers, YouTubers, podcasters, etc.) already connected into the daily life of our customer segments. These relationships may include offering affiliate programs (they get a % of all sales they send), sponsorships, or paid posts. These will be tested individual over time.

Key Resources

We are using WordPress for our website, LeadPages for testing conversion rates, Google Analytics to track visitors, ConvertKit for our email newsletters and follow-ups, and Gumroad for sales.

We still need to create custom boxes, purchase materials for several alternative art projects, and to produce instructional flyers or videos for those projects.

Before we start gathering all that equipment and buying boxes, we will be doing a Kickstarter campaign to pre-sell the idea and see if there are people willing to subscribe. This would require marketing material, promotional video, and a Kickstarter page ready to be launched.

Revenue Model

Our main revenue source would be subscribers through our website. Subscriptions will be available to order for 1, 3, 6, and 12 months at a time with a discount for ordering multiple months at once.

We would also be looking for businesses who would like to have their brand included in a project or include an advertisement within our boxes. This would take the form of sponsored projects where our customers get a bonus project paid for by a business or organization. These companies get to promote their products, our customers get more stuff, and we make money (win-win-win).

Cost Model

Our fixed costs would initially be $248 per month and $2972 for a year (see “Fixed Costs for 1-Year” chart in Appendix). To reduce fixed costs, we are using the Launch Box Business Resource Center’s Co-Working Space at Gateway Technical College. It is free for small businesses and includes Wi-Fi.

The initial costs for Kickstarter and launching would be:

Appendix