Tsk tsk this snark, Marketplace. Is it because the main audience of subscription boxes is women, therefore it's okay to take cheap potshots at them? I notice there aren't any equivalent reports about how many games the average gamer purchases, compared to the number of AAA games released a year, and how no one could conceivably give any game a fair play to keep up with the releases. And there we're even talking about an industry which women hold a 40% audience marketshare.
I agree that this subscription box thing has led to the accumulation of a lot of Stuff, some of which people don't want, but I think you've missed the reasoning of why people might decide to join a subscription service.
1) It is, arguably, a "gift" for yourself, but more importantly, it's also an opportunity to get a good "value" out of something. For $10 or $20 a month, you get to sample an array of products anywhere between 2-5 times the value of what you paid. Trends have shown that in economic recessions throughout history, women have turned to buying "little" luxury products like lipsticks (and now, nail polish) because it's both cheap and accessible, but also makes the consumer feel good about herself. Now the price of a lipstick is about $10 -- so why not put that towards a subscription where you can get a lipstick and 3-4 other beauty products to try as well?
2) The subscription box boom has been highly disruptive to the way the beauty industry works, where newer brands are able to gain inroads into audiences through non-traditional means. The American public is highly conscious and focused on on brands as a marker of quality and are highly loyal to brands, so subscription services create new opportunities to access an marketbase who might otherwise not otherwise want to try your product if it weren't already bundled along with a product they already know and like.
3) Subscription boxes are about curation, not accumulation. A subscription service isn't -shopping- for you. It's obtaining products, and making recommendations and curations based on what the service thinks you might like. I don't subscribe to a wine monthly box because I don't drink wine. I'm not with a cheese of the month box because I'm lactose intolerant. Yes, it's "stuff" but who are you to make the judgment that it's less valuable to a subscriber paying for the service, than say, picking our your own video games to add to your 200+ games collection and not getting to play more than 2-3 a week?
Also, the fact that the innovators who really pushed this disruption forward -- the founders of Birchbox -- are two businesswomen who operate in a space where the majority of the decisionmakers, influencers, and people on the receiving end of the profit are MEN dictating how women should look and feel about themselves-- well, I'm not saying you need to be on their side, but it's a LITTLE unfeminist to say the previous status quo was somehow better.
Honestly, it seems like the reporter already had her own opinions about subscription boxes and just wanted to write quirky quips rather than exploring the business model of a disruptive and booming industry. If the critique is of accumulating stuff, there's plenty in there to discuss, but that's a separate issue apart from why people choose to subscribe to these services and what make them successful. It probably would've helped, you know, to talk to the owner of one of these services or I don't know -- maybe even someone who subscribes?
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