If you’ve been following me on Twitter lately (and I know you have been, RIGHT??), you’ll know I’ve been pretty obsessed with a new subscription plan that mails you razors every month for as little as a buck. Not only is their about video freakin’ hysterical, but they also capitalize on something almost every consumer appreciates: convenience and value. (And by convenience, I mean being lazy)
Check this out for a hot minute, and then come back and finish reading –> Dollar Shave Club
I don’t now how many people have signed up just yet, but I can tell you that this thing is getting passed around everyyyyyywhere. The video’s already been watched over 3 million times, so at the very least they’ve got a killer marketing department! Even my WOMEN friends are signing up to get these razors, so they’re definitely on to something good ;) And if it weren’t for my own beard growing competition (with myself), I’d have signed up 8 days ago! (I’m on a 90+ day non-shave record, baby – watch out!)
This club also got me thinking of *other* awesome subscriptions I’ve seen over the years… including, if I do say so myself, even our own $1/mo Love Drop project we started and ended last year ;) But you all already knew about that one… how about some of these others on the list though?
6 Other Dope Subscriptions & Clubs Out There:
- Medicine subscriptions — A handful of people I know get their monthly meds MAILED to them on a nice (and even CHEAPER) rotation. Things that you know you have to pick up every single month like birth control or insulin, heart medicine, etc. But instead of heading to head to the pharmacy a few times a month, these guys get their meds delivered right to their door! A double whammy of savings and convenience.
- Wine and Beer of the month clubs — Bet you didn’t know about those, huh? :) According to The International Wine of the Month Club, “Each month, members receive internationally selected wines from two separate award-winning boutique vineyards, accompanied by our informative and entertaining wine club newsletter. Choose to receive either two reds, two whites, or one red and one white.” Their subscriptions run between $29.95 and $65.95 per month, plus S&H, and from what I’ve seen so far on beer clubs, the rates seem to be around the same.
- Grocery subscriptions — Now this one I personally haven’t ever tried, but I know it’s pretty popular among residents of large cities. You go online and check off everything you want (and even apply all your coupons), and then a service like Peapod ships them out right to your door whenever you want. If you tend to pick up the same things every trip, why not set it and forget it?
- Chocolate of the month club — To go along with your wine of the month club! Ow ow! Starting around $30/mo at places like AmazingChocolateClub.com. (Those chocolates better be damn good for that price, though!)
- ART subscriptions! Project Dispatch is one of my favorites, but I know there are others too. With them, you get the option of signing up to a 3, 6, or 12 month subscription, and in return receive an original work by an artist of your choice – running you $25, $50 or $75/mo. Pretty cool, huh?
- A lottery subscription! Okay okay, I don’t think this exists yet, but if it did I’d totally sign up! I’d love to receive a monthly (or even weekly?) scratcher in the mail for just a buck ;) So if any of you start one (and it’s not illegal?), you can consider me your first client!
There are tons of other clubs/subscriptions out there too. If you really want to be blown away, check out AmazingClubs.com. They’ve got everything from Hot Sauce Clubs to even TEDDY BEAR CLUBS! Haha… Different strokes for different folks, I suppose? It’ll be interesting to see which end up lasting, and which don’t, but it’s obvious they’re not going away anytime REAL soon, that’s for sure… If I were a smart man, I should probably get up SubscriptionsAreSexy.com!
Any of you currently signed up to any of these? Anyone signed up to something even better?
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I would love the grocery delivery subscription, but there aren’t any available in my area. My boss started doing this about a year ago, and it helped her cut her grocery bill in half! All of those little grocery store tricks like the fancy displays and the good smells and the most expensive products at eye level all lead me (and I’m sure others) to make impulsive choices. She just has her staples like bread, milk, veggies and fruits pre-loaded and then adds to it as necessary.
@Paige – YES! Didn’t even consider that, but so true – I alllllways come away with much more than originally intended. Esp when I’m hungry! (The worst time to go grocery shopping, haha…). Sucks there’s not one near ya yet, but I bet one day :)
Thanks for the links – and for that vid! DollarShaveClub is hilarious.
I was signed up for a Bacon of The Month club last year… I experienced some of the greatest bacon I have ever eaten. All locally sourced and smoked. It was truely a great year.
http://goosethemarket.com/GooseBaconClub/GooseBaconoftheMonthClub.pdf
I have recently been comtemplating joining one of the local vegetable delivery co-ops. Those seem to interest me since I love me some fresh veggies!
I would consider the sirloin of the club as I love me some good steak, but it just seems to pricey @ 89 dollars. Others I would consider are the peanut butter, coffee, beer, wine, and lobster clubs. Yumm! Chocolate covered coffee beans would be a good one to add. I just feel with these clubs that I will have a surplus eventually and then I would have to stop to catch up with all the food that I didnt consume. LOL.
It’s not an “of the month” club, but I subscribed to a diaper order through Amazon. Cheapest way to handle diapers(short of cloth diapers) that I’ve found.
We get some of our groceries through Amazon Subscribe & Save. We figured out which things we bought regularly, how often we bought them, and how much we usually paid for them. Then we subscribed to those things that were cheaper on Amazon, and we get them delivered to us regularly. Unfortunately Amazon stopped offering several of the items we’d subscribed to, but we still get a few things from them.
I don’t subscribe to the dollar shave club, but I have to say, that commercial is awesomely hilarious. Love it.
For a project in my MBA course work we came up with a delivery service for groceries. Just the logistics of it and the overhead didnt allow it to be profitable enough to continue the service. We did it for a few months but it just wasn’t profitable. Lesson learned!
For the rx now alot of insurance companies force you into the mail order, to save themselves some green!
J – I just checked out the dollar shave club, which razor, I think you would be a humble twin guy? Me personally I use a combination of razors. I’d go with the 4x and also a straight razor. You can get pretty intricate with the designs using a straight razor. The first time I shaved with one it looked like I was in a knife fight.. I am pretty good with it now.
Ha! I love that video. I’m a fan of monthly subscriptions, too, which is why I’m sad that my beloved MagHound is leaving. That aside, I’ve recently discovered audible.com, an audiobook subscriptions service.
What an awesome concept. I think we’re going to see a lot of niche businesses like this one popping up all over America. People are tired of ordinary – they want extraordinary. They want something they can talk about with their friends – something that’ll impress their friends.
Clever advertising and unique services are required in a recession. Get ready for a wave of companies just like this one!
I need to take advantage of the pharmacy subscription. It would save me a bunch of last minute headaches.
I’m going to disagree with the mail in prescription plan. It’s awful! This was mandatory with our insurance and we’ve had nothing but problems (like taking 3 weeks to fulfill!), slow delivery (or no delivery), incorrect meds sent (twice!), and then sending a different type of birth control every time!! While we do get a discount ($3-$7), it’s not worth the hassle. More than once I’ve had to pay full price for my bc at a pharmacy because mine weren’t mailed out on time.
But I’d love to have a grocery subscription. How awesome would that be! I bet that would help cut down on our grocery costs too.
I think these are really fun gift ideas (maybe not the razors or meds but most of the other stuff – at least most of the people on MY list aren’t asking for razor blades or prescription drugs!!) I love the idea that the gift keeps coming all year long. I’ve given some as group gifts since they’re usually kind of pricey. I also like the idea of consumable gifts since we all tend to have way too much stuff.
Can’t forget about the classic – fruit of the month!
Oh my gosh — JUST got asked if I wanted to join in on a veggie subscription club with my neighbor! Where you get all local food every month! HAH! What are the odds?? And actually I DO love the idea (a lot) but I know we’d never use 75% of the stuff on the list :( But maybe one day when we get better w/ cooking and all?
@Andrew from FabulousSavings – Yeah it is! I’ve watched it like 10 times so far, cracks me up ;)
@Brian – Woahhh really? Bacon? That sound amazing! Haha…
@Rich Uncle EL – Haha, yeah – for sure. Though if you switched to a new club every 3 months that may be fun? Something to look forward to each quarter of the year? :)
@Jason@LiveRealNow – Ooooh really? We’re totally gonna have to sign up to that… I don’t think we’re gonna go w/ the cloth route yet, but just in case I’m jotting down this idea, thanks :)
@Jessica @ Faith Permeating Life – I love it! And they sell soooooo much so I bet you get a TON of options! :)
@DebtnTaxes – Right? It’s def. great marketing :)
@Christopher @ This That and The MBA – HAH! I’ve never used a straight-up razor like that, I don’t think I have the patience ;) I’d probably go w/ the cheapest one if I were to order them though – I never seem to know the difference (Though I will say I’ve been sticking w/ the Excel blades a lot and DO love those…. haven’t switched in like 10+ years so far). Awesome trial w/ groceries too btw, much more fun to learn hands-on than wonder w/ theories :)
@Bethy @ Credit Karma – Oh yeah, I’ve been hearing a lot of great things about Audible lately… I don’t listen to audibooks, but I def. love the concept – esp if you’re stuck in the car for hours on end :)
@ChristianPF – I hope so, my friend! I’m obviously the perfect demographic for them! Haha… Thanks for stopping by, Bob, hope things are well :)
@SavvyFinancialLatina – Yup! For sure… having them ready to go on auto mode sounds awesome.
@Angella – Oh wow, you’re the first person I’ve heard that doesn’t like it :( I’m sorry to hear, my friend… maybe if enough people complain and let them know they’ll change it up for ya? I hope so!! That sounds horrible.
@Good Cents Savings – Oh yeah! Def. good for gifts, hadn’t even thought of that :) I’d love to get awesome stuff in the mail each month! You can remember that for when it’s my birthday, next, haha… woohoo!
I’m not sure about other states, but the state of North Dakota has a lottery subscription. As far as I know, it’s only for the big ones like Powerball and Hot Lotto, and not for scratch tickets though. (of course, we don’t have scratch tickets in ND, so that’s part of it.)
https://www.lottery.nd.gov/LotterySubscription/subscriptions.shtml
For the ladies…it’s not a club, technically, but I’ve fallen in love with Birchbox. For $10/month, they send you four or five sample sizes of deluxe beauty products. The products are amazing and you can buy the full size from the website. I got a six-month subscription from my sister as a gift, but I could seriously re-up when it’s over.
I hate subscription because the expense is recurring every month. $1/month for razor is pretty good though. I might have to check them out.
I use Medco for prescription and I like it a lot. They send out 3 months of prescriptions and it’s really convenient.
We signed up for the razor one which are supposed to ship 3/21. We also have a few things on regular delivery through amazon (arnold palmer mix, beef jerky, facewash that i cant find local, and crackers). We also do prescriptions just because its required. I like that we dont have to think about those things.
We signed up for the dollar shave club… they’re so popular that our subscription doesn’t begin until May. Haha. But we’ve heard only good things, so we’ll see.
I had a lottery subscription! I got it as a gift a few years ago. I live in Vermont and I was able to choose the numbers I wanted and every week those numbers were my numbers for the megabucks. If I won less than $5 or some nominal amount my subscription would be extended for another week or whatever, and if I won anything over $5 I would get a check in the mail. I never won much, but I got a few free tickets/subscription extensions. I dont really gamble, so its nothing I would have ever bought for myself, but it was a neat gift.
I wonder how they keep the chocolate from melting in the summer.
I’ve been on a cheese subscription before as well as an olive oil subscription. Wow that was good eating times! Nothing like that going on here in Thailand so maybe I’ve just found a niche business opportunity?
I know Amazon Prime doesn’t exactly fit with the rest of these subscription clubs, unless you want to call it the get whatever you want online and ship it in 2 days for free (even for huge / heavy items!!) club, but that’s the only one I’m a part of now. Subscribe and Save was awesome while it lasted, but it’s been taken away from everything I used it for, too.
I tried to get signed up with a grocery service, but couldn’t find one in my area.. hopefully some are coming to the rescue soon!
@Beating Broke – Woahhhh really? NO scratch tickets there? AND a lottery subscription?? I have a new respect for ND now! Haha… (well, regarding the latter part of course. No scratchers is a no-no in my books ;))
@Megan Cassidy – YES!!! I’ve heard about that before actually – women love it! And you just gave me a DAMN good idea for a future present for someone ;) Haha… THANK YOU!!
@Joe @ Retire By 40 – Yeah, that’s the downfall of all this stuff – that it’s recurring. But a lot of it is already recurring anyways if you manually have to go out and get anyways every month ;)
@Jessica – Crackers?? Haha… you crack me up :) Awesome you got the razors going now!
@Sandi – Woahh really??? Man – they ARE on to something! Let us know how they are when you get them :) It’ll be a while ’till I shave my beard off probably…
@Sam – COOL!! I’d love that gift so much :) I’ll have to check and see if we have one here in our state, but I’m also afriad of it all cuz I know I’d sign up to them all!
@Squeezer – Hmmm…. good point. I know when I bought that crazy $40 bottle of Bling H20 water a while back, they shipped it mid-winter and it froze and then broke in transit, and they had to ship me another one. I think they quickly figured out they needed to tweak something, haha…
@Money Infant – HAH! Yes, go for it :) Never even knew they had a cheese or olive oil subscription, amazing what I’m learning about this week!
@Tyler S. – Oh man, you’re not joking. My wife got Prime for free cuz of school or something, and she’s alwayyyyyys using it and telling me how awesome it is. If I could xfer over all my credit to her account I would have done it forever ago! But they don’t allow it :( Probably for reasons like this ;)
I love the dollar shave video, wow. I’m gonna have to sign up for that one myself. I usually use an electric razor, however, once or twice a month I have to use a real one to trim around the edges a bit. My wife would probably use them as well. Thanks for the post, love your style of writing and am going to follow. Maybe I’ll make a post on my blog about those as well. Do you get any affiliate commissions from any of them?
Jeremiah Brown
I love my subscription music from Rdio. I pay a whopping $5.64CDN a month (which is about a whopping $5.65US) and I get the choice of streaming millions of tunes. I like it cause I’ll have a music craving and I don’t have to pay a buck or whatever it costs to buy a song. I am quite happy to streaming music for a flat rate.
@Jeremiah Brown – Yeah, go for it! Glad you enjoy the site my man, means a lot :) I think they DO actually have some sort of an affiliate program (I forgot to sign up to it), so you def. should if you write up the post :) Def. fair to get paid for spreading the good word!
@Slackerjo – Oh for sure, when it comes to music any money spent is worth it, haha…