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Glossary

Curated Box

Also known as: Merchant-curated box

A curated box is a subscription box whose contents the merchant selects and rotates on a schedule — the customer subscribes to the experience and the merchant decides what ships each cycle, such as a monthly coffee sampler that changes every month.

Curated boxes are the classic 'subscription box' model: the merchant is the curator, and the appeal is discovery — the subscriber trusts the brand to surprise and delight them each period. It's operationally simpler than build-your-own because the merchant controls the contents, and it showcases range.

The recurring theme (coffee-of-the-month, a seasonal sampler) is what the customer is really buying, so rotation and a clear cutoff for assembling the shipment matter.

Curobi ships merchant-curated boxes that rotate on a schedule as a native feature, at a price point the established subscription apps often gate behind $299–$499/month plans — part of why it fits box-first businesses like specialty coffee roasters.

Related terms

  • Build-Your-Own Box — A build-your-own box (BYOB) is a subscription in which the customer assembles their own recurring box from a set of eligible products each cycle — for example choosing which coffee bags go in this month's shipment — usually within a per-item limit and before a billing cutoff.
  • Subscription Box — A subscription box is a recurring package of physical products delivered on a schedule — weekly, monthly, or another cadence — which the merchant either curates or lets the customer build, and which the customer pays for automatically each cycle.
  • Churn — Churn is the rate at which subscribers cancel or lapse over a given period — the share of recurring customers a business loses — and it is the single most important number in a subscription business because retained revenue compounds while churned revenue must be re-acquired.

← All subscription commerce terms