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Glossary

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.

The subscription box is the umbrella model that curated boxes and build-your-own boxes fall under. The common thread is a recurring physical shipment the customer looks forward to, billed automatically. Categories that thrive on it include coffee, beauty, snacks, pet, and wellness.

The two big design choices are who assembles the box (merchant-curated versus build-your-own) and how billing is timed relative to a cutoff for locking contents. Retention hinges on keeping the box feeling worth it — variety, control, and reliable delivery.

Curobi treats box formats as first-class: merchant-curated boxes that rotate on a schedule and build-your-own boxes with per-item limits and a billing cutoff, all on Shopify's native billing with 0% transaction fees.

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.
  • 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.
  • Mix & Match — Mix & match is a bundling model that lets a customer combine several products of their choice into one purchase or subscription at a set bundle price or discount, rather than being limited to a single fixed product or a pre-set bundle.
  • 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.

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