Jellyfish Connect is pleased to announce the launch of uOpen.com, the UK’s first subscription box marketplace website. Tapping into the subscription box craze, uOpen takes advantage of this rapidly growing sector of UK retail and will be actively supporting publishers who launch subscription boxes. The first to debut on uOpen are First News which has listed its new subscription box, First Wonder Box, on the site; and Stack Box, which curates alternative reads, a discovery of intelligent and unique independent magazines.
Subscriptions at the Heart
uOpen launches as a sister site to magazine.co.uk, Jellyfish Connect’s fast-growing print magazine subscription website, and to Pocketmags.com the leading newsstand selling digital publications through its website and apps. Subscriptions have been at the heart of the Jellyfish business ever since acquiring its first magazine client in 2002, and the company has built a reputation for its expertise in subscription marketing. Operating on either a cost per acquisition or revenue share agreement, huge numbers of publishers benefit from Jellyfish Connect’s no-risk commercial strategy to boost their subscription volumes.
Market Survey
To coincide with the launch of uOpen, Jellyfish Connect carried out an online survey of 2,008 UK respondents through Censuswide. It found that almost a fifth of UK consumers have now signed up for a subscription box scheme in the past six months. Less than one per cent of those surveyed had a subscription in 2014. This rose to 10 per cent in 2016. Huge numbers of consumers are now signing up for regular deliveries from brands such as Abel & Cole, beauty box Birchbox, Dollar Shave Club and Harry’s shaving goods.
Food and drink is the most popular category for subscription boxes, followed by beauty goods, fashion, shaving and arts and crafts, the survey found. Men seem to outspend women when signing up.
The highest spending category is the “geek and gaming” sector with an average monthly spend of £65. Next is health and fitness with a spend of £59, while fashion, home and living and family and kids all have an average monthly spend of about £57. Monthly spend on pet products is £54. Food and drink spend is about £52.
The biggest spenders are 16-24 year olds. The 16-24 year olds who participate in subscription box schemes spend over £66 a month. The over-55s who participate spend under £20 a month.
Carola York, Managing Director at Jellyfish Connect said: ““uOpen offers a fantastic opportunity for publishers as well as entrepreneurs and small businesses to ride the wave of the subscription box trend. Through large-scale digital marketing campaigns and social and influencer activities, uOpen will drive huge volumes of traffic from consumers interested in and searching for subscription boxes, making it easy, fast and safe for them to buy through the platform. Operating on a revenue share agreement, it’s free and straightforward for publishers to set up and list their boxes on the site. Jellyfish Connect will also support publishers moving into the subscription box sector through its online knowledge base, industry insight guides and networking events.”