Like what?

I don't have a retail strategy.

Why would I have a retail strategy?

I can skip past, go collect my $200, not do retail and sell directly to the consumer from the from their bed.

This is Outside the Box with Ascendia usa, a podcast educating US based brands, marketplaces and e tailers on international shipping topics and how they can expand their global e commerce footprint.

Hey everybody, welcome back to Outside the Box with the Cynia USA podcast.

Very special episode with a couple of great guests today and my co host Jason Rowland.

I'd like to introduce everybody to John Roman and John Haji.

I've got some excellent bios and intros for these guys and so John Roman.

Here we go guys.

Ready?

Hang in there.

After leading several successful sales organizations in the telecommunications and software space for almost a decade, John began investing in companies predominantly in the e commerce arena.

I know John from battlbox and from my involvement with Subsummit for many years going back now.

John Haji.

What's it been a decade?

Oh yeah, yeah.

So battlbox started to see some exponential growth in the demand for John's time increase.

In early 2016 he made the decision to step away from his then sales leadership role to join the battlbox team in a full time capacity.

We're going to have John talk a little bit about his journey a little bit further down in the episode here but.

But I very excited to welcome John Roman to the podcast.

Thank you so much for joining.

Thanks.

Thanks for having me.

Great to see you again, Nick.

Hey, you're very welcome John.

Can't wait to see you next month as well.

All right, we're going to shift over to my very good friend John Haji who is a subscription guru.

Yes, that's right.

Self proclaimed and objectively proclaimed serial entrepreneur with a decade's worth of experience in the subscription space.

He co founded Subsummit which, which is still going very strong in 2016.

The first and only conference devoted exclusively to those who work in or alongside the subscription e commerce industry or subscription commerce industry.

I was fortunate enough to be a part of the very first one in Detroit.

Probably one of my favorite after parties of all time of any show I've ever been to.

Actually that was a very good time.

And then John's background in think tanks paired with his entrepreneurial spirit has positioned him for success within the subscription industry.

Very passionate for creative thinking and strategy, design, e commerce and more.

He also co founded and served as the CEO of Gentleman's Box which was the first premier subscription box service for men which was acquired by Rove Companies in 2020.

This part of his bio I don't really like and I've told him about this, but here we go.

He always says, as a father of two, very proud husband though too.

Don't ever forget that.

Okay.

And his professional and personal life, with grace and humor he handles.

He has been recognized here in the Detroit area by Cranes Detroit as one of the 40 under 40 award recipients in 2019 for his outstanding achievements and contributions.

So thank you both very much for joining and we're very excited to kind of get this episode off and running.

Jason, you got anything you want to throw in there?

No, just a big thank you again to the Johns for, for coming and meeting with us today.

John Hodgy.

John Roman, it's great to be with you.

Really excited to have this discussion about subscription boxes and not only what companies face when they're getting out there and trying to open up, get their material out there, but also what the subscribers and the, and the recipients of these items have to go through sometimes too.

It can be a little tough.

So it's going to be a great discussion.

I'm really looking forward to it.

Yeah, no, thank you so much.

So, so guys, just, you know, you've got the outline and everything.

So again we're going to keep it real conversational, you know, and just for, for listeners and viewers if you're watching.

Again, our goal here with our podcast is to really help educate you guys on navigating some of the complexities associated with cross border e commerce.

Logistics and subscription boxes is a huge part of that business.

I mean as an organization, we partner with several, you know, many companies that are subscription based businesses to really help them improve the post purchase experience for their subscribers when it comes to, you know, the Canadian and international front.

So I want to kind of just jump into, you know, John Roman, can we start with you and talk about what you're doing right now, some current projects and you know, everything going on battlbox.

I know battlbox has gone through some transition and if you just want to give some background, that'd be great.

Sure.

So we, yeah, the transition we were, we were part of a larger parent company post acquisition, a SPAC publicly traded on the Toronto exchange in April of 2023.

We, we, we bought the business back and so it's back in our hands now.

And you know, the reality is, you know, the consumer, consumer purchasing behavior has slowed down a little bit just giving the current economic situation we're in looked at the market a Couple of minutes before this call.

It's not looking great.

And so what we're seeing, you know, just to oversimplify it, is the subscription box aspect of our business.

It's becoming almost not sustainable.

I don't know the future of it.

I think we're a little bit different in the sense that we don't position ourselves at any point in any part of our business as a subscription box.

We offer a membership now.

The membership is the lion's share of the revenue.

It used to be 90%, it was 85%.

This year it will be a tad above 80% now.

Luckily we've somehow I think some of, with our secret sauce that we have, we've managed for it not to shrink and we actually showed some, some growth.

And currently as of right now, it's not growing, it's not shrinking.

It's just kind of like just living.

So the additional revenue that we're seeing, this growth that we're seeing as a business is not coming from the subscription aspect.

It's coming from one time purchases, marketplaces.

We've talked about the importance of multichannel diversification.

I think that's just more true than it's ever been.

Ever been true.

You would have asked probably John, you would agree with me if someone would have asked either of us in 2017, what's yalls retail strategy?

Like what?

I don't have a retail strategy.

Why would I have a retail strategy?

I can skip past go collect my $200, not do retail and sell directly to the consumer from their bed on their cell phone.

Like I don't need a retail strategy.

But obviously, you know, times have changed.

Okay.

No, I appreciate it.

And also, I mean I think it's fair to recognize, I mean battlbox as a brand, right?

I mean Netflix.

I mean you guys have, you have a lot going on, you know and I understand and I think I do want to come back to what you said about it.

Not necessarily you were used the word shrinkage but customer experience is changing and I want to probably we could even get into it now just because you brought it up.

But what do you, how do you think that impacts, you know, in terms of any volatility related to the post purchase experience?

Because it's a little lighter than it used to be.

I mean I think it, I think it matters even more.

Right.

So you know, as, as, as new customer acquisition has become more difficult for the reasons you just outlined.

I think the reality is, you know, the, the hard earned dollars of the wallet that are being spent There's.

There's a certain level of expectations there.

Right.

And you know, love them or hate them, but Amazon, the giant that it is, has really created a lot of personal behavior, expectations.

What's that?

Yeah, and it's just like, you know, my wife's a great example.

She very regularly will purchase two similar things on there with full expectations of sending one back.

And I'm like.

I'm like, Colleen, like, you know, that, that the vendor, not Amazon, the vendor just completely got hosed on that.

They're probably not able to sell the product back.

They had to pay shipping on every.

Every leg of that.

It's going to get shipped back to them.

The reach.

It can't be resold.

Like, Amazon still got their fees, like they lost money.

But it's a.

But it's, It's a behavior that Amazon, I don't want to say they promote it, but to a certain level they do.

Right.

Is it fair to say they encourage it?

They encourage it.

I think that is.

So.

So when you, when you have that going on, it's.

Yeah, it's sustainable for Amazon to do that because it doesn't.

It doesn't come out of there.

They're part of the squeeze.

Right.

It's on the backs of all the people selling on the platform.

So I think when you see behavior like that and you combo that with the purse strings tightening, if you will, I think the expectations are even higher than before.

That's, you know, anytime there's acquisition costs issues, everybody wants to talk about retention.

Retention is absolutely a part of that.

But a big, big part of that is, is that onboarding and customer experience from immediately after the order to all the way into the journey of the package coming to them, honestly, as it continues, the communication and experience afterwards.

Do it.

It all matters so much more than it ever mattered before.

No, that's.

You brought up so many points.

We're going to dive into that as we go on, but I want to transition over to John Haji real quick.

Just, John, give us an update.

Give everybody, the viewers, the listeners an update.

What's going on with John Haji and projects you're working on and everything else.

Well, to start, I'm gonna have to update my bio from father of two to father of three in maybe a week or so.

So big time.

Congratulations.

That's on the horizon.

So looking forward to that.

Yeah.

You know, right now, the only thing that, you know, are really focused on within the subscription space of Summit.

Our event is less than 60 days away at the end of May and we are continuously growing the event year over year.

So we're seeing a really nice 30, 35% growth from last year to this year.

And what started off as an event, which was the largest event for subscription box companies, has now evolved to the largest event for consumer subscriptions as a whole.

Across six different verticals of subscription that be e commerce and retail brands have some level of subscription box.

It could be an auto save, subscribe and save auto replenishment.

Sorry.

Membership loyalty built into the DNA of their business to your.

Your Netflixes and your Hulu, your streaming subscriptions to your media publication companies like Wall Street Journal, New York Times.

Right.

The.

The gamut's large.

It's anyone from Spotify and FanDuel.

So the nice thing is we're starting to see the shift that we're also seeing too is coming from the retail brands that are trying to implement subscription in some capacity.

Is that implementing rewards?

Is that implementing membership?

Footlocker signed up to come to our event.

Footlocker is not sending you shoes on a recurring basis, but they want to implement subscription in some capacity.

All these folks are talking about the common topics at our event.

Right.

They're all dealing with acquisition, they're all dealing with retention.

They're all looking to improve the customer experience.

So, you know, subsummit is our focus here, is identifying the partners, the right partners to come to the event.

Sundia has always been an amazing partner to subsummit.

They're there year over year.

John is an original.

John Roman is an original alongside Nick that comes to the event year over year and shares his knowledge with the other merchants at the event.

And yeah, what we started this event to do was to bridge the gap between the merchants in the space and the solution providers that can help them grow and scale.

And we're continuing to do that and we're loving seeing the growth in it.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

And I think I probably should bring up, although I think the crowd knows at this point, John Roman has an incredible bio.

But should we bring up the number of awards that battlbox has received in the Sub Summit space over the last decade?

I mean, I'm never.

I'm never winning another one.

So that's why.

Unless.

Unless I.

Unless I start a new company.

Oh, we're done.

Battlbox is done.

Battlbox can't win anymore.

Oh, okay, folks.

That's how many he's got.

Okay.

That's.

That's when you know it's a pretty big deal.

Nine.

Nine.

That's incredible.

That's incredible.

Is a big influencer in the subscription space.

So they were all well deserved, well earned.

But yeah, I mean, not that, not that Roman can't win anything moving forward.

Is that I can still win just a lot of the awards that I've previously won.

Those categories no longer exist.

Exactly.

Yeah.

There's been a shift in the way that we run the award ceremony in the after party.

Something completely different.

You'll see this year as well as we have like a headliner act.

It's completely different.

Yeah, I saw a sneak peek.

It's exciting.

It is exciting.

Okay, guys, I'm going to transition into some market statistics.

Jason's got some stuff to talk about when it comes to post purchase with visibility estimated, you know, dates of arrival and just, you know, forecasting and things like that.

So let's talk about some, some market statistics and then we can kind of talk on that for a little bit.

So.

So information that I was able to pull said the subscription economy anticipated to reach a valuation of $3 trillion in 2025.

Is that John, Is that haji.

Is that, is that number accurate?

I mean, there's multiple sources that I was able to find that 3 trillion.

Yeah, that's accurate.

And you have to think it's not.

Again, not that it's a stigma, but like a lot of people, even to this day, when I have conversations with folks and they talk subscription, I think they think like, right, a subscription box.

Right.

Subscribe so much more.

Right.

So when you think of everything that encompasses and every vertical that encompasses.

Yeah, that number is accurate.

You've got to think another big thing of it is.

So to John's point, the Netflixes and the Amazon Primes, those are all in that category.

And if you have either of those, you've seen some major price hikes going.

On to the 3 trillion.

You're right.

So the next part.

So digital subscriptions contributing over 40% of that number, which is wildly impressive.

Expansion is driven by increasing consumer demand for convenience and personalized experiences.

Not that we're here to talk about digital subscriptions, but I think that would just be interesting to learn more about that alone.

And then here's a.

Did you know.

Okay, little guessing game for you too.

What year was the very first book subscription traced back to?

I'm going to go.

I'm not going to give a year, but I'm going to say five decades ago.

No, wait, we're in 2020, so that'd be the 70s.

So.

Oh, I might say somewhere in the, in the, in the early, like the forties.

Yeah, you're, you're, you're a little off.

We're, I'm, I'm thinking you need to check your century.

No, this book subscription traced back to.

I'm just going to give it the 1610s.

1610s.

Okay.

John, don't be upset.

John Haji, don't be upset.

Okay, so here we go.

All right.

Thanks for the knowledge.

On me.

It's a.

Did you know, you know, let's keep it, keep it fun.

All right.

So I thought too.

And then in third place, when it came down to like revenue tiers, we have subscription e commerce or subscription boxes in that space.

Right.

And then between 2012 and 2018, which you both know very well, subscription businesses grew by more than 300%, notably five times more in terms of.

Was over five times revenue generated by the S&P 500 companies during the same period.

Which is.

Wow.

Which is really wild.

Right.

Top categories currently listed include beauty and personal care, food and beverage, health and wellness and home and pet.

I'm going to quickly go into market statistics and then Jason, do you want to take it on post purchase after that?

Yeah, sure.

Okay.

So here's what's important though for listeners and viewers too.

So there's a lot going on in the global space.

We will touch on tariffs and I know that's such a huge hot topic.

It has to be right now.

It's vital and it's so much impact to, to what we do, to what the subscription businesses do, to what anybody in global commerce and global e commerce do.

So we will touch on that.

But it's important to note that this is still a very huge world with, with massive revenue opportunities outside of the United States.

Right.

So, so we're talking from US based perspective.

Ex US or shipments going outside to consumers outside.

So we'll talk a little bit about, just briefly touch on Canada, uk, Australia and Mexico.

And then Jason's going to get into specifically with subscription, some of the post purchase stuff we were talking about.

So Canada E commerce market projected to reach 72.15 billion and that's in USD in 2025 with an annual expected growth rate of 8 point about 9%.

8.85%.

That's pretty good.

We go over to the UK which is the third largest e commerce market in the world behind the US and China.

Revenue in the UK e commerce market projected to reach 142 billion with a little bit smaller growth.

So 7%.

Australia at 42 billion.

And then we're also looking at if you look at Mexico, here's the number that got me on Mexico and we're going to touch on Mexico.

Although people think of shipping to Mexico and typically it's not great thoughts but, but we're trying to reword, we're working diligently to reframe that.

But if you look at neighbors to the south of Mexico, E commerce markets projected to reach 44 billion in 2025 with an annual growth rate of 9 point.

But this is the largest number of users which is expected to surpass 118 million by 2029.

And that's greater than Canada, UK and Australia.

And if we look at Mexico City alone, it's home to approximately a little over 22 million people estimated.

Right.

So it's a massive market and something that we see specifically, and I think many different logisticians they see as a huge growth area for years to come is going to be Central and South America.

All I have a question here.

Just pure naivety.

I don't know if anybody knows it on the call like so to see the growth now, knowing that the population exists to support it previously, do you think it's just like they were a lagger in adopting, just buying stuff on the computer in your phone and now they're embracing it?

Is it as simple as that?

I don't have an exact answer to that, but I would, I would, based on what I'm reading, I would say that's certainly a huge part of it for sure.

Probably more of a late adopter when it comes to, I mean if you look at, you know, I think really it was like 1989, 1990s when, when we had our first online store somewhere here in the U.S.

right.

Something like that.

I mean, and we're far, we're far removed from that now.

Although it's not that long ago but, but Mexico is definitely, and Jason even works a little bit closer more closely with our, with our Mexico team directly could probably speak to that even further.

Yeah, I think a little bit of it though is, is not only the access to or the willingness of the market to participate in that transaction, but more of also them now having access to it.

It's, it's.

If you think about going, you go to Europe or some other countries and you try to log in to one of your American websites that says no, you can't access that here.

So I think a lot of what we're seeing though too is now that through other third party vendors for Internet access and for able people having the ability to access more of these sites to make the purchase orders to be a participant in that transaction.

That has begun to open the doors are there are opening a little bit more which is allowing people who have wanted to participate in these transactions, all of a sudden now they have access to and they have the ability to do it.

So I think it's a little bit of.

Yeah, people are, are more willing to, to put their money out there.

Right.

Because there was a lot of mistrust with foreign transactions and, and that kind of stuff from, from that market typically before and now not only do they have access, but they have the willingness and they are, are doing it and obviously in more every year.

So we're seeing great growth in those kinds of markets.

So yeah, I think there's a lot of things that play into it.

Sounds like both, both sides are leaning in for sure.

And you know, in perspective before we switch over real quick, if you look at like we talked about Canada, UK, Australia and then Mexico.

So Canada expected users by 2029, 33 million.

Again going back to Mexico, we were at almost 120 million.

You know what I mean?

So and you look at UK expected amount to be just under 63 million by 2029 and Australia was 23.1.

I mean Mexico is like, I mean that's shooting to the moon right there.

So I see huge growth area potential at least especially we look at central and then, you know, we're not even talking about South America.

So.

All right, Jason, if you want to transition over to, you know, post purchase experience, talk about visibility, those types of things.

Thank you for listening to the outside of the box with the Sending you USA podcast.

We're continuing this discussion on subscription Boxes with our special guest John Haji and John Roman on April 30.

Share, subscribe and download our podcast to learn more about today's topic or for a free consultation, email us at ecommerce USA@ascendia.com.

come back for more insightful discussions on ecommerce shipping to Canada, Mexico and worldwide.