Do Subscription Boxes Save Money?

Games, intimates, jewelry — these days there’s a convenient subscription service for nearly every need.  Does your spouse hate to shop?  Gift him a membership to a “T-shirt of the month” club.  Do you love trying new make-up, skin care products, and healthy snacks?  You’ll find a plethora of prettily pre-packaged sample boxes, all offering to make you feel like it’s Christmas 12 months of the year.  From pet stuff to craft stuff to survival supplies, there’s no end to the wacky subscriptions you can sign up for.

But at $10, $20 — even $40 a month — box subscription services claim to deliver far more “value” than the retail sticker price of the products within. But are they worth it?

Let’s use Wantable as an experiment. It’s best known for it high-end beauty box, one of few that delivers 4-6 full-size (not sample-size) beauty products. According to the experts at Real Simple Magazine, Wantable’s $40 package ($36 with annual subscription) is easily worth twice that of it’s cost, so at first-glance, even this “splurge” option seems worth the $80 value.  However, I counter that this is ONLY true if you find the offerings useful.  The return on your investment depends entirely on how much you wore, ate, consumed and appreciated your extra $40 worth of free goodies.

Wantable actually sent me their most recent intimates, make-up and jewelry boxes. Here’s my  review along with an assessment of why, or why not, a subscription service like this can be worth it:

Wantable’s Make-up Box

The box contained full sizes of magenta nail polish, raisin-colored eye shadow, “1930′s” black mascara , a hot pink lip gloss with a convenient mirror and light attached (unique!), and a sample size of two pearl eye-shadows.  The nail polish didn’t impress and the mascara was just “okay” (I’m not one for fragranced mascaras and this one packed an annoying, pungent punch), but the lip gloss may well have made up for it all.

Wantable’s Jewelry Box

This box contained a long gold chain with geometric flowers (loved!), gem-encrusted hoop earrings, coral stud earrings, uber-trendy Mint & Kelly green chandelier earrings, and a spectacularly gaudy necklace that I couldn’t even pawn off on friends.  Like other Wantable jewelry boxes I’ve reviewed, I find their stuff to be very hit or miss.  More on that in a second.

Wantable’s Intimates Box

New to the Wantable line, the intimates box isn’t for sale yet, but I got a sneak preview.  This box contained mostly underwear but I must admit, it was GOOD underwear.  Lacy black bikini briefs and spanx-like boy-shorts in neutral, in addition to a pair of cute pink argyle socks and a pair of universally useful black tights.  I hadn’t specified size and was delighted to find out that the small fit me, so word of warning: their sizes run quite big (that, or the gym has been paying off more than usual!)

Does Wantable Leave Me Wanting?

The allure of subscription boxes like Wantable is that they plan (and hope) that you’ll be pleasantly surprised with enough of their offerings that  you keep coming back for more, even if not everything in the box was a hit.  Like with other services, I’ve been enchanted with about 20-30% of their products, and left cold by the rest.

I’ve discovered that it’s best to avoid judging a box by the sum of it’s parts. With 70% of the products not quite “right” for me, whether due to color, style or quality (I’ve had Wantable jewelry not last through a single wearing), I’d say my overall satisfaction has a lot more to do with single pieces than how successful the package is as a unit.

For example, the long gold necklace is a piece of jewelry that I instantly adored, would never have bought for myself and now that I own it, admit that I’d easily have paid the cost of a monthly membership for it.  The fact that I scored some pretty great chandelier earrings on top of that, makes me feel like I got both for a deal.  I’ll probably never touch the hoops or coral studs again, but were they worth the price of admission?  It seems so.  Especially if I can pass them on to someone who will enjoy them more than me.

Bottom-line

Entry-level sample subscription boxes start around $10 and offer an affordable way to discover new products. For anyone in the business of keeping up with food trends and fresh looks, or for those who don’t have the time, patience or fortitude to figure out what they like on their own, I believe a carefully curated subscription service (where you input your preferences) can be worthwhile.  Will it save you money?   In the long run, probably not.  But then every once in a while an item you don’t know how you ever lived without comes knocking at your door – and that might hold more value than you think.

Photo Courtesy of:  Commons.wikimedia.org