57 startups in the subscription ecommerce market

cbinsights_subscription-market

CB Insights:

To understand the current market landscape, we used CB Insights data to create a market map of subscription e-commerce startups. The market map includes only startups offering subscriptions for physical goods — either of their own items, or curated boxes of other brands’ items. We excluded food subscription startups, such as Blue Apron, and subscriptions for services or experiences, like Classpass. The 57 companies on our market map have raised over $1.4B in total.

Category breakdown

  • Beauty & cosmetics – These startups provide curated subscription boxes of their own or other brands’ beauty items. Birchbox and Ipsy are the leaders in the space, with $87M and $103M in funding, respectively.
  • Beer & wine – Subscription shipments of beer and wine.
  • Child & baby items – Subscriptions for children’s items, such as Bitsbox, which focuses on teaching kids to code, and Rockets of Awesome, which offers a subscription for children’s clothing.
  • Coffee & tea – Curated subscription boxes of coffee and tea.
  • Leisure –  Loot Crate is a relatively well-funded company in this diverse category, with $19M in funding for subscriptions of geek and gaming pop culture items. Other players include Datebox, which delivers items for a date each month to couples, and Cairn, which serves outdoor enthusiasts with boxes including goods like energy bars, headlamps, and firestarters.
  • Men’s apparel – Companies such as Bombfell ($1M raised) and Five Four Club (bootstrapped) ship male-targeted boxes of apparel and accessories.
  • Pet items – Startups offering scheduled deliveries for dog toys, like BarkBox, or healthy pet food, like The Farmer’s Dog.
  • Personal care – These startups generally produce and provide subscription refills for personal care items. Harry’s offer razors, The Honest Company provides subscription bundles of various personal care items, Quip and Goby both target toothbrushes, Lolaoffers organic cotton tampons, and Monthly Gift sends women monthly feminine care packages.
  • Vitamins & supplements – Subscription refills for vitamins and supplements. For example Nootrobox ($3M in funding) focuses on “body hacking” supplements, while Y Combinator graduate Multiply Labs aims to provide personally customized supplements on a recurring basis.
  • Women’s apparel – This category includes the most well-funded company in our infographic, the beleaguered TechStyle Fashion Group (formerly JustFab), with $300M in funding, which aims to offer members personally curated selections of apparel and accessories each month. Other companies include Stitch FixAdoreMe, which focuses on lingerie, and Gwynnie Bee, which targets the plus-size market.