[bemmu]

I've built a relationship with a supermarket owner. He gives me a discount and also does a lot of the work of calling around manufacturers to see which candies he can get. I suspect he probably makes a nice profit, too, compared to if I did all that sourcing myself.

The biggest challenge is that many items are region bound or limited time sales, so practically we cannot get them. If I took the train to various prefectures in Japan and chatted with manufacturers, I could probably get even more variety going. I was thinking of starting a new tier (Candy Japan premium) for that, but still thinking about it.

It does take time to prepare the packages. First of all we don't know exactly how many subscribers we'll have until the last minute. Then we want to order an amount of items that best matches that count. That takes more time than if we pre-ordered. Then stuffing the boxes takes about 3 days. I think the post also takes an extra day for them to calculate all the postage for a pile of 1000 boxes. So yes there are currently some delays, but from the customer point of view they get something every 2 weeks, only the initial shipment being slow to arrive.

[lsiebert]

You might consider preordering extra so you can cover your count, and sell additional boxes/ordering of individual items as one off items. A one off box of some of the same stuff you shipped out might make a good gift or a way for a person to get some more of a box they really enjoyed, or a way to try out the service (perhaps at a slight discount) without subscribing.