The unit economics that determine profitability.
Subscription boxes have two killer metrics: churn (how many subscribers leave each month?) and LTV (lifetime value — how much will they spend before leaving?). You'll learn MRR (monthly recurring revenue — your baseline), how to calculate true procurement costs (many founders forget shrink, damage, fulfillment), and the break-even analysis that shows how many months a customer needs to stay to recover the marketing spend. By the end, you'll know whether your unit economics work and what to optimize (lower churn, higher AOV, or lower COGS).
Churn rate measures how fast you are losing customers or revenue. It is one of the most important — and most often ignored — metrics for any subscription business.
5 min read · Beginner
MRR is the lifeblood metric for any subscription business. It tells you how much predictable revenue you generate every month — and how that number is changing.
4 min read · Beginner
CLV is the total revenue you expect from a customer over their entire relationship with you. It changes everything about how you think about acquisition costs.
4 min read · Intermediate
AOV is the average amount customers spend per transaction. Increasing it is one of the highest-leverage moves in eCommerce.
3 min read · Beginner
Gross margin tells you how much money is left after paying for what you sold. It's one of the most important numbers in any business.
4 min read · Beginner
Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the total sales and marketing spend needed to win one new customer. Pair it with lifetime value to assess whether your growth is commercially sustainable.
5 min read · Beginner
Net revenue retention measures how much recurring revenue you keep and expand from existing customers. Learn the formula, benchmarks, and why investors care.
4 min read · Intermediate
Inventory turnover measures how many times you sell through your stock in a year. High turnover means efficient capital use; low means dead stock.
3 min read · Intermediate
Follow this learning path to master subscription box: churn vs revenue.
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