Thankbox is a successful B2C bootstrapped website created by Valentin Hinov which is now doing $30-35k a month. Val saw an opportunity to create an e-card tool after witnessing the British culture of awkwardly passing cards around the office. Read on for Val's tips on building a B2C business, marketing and making a product people actually want.
Can you introduce yourself and Thankbox?
My name is Valentin Hinov and I’m originally from Bulgaria but now live in Edinburgh, Scotland. I started Thankbox in 2020 with my partner, Tsvetelina.
Thankbox is an online appreciation platform. At its core is a group card combined with a gift collection. It’s used mostly within businesses as a way to appreciate staff occasions - events like birthdays, farewells and retirements.
It makes it super easy to set up a card for someone and let the whole team add messages and contribute funds for a gift - people can add GIFs, videos & photos. Combined with our huge library of customisation options you end up with a really awesome looking card for any occasion.
Can you tell us what you’ve achieved with Thankbox?
Thankbox has been running for just over 4 years - we’ve just had our birthday last month in May. In that period it went from a side project to a full time business supporting a small team.
It’s currently making about $30-35k a month - there’s a lot of seasonality when it comes to card sending so some months are stronger than others. There’s also no MRR to track since none of our revenue is subscription-based. The business model is still very much B2C (business to consumer) with individual sales.
With that in mind, the metric I like to keep my eye on is the number of active users we’ve had over the last year. That’s a user who has made a purchase in the last 12 months.
It’s currently sitting at around 32,000 and getting higher each month. Thankbox relies on repeat purchases to get the most lifetime value per customer. The least amount of money someone can spend with us is $5.99 for a single card - ideally we want them to make several like that, eventually buying a pack of prepaid cards which can go for up to $299 for a pack of 100.
The last metric I’m really proud of is our gift card processing value - Thankbox currently processes nearly $500,000 of gifts every month on behalf of our customers.
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