Episode 14: Creating Value Outside of the Subscription Product with Brian Runnals, President and Founder of Recur Outdoors

In this episode of the Subscriptions: Scaled podcast, Nick Fredrick, President of Rebar Technology Solutions, is joined by Brian Runnals, President and Founder of Recur Outdoors. Brian discusses ways in which Recur Outdoors differentiates itself from competitors. He provides strategies for crafting a solid brand strategy and shares insight into how they’ve managed to decrease both voluntary and involuntary churn. Brian also touches on leveraging premium content, creating customer incentives, and investing in technology early on.

Differentiating Your Subscription Business

Subscription has become an increasingly popular e-commerce model, and there is now a subscription option for essentially anything. Because of this, subscription businesses need to dedicate more time, resources, and effort into differentiating themselves from their competitors.

Brian shares that one of the ways he works to differentiate Recur Outdoors is by creating subscription value that stretches beyond the product. He states that because offering a solid subscription product is what most subscription companies are already doing, creating additional value in the forms of free shipping and returns, access to exclusive releases, and extended warranty benefits are all things that can set a subscription business apart. 

He also adds that experimenting with the product and user experience can all further contribute to product differentiation. For example, Brian realized that by building products with higher price points and profit margins, he was able to replicate the experience that customers had over the course of six months in only one month. This now represents about 20% of the company’s overall revenue, and it has allowed them to enter into a space and type of product that other subscription businesses are not currently in.

Shaping Your Brand Strategy

Recur Outdoor’s current brand strategy has been largely influenced by their subscriber base. The company started off by focusing only on their fly fishing subscription, and they quickly became experts in this area. Because of this, their subscribers placed a lot of trust in them and would often approach them with questions around where to purchase high price point items such as rods, reels, and nuts.

Brian shares how he eventually realized that instead of sending their subscribers to other places to purchase this gear, Recur Outdoors could manufacture it themselves and have an existing customer base ready to purchase from them.

This led to Recur Outdoors expanding their reach by establishing a number of separate brands that focused on different categories of specialty items. They then officially created Recur Outdoors to act as the overarching company housing all of their individual brands.

Decreasing Churn

There are two types of churn that subscription businesses deal with - voluntary and involuntary churn. Involuntary churn occurs when a subscription business is unable to charge a subscriber’s card due to a number of reasons, such as insufficient funds or a closed account. Voluntary churn, on the other hand, occurs when a subscriber actively cancels their subscription.

Brian shares that Recur Outdoors uses the best in class subscription softwares, such as Churn Buster and Stripe, to decrease involuntary churn. However, there is less of a one-size-fits-all answer to decreasing voluntary churn. 

Brian explains that at Recur Outdoors, their approach to decreasing voluntary churn goes back to creating subscription value outside of the product. He suggests that instead of attempting to decrease voluntary churn by offering subscribers discounts, free months, and giveaways, businesses should focus on unique experiences they can create to retain subscribers. For example, Recur Outdoors holds virtual fishing tournaments to engage and offer value to subscribers, and they have found this to be effective in decreasing voluntary churn. 

In general, Brian advises that subscription businesses find ways they can surprise and delight subscribers with methods unique to their products and industries.

To hear more from Brian, tune into this episode of the Subscriptions: Scaled podcast.

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