'I was laughed out of the room': How Bokksu founder Danny Taing bootstrapped his business to a $100M valuation

Bokksu, which connects U.S. customers with Japanese snacks, is still bullish on subscription boxes, according to its founder and CEO Danny Taing.

The company, which first launched in 2016, began by offering a subscription box that featured Japanese snacks that were never before available in the U.S. Growth for the first few years was on the slower side, as the company remained mostly bootstrapped. Two years after launching, the company really started to hit its stride. And is now expanding beyond subscription boxes and launching its own marketplace.

"In early 2018, we had about 1,000 subscribers, and in just one month, we grew that to over 3,000," Taing said on the Modern Retail Podcast. "It was because of this viral Facebook kind of campaign."

With that growth, however, came some struggles. "The warehouse in Japan was not equipped to deal with triple the amount of orders," Taing said. "And that was way before I had a logistics team or director."

But Bokksu was able to roll with the punches and still grow. The company has doubled its revenue and customer base every year since 2018. This came as other subscription box brands like Birchbox faced major headwinds. But, according to Taing, Bokksu never experienced subscription fatigue. "I think what helped was that we have a very strong underlying product that changes every month that a lot of people get a lot of value from," said Taing. "It's not faddy."

Earlier this year, Bokksu closed a $22 million Series A round of funding, giving it a $100 million valuation. That happened after years of receiving nos from VCs. For Taing, it was validation that his company had staying power. With this cash infusion, Bokksu is focusing on its marketplace expansion.

Still, Bokksu remains focused on its hero product. "Subscriptions are still the majority," said Taing. "That's our core thing."