Consumable Products: Why Boring Products Build the Most Profitable Ecommerce Brands

Consumable products are products that get used up, like soap, coffee, supplements, pet food and cleaning tablets. They build more profitable ecommerce brands because customers come back on their own when the product runs out, the product becomes part of a routine, and every repeat order costs you nothing in ads. That only works if your emails show up right before the customer runs out, and if your brand gives them a reason to stay.

Your ad costs keep going up.

You pause ads for a week, and revenue drops off a cliff.

It feels like an ad problem. Most of the time, it isn't. It's a product problem, and a post-purchase problem.

Some of the most profitable brands in ecommerce sell things nobody gets excited about. Soap. Cereal. Hand sanitizer. And that's exactly why they work.

By Emiel Dingemans, Founder of Magicianly

Updated October 2026

What Are Consumable Products?

Consumable products are things your customer uses up and has to buy again. Think soap, coffee, supplements, cleaning tablets, air filters and pet food.

The opposite is a durable product. A chef's knife, a standing desk, a wallet. You buy one, it does its job for years, and you never think about the brand again.

With a durable product, you have to come up with a reason for the customer to buy again. With a consumable, you don't. Their bathroom already did that for you. The bar of soap gets smaller every morning, and at some point it's gone.

We've worked with more than 150 ecommerce brands. The ones that grow profitably almost always have a product that brings customers back on its own.

Why Do Boring Products Build Stronger Ecommerce Brands?

Because they get bought again without you paying for the customer twice. There are four reasons boring products win:

1. 1They run out. The reason to come back is built into the product.
2. 2People don't switch. Once someone finds the coffee that doesn't upset their stomach, or the lotion that finally calms their baby's eczema, they stop looking. They're not shopping anymore. They're buying the same thing again.
3. 3The math is better. Every repeat order comes in without ad spend, so you can afford to pay more for the first one.
4. 4They survive downturns. When money gets tight, people cut vacations and gadgets. They keep buying toothpaste, soap, dog food and coffee.

A boring product isn't enough on its own, though. The brands that win build three things around it: the product, the website and the retention. Here's what that looks like in practice.

How Does Dr. Squatch Make Soap Worth Reordering?

Dr. Squatch sells soap. Natural bar soap for men, plus deodorant and other personal care.

On the product side, the bar shrinks every time it's used. The reason to come back is already there.

On the website, they don't wait for you to run out. When we looked, the homepage pushed bundles: a six-pack of bar soap, a four-pack of deodorant. Stock up from day one. One bar won't build you a business. Six bars from the first order will.

On the retention side, they add a reason to buy beyond "I ran out": limited scents and collaborations, such as a Star Wars collection. That gives people something to buy before their bar is even gone.

Why Is Timing Everything With a Product That Runs Out?

Because running out only helps you if you show up when they run out. If you're late, the customer picks up whatever's on the supermarket shelf, or clicks the next ad they see.

This is where a lot of brands get it wrong. They set up a replenishment or winback flow from a template and keep the default timing.

Here's what we do instead:

1. 1Look at your real data. Find the average number of days between a customer's first and second order. Here's how to find your average time between orders.
2. 2Send the reminder a few days before that. Not on the day. Not a week after. A few days before they run out, so the reorder arrives in time. Our guide to replenishment emails covers how to set this up.
3. 3Base your winback on the same data. Most platforms default to something like 90 days. If your product runs out after 30 days and you wait 90 days to try to win them back, you lost that customer two months ago. Here's how we set up a Klaviyo winback flow.

The reminder is only one part of what happens after the first order. The rest of the sequence is in our post-purchase flow guide.

Why Do Customers Stop Buying a Product They Like?

Usually not because a competitor won them over. Because they got bored.

Once a product becomes part of a routine, your biggest threat isn't another brand. It's the customer's own boredom. Same flavor, same scent, every month. At some point "maybe I'll try something else" creeps in.

Magic Spoon is a good example of a brand that plans for this. They sell high-protein cereal. A box is empty in one to two weeks, which is great for repeat orders. But eating the same cereal every morning gets old fast.

So they work on both sides.

On the website, the build-your-own box lets people mix flavors, and they push subscriptions hard.

In their emails, they make reordering automatic and keep it interesting:

• Autopilot. A subject line like "Your protein pastries on autopilot" moves people toward a subscription. Every reorder decision is a moment where the customer could decide not to. A subscription removes that decision.
• A subscriber club. Early access, flavor swaps and 20% off, so subscribers feel there's something in it for them beyond the product.
• Limited flavors. "Strawberry Cheesecake back for a few days only" gives people a new reason to buy and a new reason to look forward to the next box.
• Choice. "Mix and match everything you love into one box" tells the customer it's their box, their flavors and their rules.

The lesson: make staying easier than leaving.

• Give subscribers ways to skip, swap or delay, not only cancel. We cover this in subscription retention and subscription cancellation emails.
• Add perks that grow the longer someone stays.
• Give people new things to try inside your brand, so they never feel the need to look outside it.

For the bigger picture on selling subscriptions, see our guide to ecommerce subscription marketing.

How Much More Is a Repeat Customer Worth?

A lot more than most brands think. Here's a simplified example of two stores with the same revenue and the same ad spend. To keep it simple, it leaves out payment fees and other costs.

Both stores do $100,000 a month in revenue. Both have a $50 average order, so that's 2,000 orders a month. After $15 for product and shipping, each order leaves $35. Both pay $35 to acquire a customer, so the first order breaks even. Both spend about $70,000 a month on ads.

Store A sells a trendy, one-time product. Customers buy once and that's it. Every month, the ad money is gone and nothing is left. If the cost to acquire a customer rises to $40 or $45, Store A starts losing money on every sale.

Store B sells a product that runs out. 30% of customers come back and buy three more times over the next year. That's 90 extra orders for every 100 customers, at $35 each, or more than $3,000 that Store A never sees, without spending an extra dollar on ads.

After a year, Store B is getting around 1,600 repeat orders a month on top of its new orders, on the same $70,000 ad budget.

That last row is the real advantage. Store B can outbid Store A in the ad auction and still make money. Same ads, same platforms, same revenue at the start. Completely different business.

If you want to run these numbers for your own store, start with your customer acquisition cost, your customer lifetime value and your break-even ROAS.

And stop staring at attribution in your email platform. Attributed revenue doesn't tell you whether customers come back. Look at your repeat purchase rate and what a customer is worth after 6 and 12 months.

Why Do Big Companies Buy Boring Brands?

Because routines are predictable revenue, and predictable revenue is what acquirers pay for. In a downturn, people keep buying the products they use every day.

Look at some of the brands bought by big consumer companies in the last two years:

Soap, soda, hand sanitizer, gummies. Nothing on that list is exciting. Everything on that list gets used up.

(Unilever's own announcement of the Dr. Squatch deal is here.)

How Did Touchland Turn Hand Sanitizer Into a Brand?

By making the product boring and the brand anything but. According to Church & Dwight, Touchland had around $130 million in net sales over the twelve months before the deal. From hand sanitizer.

The product is used several times a day, so it runs out fast.

The website does the rest. When we looked, the menu went well beyond sanitizer: body and hair mists, accessories and cases for the bottles, a fragrance quiz, subscribe and save, and a rewards program. Free shipping starts above an order value one sanitizer doesn't reach, which nudges people to add a second item.

Their emails keep giving existing customers something new:

• New categories for people who already buy. A launch email introduced a new caramel-scented body and hair mist, a new product type at a low price point for people who already love the scents.
• Accessories for the bottle they already own. These emails talk to existing customers, not to new ones.
• Collaborations. A Crocs collaboration turned hand sanitizer into something people talk about.
• A monthly newsletter. "Your October Forecast" gives people a reason to open even when there's no launch.

The lesson:

Your product can be boring. Your brand can't be.

What If Your Product Doesn't Run Out?

Then you have to build the reason to come back yourself. Not every brand sells a consumable, and you don't need to change your whole product line tomorrow.

Look at what Touchland did around the sanitizer. Accessories, related products in the same scents, new versions people want to collect. Ask what your customer needs next after their first order, and make sure that product exists and that your emails introduce it at the right time. That's what a cross-sell flow is for.

Bundles and multipacks help here too. They raise the first order, which gives you more room on acquisition. Here's how to grow your average order value without discounting.

How Do You Build Retention Around a Product That Runs Out?

Start with the timing, then work on the routine and the brand.

1. 1Find your real reorder window. The average days between first and second order, per product if you can.
2. 2Time the reminder a few days before that. Not on a template timer.
3. 3Sell more than one from the start. Bundles, multipacks, stock up.
4. 4Push subscriptions, and make them easy to keep. Skip, swap and delay, not only cancel.
5. 5Fight boredom. Limited flavors and scents, new products, collaborations, perks that grow over time.
6. 6Set your winback by your own data. Not the platform default.
7. 7Judge it on repeat purchase rate and customer value at 6 and 12 months. Not attributed revenue.

So Are Boring Products Better for Ecommerce?

For building a profitable brand, usually yes.

A product that runs out brings customers back without another ad. A product that becomes a routine keeps them. And a business built on routines survives the months when people cut back.

But the product only gives you the opportunity. If your emails don't land around the day the customer finishes the product, someone else gets the reorder. The supermarket, Amazon, or whoever runs the next ad.

Boring product. Perfect timing. A brand people don't get bored of. That's the whole game.

For more on why this pays off, read our breakdown of customer retention vs acquisition.