This week I am not breaking down a single brand. I am breaking down a subscription model that two very different brands are using to dominate their categories.

One is a premium supplement brand co-founded by David Beckham that hit $120M ARR in its first year. The other is a cleaning concentrate company that built a £40M business from a garage in Hertfordshire.

Both default to 90-day subscriptions. That is not a coincidence.

Most subscription brands default to 30-day cycles. It feels like the obvious choice. Shorter commitment. Lower barrier. Easier to say yes.

But here is what 30-day billing actually creates: 12 opportunities per year for your customer to ask "do I still need this?"

Twelve decision points. Twelve moments of doubt. Twelve chances to churn.

Every single month, your customer sees a charge on their statement. Every single month, their brain runs a micro cost-benefit analysis. Every single month, you are one bad day away from a cancellation.

Now flip it to quarterly. 90-day supply. Four billing events per year. Four decision points. That is a 66% reduction in churn opportunities.

But fewer exit doors is only half the story.

A customer who commits to 90 days upfront is a fundamentally different buyer.

They are not browsing. They are not "trying it out." They are putting three months' worth of money on the table because they have a problem and they want it solved.

That is a psychological commitment, not just a financial one. They are self-selecting into a higher-intent, higher-LTV segment before you have even shipped the product.

For supplements in particular, this matters enormously. Someone paying for 90 days is dedicating themselves to the ritual. They are saying "I am going to take this every single day for three months and see what happens." That level of buy-in changes everything downstream.

But it also places a burden on the brand. If someone commits to 90 days and your product does not deliver a noticeable transformation by the time that second billing event arrives, you have lost them forever. Your product has to work.

Here is where most brands would get 90-day subscriptions wrong.

They would take the money, ship the product, and go quiet until it is time to bill again. That is a recipe for chargebacks and one-star reviews.

The entire first 90 days should be an orchestrated communication sequence designed to reinforce the ritual and demonstrate efficacy. Not marketing. Coaching.

Think about what this looks like in practice:

Week 1 to 2: Onboarding. How to use the product. What to expect. Set expectations that real results take time. Build anticipation.

Week 3 to 6: Efficacy reinforcement. Customer stories. Before and after results. Testimonials from people at the same stage of their journey. Authority content from experts. This is where you use email, RCS, and WhatsApp to keep the ritual front of mind.

Week 7 to 10: Transformation proof. Show them what other customers experienced at the 60 to 90 day mark. Remind them their second shipment is coming. Frame it as a milestone, not a billing event.

Week 11 to 12: Reward. Acknowledge their commitment. Offer a perk for sticking with it. Make the renewal feel like a celebration, not a transaction.

You should also be running a post-purchase Meta funnel during this period. Not acquisition ads. Reinforcement ads. Social proof. Usage reminders. Habit-building content. Your ad spend shifts from "convince them to buy" to "help them stick."

Three channels. One data source (your subscription platform). Fully automated.

IMG is the brand that made me pay serious attention to 90-day subscriptions.

Co-founded by David Beckham and backed by Prenetics (NASDAQ: PRE), im8 launched in December 2024 with a single flagship product: Daily Ultimate Essentials, an all-in-one supplement powder with 90 clinically-dosed ingredients.

Their subscription defaults to a 90-day plan at $235 billed every 12 weeks ($78.33 per month). A monthly plan exists at $89 per month but it is deliberately positioned as inferior.

Look at how aggressively they stack the quarterly offer:

The quarterly plan gets the "BEST VALUE" label. It comes with a 90-day money-back guarantee (monthly only gets 30 days). Quarterly subscribers get exclusive access to a 90-Day Transformation Programme featuring masterclasses from Mayo Clinic physicians, Beckham's personal trainer, gut health experts from Cedars-Sinai, and breathwork coaches. They get a free mystery gift, a free mixer, and free shipping.

They are not selling a supplement subscription. They are selling a 90-day transformation commitment that happens to come with a supplement. The product page CTA literally says "Start my 90-day program."

The results speak for themselves.

IM8 hit $120M in annualised recurring revenue within 12 months of launch, making it one of the fastest-growing supplement brands in the history of the industry. They generated $60.1M in actual 2025 revenue. 80% of all new orders are subscribers through their website. Average order value sits at $110. Gross margin is 52%. LTV to CAC ratio is 4.8x.

Here is where the 90-day maths gets interesting.

At $235 for the quarterly plan with a 52% gross margin, that is roughly $122 in gross profit per first order. Their customer acquisition cost in the first half of 2025 was $104. That means they are profitable on order one.

On a monthly plan at $89, that same $104 CAC puts you underwater until month two at the earliest. The 90-day default changes the entire first-order equation.

im8 also explicitly frames their content around the 90-day cycle. Their product page states that after 90 days, "the compounding effects begin" and "profound cellular renewal becomes evident." They have built the entire brand narrative around the idea that 90 days is the minimum commitment to see real results. That is not an accident. It is offer architecture.

To show this is not just a premium supplement play, look at the opposite end of the price spectrum.

Purdy & Figg makes natural cleaning concentrates. Glass spray bottles. Essential oil scents. The subscription costs £15 every 90 days. That is about £5 per month.

The company was started in 2018 by two friends in a Hertfordshire garage. By mid-2025, it was a £40M revenue business. At peak, they were onboarding up to 9,000 new customers per month, with nearly half opting for the subscription. They have over 20,000 Trustpilot reviews.

Their subscription defaults to a 90-day frequency. The product is a set of three cleaning concentrates that arrive through your letterbox every quarter. You dilute them into your refillable glass bottle, use them for three months, and the next set arrives before you run out.

It is a pantry purchase. Think about the dry goods in your cupboard right now. Rice. Pasta. Tinned tomatoes. Most of it will last you three months. You do not stress about it. You do not have a monthly subscription to rice. You just restock when it runs low.

Purdy & Figg mimics that rhythm. No decision fatigue. No monthly reminders. It just arrives.

Jack Rubin, co-founder, has spoken about this publicly. Subscription works when the product is consumable, the usage cadence is predictable, and reordering solves a real inconvenience. Quarterly delivery of letterbox-sized cleaning concentrates ticks all three boxes. It removes the mental load entirely.

At £15 per quarter, the churn economics are different from im8. A cancellation does not wipe out a large revenue number. But the principle holds. Fewer billing events means fewer moments where a customer reconsiders. And for a low-AOV product, reducing churn is everything because the margin lives in longevity.

When you move from monthly to quarterly billing, several things change at once.

Contribution margin per transaction goes up because the basket is three times larger. Even with a discount for choosing quarterly, the absolute margin per order increases.

Payback period compresses relative to revenue collected. If your first quarterly order covers the acquisition cost (as it does for im8), you are recovering your investment on day one rather than waiting two or three months.

Fewer billing events means fewer failed payment attempts, fewer dunning cycles, and fewer customer service tickets triggered by unexpected charges.

And critically, for products that need time to demonstrate efficacy, 90 days gives the product a chance to actually work before you ask someone to recommit. Most supplements need 60 to 90 days to show meaningful results. Monthly billing asks people to renew before they have felt the full benefit. You are essentially asking them to pay again on faith. Quarterly billing asks them to renew after they have experienced the transformation. That is a much easier yes.

90-day subscriptions are not universal.

If your product cycle is naturally 30 days, do not force 90 days. Coffee is a 30-day product for most households. Some skincare products (cleansers, toners) run out in four to six weeks. Forcing a quarterly cadence on a monthly-consumption product just means your customer ends up with surplus stock, and surplus stock is a cancellation trigger.

The 90-day model works best when consumption is predictable over a quarter and the product benefits from sustained use. Supplements, skincare with longer usage cycles, cleaning products, personal care staples, food and beverage items with a natural pantry rhythm.

The key question is: does my customer naturally use this product over roughly 90 days? If yes, default to quarterly. If no, match the subscription frequency to the actual consumption cadence.

Monthly subscriptions give your customers 12 reasons per year to leave. Quarterly gives them four.

The customers who choose 90 days are telling you something. They are committed. They want the result. They are willing to invest upfront to get there.

Your job is to reward that commitment with a product that delivers and a communication system that reinforces the ritual every step of the way.

im8 built a $120M ARR brand in 12 months with this model. Purdy & Figg built a £40M business from a garage.

Four billing events. Four chances to lose someone. Four chances to wow them. The rest of the year, your product builds a habit in the background.

90 days is it.

Talk soon,
Kunle