There’s so many parts to owning & running a gifting business like TheBoxNY, but one of the jobs I love most is planning and building out new gift boxes and collections. It's such an exciting process - as the gift box evolves from the germ of an idea to the breathtaking final product.
Planning a destination wedding and want custom gift boxes for your bridal party? Need a themed, masculine gift box for your holiday corporate gifting? Looking for a small giveaway gift at your intimate dinner party? These (and more) scenarios would be a good time to contact us about creating a bespoke gift box, custom tailored to your event or client.
Here's how bespoke gifting works!
Every stage is shared with the client, from our original color palette, to mood boards, to decisions about ribbons, box configurations & all the finishing touches. We follow this process for each new gift box we introduce, whether it's a new addition to our ready-to-gift collection online, or custom client gift. It ensures that all parties are constantly up to date on all details, and that the final product is exactly as envisioned.
Original color palette for TheGirlBox
We start with the theme. Who’s the gift box for? (Mom, girlfriend, client etc.) What’s the occasion? (wedding, birth, holiday etc) What emotions do we want to evoke? (excited, calm, appreciated etc.) Once we have all that we can start brainstorming, adding product ideas, color palettes and box configurations.
My next step is always a moodboard. Mood Boards are my favorite way to plan anything, be it parties, interiors, or gift boxes, of course. The color palette and inspo pics make it so easy to visualize the end result- and that’s really important before going on a shopping spree!
Here's an example:
Original mood board for TheGirlBox
Our first ever collection was created for women, full of soft, organic self-care essentials to delight and inspire relaxation. See how that creates the theme? We built our color palette based on this theme- soft blush, neutral beiges, grays & whites; for a feminine, relaxed feel. Then we searched for organic, simple & natural self care products; clipping images, assessing how the packaging of each coordinated and harmonized with the other.
After combing through hundreds of products and choosing the finalists to place on our mood board, we start the actual consideration of products. Ingredients, quality and manufacturing process are the first things we look at. Is the product simple, clean, organic? How about the quality? I personally hate receiving gifts with cheap filler items, or unnecessary clutter like a single mug or glass that would never coordinate with my household decor. So, we’re looking for items that are extremely high quality and would be useful and actually used.
Each product needs to be a perfect fit for the gift box, to ensure a stunning visual presentation.
There are times when we know exactly the kind of product we want to include, but just cannot find one that fits our considerations. Then we’ll reach out to one of our amazing vendors & see if they can provide that elusive perfect product- and sometimes, we even manufacture it ourselves. When we started this business, I never thought we would be manufacturing our own items, but lo & behold- we’ve got quite the private label, by now!
When we have our product finalists, we order samples; and try layout after layout until we get the perfect fit. Many gift box companies use crinkle paper filler to keep everything from flying around, which leaves a bit more leeway in product sizing. I personally am not a fan of it, because I find it to be so messy; we use tissue paper to stuff everything and keep it perfectly in place. The downside to that is that every item needs to fit perfectly and that necessitates a lot of Tetris style figuring!
Signature gold stamped tissue paper gently keeps all the products in place, without compromising on the elevated, luxury feel.
Once we have it all figured out, we can finally put in our bulk orders & begin the magic of building those gift boxes! Nothing compares to that satisfying, last tug of the ribbon, threading our gorgeous hang tag and tying our signature fluffy bow!
I hope you find this as fascinating and exciting as I do! Feel free to reach out to me in the comments or at our contact form with any more questions about bespoke gifting! Next, I'll be letting you in on the juicy details of why we choose certain gift products over others and some cool behind the scenes in the products we manufacture under our own private label... Stay tuned!
Xoxo,
Sara
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