EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Intro: Welcome to Uniquely Small Biz, a podcast where small business owners share their real stories of success, failure and everything in between.
Carolyn: Welcome back to Uniquely Small Biz by Selective Insurance, a podcast for small business owners to share stories about the small businesses that they own. I'm Carolyn McCardell, and this week I'm joined by Hannah and Ariel - sisters and founders of Happy Box, a unique platform that allows people to create specially curated gift boxes for any occasion. Today, we're going to discuss how a sweet gesture from one sister to the next turned side hustle, has now turned into a fast growing business that allows both consumers and businesses to connect with others through gift giving. All right, we're talking Happy Box today. Welcome ladies!
Ariel: Hi. Thank you.
Carolyn: Ariel Redmond. Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer, and then Hannah Redmond, co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer - who's who?
Ariel: So I'm Ariel.
Carolyn: Okay. Then you must be Hannah.
Hannah: Yes, and we’re sisters which is why the last name is the same.
Carolyn: I know, that’s so cute that your sisters, before we even go into that, because, you know, I have questions about that, but tell us, first of all, what Happy Box is all about - just a brief overview.
Ariel: Yeah. So Happy Box is basically like your personal gifting assistant. It is a platform where you can buy very customized, curated care packages. You can actually build your own care package in a few clicks. We have a team that literally packs the box with all your selections. Handwrites your note in a card and sends it out to your recipient with little to no effort on your end. So you can sit on your couch, be a gifting hero. We also have some other unique kind of best-selling care packages that are very thematic to the season, and we're launching some new offerings as well, just in kind of the unique gifting world coming soon.
Carolyn: How did this idea come to be, as a very unique product? So how did that even come to be?
Ariel: Yeah. So it's painful to talk about.
Carolyn: Alright Ariel.
Hannah: Yeah. So the founding inspiration was when we were in college. We're about three years apart. We were states apart. I was in Maryland. Ariel was in Manhattan and Ariel got dumped like right around Valentine's Day.
Ariel: Yeah, I know. You're like, how is that even possible?
Carolyn: I don’t even know how that would happen? You're delightful.
Hannah: But it happened right around Valentine's Day. Horrible timing. I couldn't hug my sister. Couldn't be there for her. We're very close. And I wanted to send her something to cheer her up. I wanted something that was not the typical, you know, pineapple in a package or nuts and fruits. I wanted to send her - and not flowers. I needed something more appropriate for a college aged breakup. So I wanted chocolate. I wanted a voodoo doll. I wanted fun things that would make her just smile and forget about what was going on, especially being around Valentine's Day. And I was looking around on the internet. I couldn't really find anything that was appropriate or decently priced. So I made my own care package. I went around to, it took me seven stores, 20 minutes at the post office, horrible experience. And I kind of came back. And was like, that was awful. There has to be a better way. You can customize so many things online. You can find roommates online. There's all these things you can do online, but you can't customize a care package. When she received it, she was just so happy and, you know, called me crying. And I was like, there's something here. So the idea always kind of stuck with us. So that's the inspiring, you know, background or the inspiration behind it. But then moving forward, we actually worked in marketing and advertising for many years.
Ariel: Separately, separately.
Hannah: We're both like a lot of my job was looking at consumer trends and, you know, we kind of realized this thing, this gap in gifting never was filled and we know that people want, you know, customization and convenience. So we were like, what if we tried to build it? Like, what if we tried to build this, build your own care package company. So that's really how it all started.
Carolyn: Isn't it crazy how it was so in front of you and you were kind of dancing around it, right? Like Ariel with the breakup and then you, and then Hannah, you with a gift package. And then you've got these marketing backgrounds. And then here you are running a business that kind of, you were circling at the entire time.
Ariel: Yeah, well, you know, Hannah is the serial entrepreneur of our family, and I was really sick of seeing her ideas that she had brought to me when I was 13, 14, 15, come to life by someone else's hand. So when she finally really thought of the idea for Happy Box and we're both adults and had, you know, a little bit of extra cash. We were like, let's do it. Let's try it.
Hannah: Why not test it out.