So what, who and why Banilla Box?

As some of you may know how Banilla Box started, to the newcomers, we will do a little catch up class on how it started and how it is going over a year down the line.

Banilla launched in the late summer months of 2020 (August to be exact) and was started by a wonderful young couple, James & Gemma (we are writing this so can say what we want about ourselves).

In a year we would mostly all want to forget, the world as we know was hit hard with the pandemic which resulted in many people losing their jobs, being made redundant, being put on furlough and in a lot of cases the unfortunate decision for many businesses to close their doors for good.

I (James) was fortunate enough to remain in a job working from home, while Gemma was put on furlough – which at that point we had no clue as to how long for.

After multiple brainstorming sessions, we both had the light bulb moment of creating a business that would allow us to help businesses close to us and support the smaller and local companies who at that point in time needed a lot more help than the large corporations, and so, Banilla Box was born. 

We would go on to start a gift box business (a luxury one we might add) that featured amazing products from small and local businesses.

We learned a lot in the first few months but quickly found our feet and before long were introducing more and more curated box options as well as our own range of candles and sprays to compliment the products within.

Fast forward to the present time and we have been running now for close to a year and a half.

However, as much as a lot of our customers and followers know the origin stories of Banilla Box, few may know about the ins and outs of day to day running.

The present month is December 2021 and not only am I (James) still in full time employment, Gemma also finds herself in full time employment as well as studying a degree in Management at university. Talk about multi tasking.

As a couple, we bring various skills and experience to the table and therefore are able to create a business that we are extremely proud of and in our opinion believe that we have created something special that we hope to make somewhat of a household name in the future.

Not a lot of people may know however is that the business of Banilla Box is only run by the two of us and unless we call in the ‘maws’, we take care of everything on our own – orders, stock management, social media channels, website build and maintenance, local delivery and even making our own candles and sprays….the list goes on – anything that happens in Banilla is done by the two of us, and our fantastic suppliers.

Now that isn’t exactly an uncommon thing for even 1 person to run a full business but in our case, we do this out of passion and love as not only do we not take money out of the business to line our own pockets and use this as an income, anything that the business does make we reinvest this into more and more stock, new product ideas and even new equipment, such as our vinyl cutting machine in which we hope to introduce more personalised items as well as the biggie, a fully built office space in our garden (thanks to James B SNR – my dad)

As we are in full time employment and in Gemmas case also studying, we therefore run Banilla in our free time in the evenings and weekends which backs up our love and passion previously mentioned to do all we can to support the businesses we include in our boxes. 

So what is next for Banilla Box you may be asking yourself? bigger and better, it’s as simple as that.