Exam stress slowly sneaking up on you and your friends? Getting a bit too cold outside? Don’t worry - our friends at GIFTABOX are here to take care of you and your friends, whether it be with a brand-new pair of fuzzy socks or just some extra pens you’re gonna need for your exams. The girls took time to sit down with us and talk to us about Queen’s newest venture on campus.
Q: Can you tell us a little bit about yourselves and about the business?
We are 4 students in our third year of Queen's Commerce and 1 student on exchange from France. As a business, GIFTABOX creates curated gift boxes for students at Queen's to send to their friends or gift to themselves, spreading a little bit of joy!
Q: Where did the idea come from?
The idea came from what ourselves as students saw missing on campus. There are periods where school and life can be particularly stressful and we wanted to remind students that people in their life are thinking of them and that it is important to take time for self care. GIFTABOX is a care package from home that doesn't require assembly!
Q: How do you source your products?
When we decide what we're going to put in a box, we start by researching online to find out where we can find those products for the best price while maintaining a very high quality. What we've found is that buying in bulk is a great way to keep costs low.
Q: How are you getting the word out about the business?
We're using a variety of methods to market GIFTABOX. As a new business, we have no awareness among consumers, so we have started by letting out friends know about the business through sharing on our social media. We also wanted to make sure that our consumers have trust in our brand, so we engaged in face to face selling. Our target market is the Queen's community so we have  run booths in Queen's buildings to give our customers a chance to see the product and understand the quality. Finally, we are using social media marketing to reach a larger part of the Queen's community.
Q: What is your favourite aspect of running the company?
Our favourite part of the business is getting real exposure to running an online business. What we originally thought was just pretty instagram themes posts turned out to be much so much more! One specific aspect that we’ve learned a lot about is ensuring the GIFTABOX experience through all touch points of the customer journey. For example, after attracting the shopper’s attention through an initial ad, we need to make sure that we are providing an optimized landing page to guide our consumers. After purchase, we need to ensure that we are leveraging email to reinforce confidence among our consumers. At the point of delivery, we need to provide an experience that people are excited to share. Since starting our company, we’ve had so much fun learning about how we can further improve the overall GIFTABOX shopping journey.
Q: How do you balance working on this with schoolwork?
Running a business is a big undertaking, and balancing it with our schoolwork is definitely a challenge. However, we've really learned to manage our time well and make sure we have time for everything. We have a really strong team, and we're all very dedicated, so we delegate between us, and help each other out when we need it.
Q: What advice do you have for someone starting a small business?
This process has been a huge learning curve given that it was the first time starting a business for most of us. Advice that we’d give to others starting a business is make sure you give the team reasonable deadlines for completing tasks. There are so many little things to work through before you even launch so setting explicit timelines and ensuring all hands are on deck makes a huge difference. Also, patience is key! You’ll have to rely on each other and external partners and sometimes things just don’t go the way you planned. Do your best to stay calm and quickly coming up with a new course of action/solution. This will allow you to stay on track and continue towards your goals!
