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A year and a half ago, alumna Chelsea Moore’s sorority sister caught a cold. All Moore wanted to do was send her a personalized gift, but she couldn’t because she was too busy at work.
After graduating in 2013, Moore co-founded BOXFOX with her Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority sister Jennifer Olivero, former Daily Bruin marketing assistant manager of internal affairs, and Sabena Suri, a former Ogilvy and Mather co-worker. Their gift-giving company, BOXFOX, launched in November, is currently selling seven boxes and a special Valentine’s Day line online.
“All of these reasons for needing to send something easy but personal kept coming up,” Moore said. “You still have this yearning to still feel close to people and still feel like you’re a part of certain milestones, even though you’re not there.”
Moore said BOXFOX hopes to make gift giving personal for any occasion.
“I want to be the go-to for gifting,” Moore said. “I want to own easy gifting for people and to create a brand that you can project your personality and the personality of the recipient onto.”
Moore and her co-founders started the company in 2014, a year after Moore and Olivero graduated from UCLA and two years after Suri graduated from USC.
“It was challenging (starting a business), but I think that when you’re this age, you have less to lose,” Moore said. “I don’t have a family that I need to pay the bills for, so I feel that I can be a bit riskier in my decisions and have a bit more conviction and go for it.”
While Moore has plans to make more gender-neutral products, she said the Internet-based company currently has many products geared toward women, including the “GALentine’s” box to celebrate friendship on Valentine’s Day and the bridal-themed “Be My Bridesmaid” box.
Boxes range in price from $40 to $160, and the products in each box are centered around a theme, like the travel-based “Jet Set” box or the exercise-based “Move” box. Each box also includes a handwritten card to personalize the gift.
Moore said the company has almost 20 new boxes planned for release throughout the year and is working on an online interface for clients to be able to customize their boxes.
The company also provides special boxes for wedding and corporate projects, including welcome bags for weddings, bachelorette party survival gifts and custom wedding day services.
“We’re definitely going to expand the bridal category after Valentine’s Day, and we’re going to be doing something for Coachella that I’m very excited about,” Moore said.
BOXFOX gifts are filled with products from larger brands, like chocolates from Sugarfina and candles from Voluspa, to products from smaller companies, like the card company Cornelia Paper Co. and the jewelry business Consider The Wdlflwrs.
“We have some really cool brands like Kate Spade, and we’ve got some more up-and-comers,” Moore said. “It’s really fun to find those smaller brands, who are small like us, who are killing it.”
Although Moore found Cornelia Paper Co. through her sorority sister, founder Mary Dyer, Moore said the BOXFOX co-founders find many of their smaller brands at craft fairs and interesting stores.
“Being in the design field, you work with clients that don’t always know what they want, but (the BOXFOX co-founders) are not that way at all,” Dyer said. “It’s been fun building off of their ideas and working with their creativity.”
Moore said the group of co-founders used their backgrounds in marketing, outreach and communications to help launch the company through social media grassroots marketing, a skill Moore learned through her time working at Ogilvy and Mather.
“(Social media) is kind of the way we can get the word out about what we do and spread awareness for our brand for people that we wouldn’t otherwise come into contact with,” Suri said. “It’s also just important from a brand-building perspective. A lot of what we photograph is supposed to give potential customers an idea of who we are as a brand and building that image of how we’d like to be portrayed.”
Moore said it is important for people to make their own opportunities and be proactive if they’re not feeling stimulated by the opportunities they’ve been afforded by others.
“The world goes round by people taking risks and finding these little niches and creating careers that they want for themselves,” Moore said. “If you want to, go do it. If you find something you’re really passionate about, don’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”
Correction: Sabena Suri worked at Ogilvy and Mather, not Brandy Melville.