Sabina, Chelsea, and Jenny are co founders of box Fox, a premier
gifting company on track to do six million dollars in revenue with no outside funding.
Their story begins a few years ago in an apartment in Venice, California.
They were three girls with full time jobs and a dream to combine new
technology with one of the oldest gestures in the book, gift giving. Fast
forward three years and they've got a bustling warehouse, an amazing team, and
the same dream. Sabina Surrey, co founder in CSO of box Fox,
is originally from the Bay Area, and she earned her bachelor's degree from the
University of Southern California. Prior to co founding box Fox, Sabina worked in
brand strategy, where she gained a deep understanding of consumer behavior. Her obsession
with trend spotting when it comes to new brands and products that enhanced lives shines
at box Fox. At just twenty eight, she wears many hats, running
the company's corporate gifting arm, discovering new brand partners, in concepting new ways
to constantly better box Foxes online retail experience. Today, we'll hear from Sabina,
who walks us through the box Fox journey to a millie. A million
in sales, a million in revenue, a million followers, or a million
in funding. To amass one million of anything is a major feet and that's
why we're highlighting women who have done just that. You'll hear from women who
have made their mark, impacted lives, blade trails, and amassed a millie.
So my dream job as a kid, I was actually always thinking that
I wanted to be a fashion designer. I was obsessed for trendspotting and kind
of following designers and you know, magazines, and I would always clip different
pieces of fashion out from magazines and had all these vision boards and inspiration boards
on my wall of my bedroom. So that's kind of what I thought I
wanted to do as a kid, and I think that definitely, you know,
plays a role in what I do at Boxbox, which is still kind
of taking inspiration from the world around me, being inspired by what is going
on in culture and bringing that to our company, even though it's kind of
in a different way. So Boxbox originated in November of twenty fourteen. It
was really impossible for us, being recent college graduates, to send kind of
an elevated care package to a friend who was actually hospitalized and she's you know,
totally fine now. And that was kind of the inspiration for the company
was we realized that there was really no service that allowed you to curate something
very elevated and meaningful yet still personal, you know, and ultimately utilitarian,
So something that wasn't going to just be flowers, but actually have products that
our friend would be able to use in kind of her healing journey. And
that was kind of the aha moment of this doesn't exist. We know we
can build this in a really beautiful way, in a way that is a
really great user experience, and so we kind of pulled our you know,
our ideas together and started drafting a business plan around our kitchen table in Venice,
and that's kind of where boxbox originated. We launched November seventh, twenty
fourteen, just in time for Christmas, and you know, have kind of
been hitting the ground running ever since. So for us writing the business plan,
we knew it was going to be important. We knew that that was
kind of going to be how we were setting the foundation for the company.
So we did a lot of research into what other business plans looked like we
always say, you know, the magic of the Internet allowed us to start
this business. So any question we had anything that we wanted to find out,
we could google, truly, and so with business plans that was no
exception. We googled, We kind of figured out what components there were and
kind of had that structure. But from there, you know, we really
allowed ourselves to iterate beyond kind of the four walls of what a business plan
should be and really tried to make it as creative and kind of big picture
as we knew we needed it to be to create this kind of vision for
the company. But I think in general there is a lot of kind of
limited thinking in terms of how you can start a company. I think you
just have to start somewhere. So for us, business plan felt official,
It felt like a good starting point. It felt like a way that we
were going to all hold ourselves accountable to something that didn't yet exist. So
a business, you know, until you have any tangible assets, it's just
an idea. And so the beginning was definitely how do we make ourselves accountable,
how do we put this idea to paper, how do we kind of
think through some of the consumer side of it and the market and can the
pricing strategy, distribution model, all of that type of stuff. But ultimately,
I think a business plan the way I see it as kind of an
accountability plan. So you're saying, we're all bought into this, we all
believe in it, and here's kind of the ways in which we think it
will work. You know, from the beginning, we said our kind of
view on funding is if and when we reach a point where that becomes a
necessity for us, we would always be open to it. So we've never
necessarily said no, absolutely not, that's never going to be for us.
We actually see it as like a really big kind of testament to what we're
doing and something very positive because we've been able to scale organically at a very
steady pace that is sustainable for our business and we are profitable, so we're
in kind of the lucky position that we don't need kind of to be have
this cash injection in order to kind of scale us to where we want to
go. We feel very comfortable with the pace that we're growing at and honestly,
we feel like it's been serving our loyal customers well from the beginning,
so we've never kind of done something just to make a profit because we are
accountable to sort of like a third party, or we've never kind of bought
customers to make you know, to just make our numbers, but people that
aren't actually you know, believers and advocates for the brand. So that was
kind of from the beginning, we said, we want to do this as
authentically and organically as possible because that's the kind of brand that we want to
be building and that we were looking for when we first started this company,
and we never want to straight away from that. With that said, you
know, we would always be open again if and when we reached kind of
a fork in the road and said this is the only way we can go
in order to reach more people or kind of do this this initiative that we
know is going to benefit our customers in a huge way. That's when we
would kind of open up that door. But we've really so far been in
the lucky position that that isn't really something that we need to go after.
I think for us, it was several moments we always kind of call them
like pinch me moments, or these times where we're like, wow, this
you know, this is never what we thought was going to happen. I
mean, we always believe this was a huge opportunity, a great idea,
something that needed to exist in the world. But of course when you're building
something, you never really know exactly how it's going to how it's going to
go. And so for us, probably one very pivotal moment early on was
in February of twenty sixteen, so we had been launched for a little over
a full year. We actually were featured in tech Crunch, and so for
us that was a huge moment because you know, we aren't necessarily your traditional
tech company. We don't have a super techy product, and you know,
like we're not a staff platform or something like that. We have unconventional backgrounds,
we're all female. So I think having that kind of validation to be
like, we have this great concept and it's being recognized by a publication that
we all really regard very highly, that was a really cool moment that led
to a ton of other opportunities. Shortly after, we met some really great
people, and at the same time, during that time, we were actually
doing a pop up store at the Grove shopping Center in Los Angeles, and
that was also another kind of moment where we were like, this is such
a great way to bring our product to customers kind of test what's working.
We learned so much about kind of our inventory and our product flow and all
of these different things from bringing our product offline, and so those two were
probably really big moments for us early on that led to a lot of other
things. But I think, you know, the best thing and probably the
most exciting part about having a business of your own is hopefully those moments are
going to kind of keep happening and you're going to keep surprising yourself as to
all the things that you can achieve. When an entrepreneur or a company reaches
a certain level of success, everyone wants to know what's the secret sauce and
what's in it. So Sabina shares with us what she thinks makes of the
differentiating factor for Boxbox. I think it's definitely a collective superpower. Chelsea,
my co founder, and Jenny and my other co founder, and I always
talk about the fact that the three of us are so similar, but we
are also so different. So I would say similar in terms of kind of
our values, our taste, the way that we kind of look at brands
and the brands were into the products. Brandto our aesthetic vision is very similar,
and I think that's very important. You know, as we build this
company. On the flip side, I would say, our kind of skills
and what we bring to the table is very different, and so that has
translated into our roles really nicely. So Chelsea really brings the creative vision to
the company. She's really responsible for the aesthetics, the photography, and the
marketing in general. Jenny is so detail oriented. She's always thinking about kind
of the day to day operations and kind of how we hire, how we
run the inventory, how we run the actual warehouse, and our fulfillment teams,
and our finances and our projection. So she is very much made for
that kind of role. And I am very big picture. I'm always thinking
one step, you know, one step in the future, if not five
years in the future. And so when you bring those kind of skills together,
you have a really nice mix of different of different ways of banking.
And that's allowed us to grow our business in different ways at different times and
also allows for a lot of kind of healthy debate because all of our priorities
are a little bit different in just the right way to allow for the company
to kind of move forward and make some strategic decisions at every juncture when we
were first launching, So that that day in November, the night before,
you know, we were so excited. We stayed up all night and we
emailed literally everybody we had in our in our like email lists, in our
network, our rolodexs, and so literally told every single person pretty much we
had ever met, about our company, our concept. We had one photo
that we could share and just kind of did a little right up in a
blurb, and that was just literally guerrilla marketing. We were like, we're
just gonna tell everyone, We're gonna blast this, and you know, that
was a sizable amount of people, because you know, when you combine the
networks of three people, you're gonna you're gonna reach a decent amount of folks.
So that was kind of one fun tactic that we did at the beginning.
We also when we were trying to build our initial product offering, we
did a lot of in person research, which was just really fun. We
went to a lot of local boutiques and kind of shopped around at different items
and you know, kind of touched and felt items which was the our initial
product research. Now it happens in a very different way, but that was
really fun and um, you know, we bought a lot of samples.
We tested different packs and within the box samples that we were getting, so
we were like obsessive about raping packing in a certain way. So that was
that was another kind of unique tactic. We also did beta test our initial
site with friends and family to work out any kinks, which I think is
always really important because obviously you want to launch something as you know, the
minimum viable product, but it still should be obviously functioning and great. And
we also hired PR pretty early on, so we had a PR, a
PR freelancer I would say about within the first year of launching. And that
kind of went against a lot of the advice we were given because a lot
of people said, if you're investing in PR, you're not necessarily investing in
the product, and all of you know, you're always going to get a
million opinions to which you kind of have to to know what to filter and
what to listen to. But I think with the PR piece it really did
help us. Because we were a small business, we knew that we needed
to get our name out there. We wanted to be kind of featured in
gift guides and bye you know by publications that would give us kind of that
credibility. So pr was important for us early on, and I think that
really that really moved our business forward. At the beginning, we had to
reach out to every single brand we wanted to work with, and we heard
a lot of nos. So, you know a lot of people said,
we've never really heard of you. We don't want to work with another box
company, even though we aren't subscription. That's kind of where their heads went.
You know, we're not sure we're the right fit. We don't really
know if we're in line with your customer profile that you're envisioning. So we
did hear a lot of nos at the beginning, in addition to you know
a good amount of yeses. So that was encouraging. But you know,
it was very much like we had to really knock down doors to get the
brands that we knew were going to help us build this company and that we
knew we would want to buy as customers. That has changed because we actually
get tons of inbound you know, requests from brands now to be considered for
our box. So it's or for our platform, which is actually really amazing
because it allows it's a testament to kind of what we're building. But I
think it really allows us to have our finger on the pulse of so many
different awesome brands that we might not have heard of otherwise. We're always very
open to hearing from brands. So you know, we love small brands that
are just up and coming. We obviously, you know, the big brands
that our customers love. We want to make sure that we're carrying a good
array of those. So we say it's like that mix of big and small,
which makes us really unique. But it's definitely changed because it's less us
kind of seeking out these brands and a lot of the brands coming to us.
With that said, we definitely do a fair amount of our own kind
of products seeking. So we'll go to gifting shows, you know, on
occasion. We don't go to every single one, but we we do go
to gifting shows. We also travel very frequently just in our personal lives,
and so we've brought back a lot of brands from travel. Australia is a
really big one. I've gone to India a few times and brought things the
suppliers that way. So we definitely feel like the travel component gives us a
unique edge and kind of bringing brands that again our customers might not be super
familiar with, but we're happy to introduce them too. So a little bit
of a different process, you know, But there's nothing like getting a sample
and kind of being able to look and feel look at and feel the product,
because ultimately that we test every single thing that we put on our site.
I definitely think that there is something in the don't take note for an
answer, and so I think that, you know, again, so many
people kind of are so focused on reasons why something can't work, and I
feel like we live kind of in culture of like we're always very like contrarian
and we're trying to like debate whether you know, something should exist, and
we're trying to deconstruct ideas all the time. I mean, how how frequently
do kind of go to a dinner with somebody and they have a great idea
and they share it with you, and then you know, the dinner table
says, well, somebody else has done that, or if if someone else
hadn't you know, if how how has someone not thought of that before or
how is that even that unique? And so I think in general, not
taking no for an answer and not looking for reasons why something can't work and
actually looking for the confirmation of why something will work and kind of having that
sense of tenacity and being very resilient is really important. And I think that
that's just for me been the biggest thing. I think. Again, there's
everybody goes through challenges and stumbles, and I think always kind of realizing like,
Okay, just because I'm in this moment and the world is telling me
know or somebody is telling me no, that doesn't mean that I can't move
forward, and then I'm not going to kind of find a way through this.
So it's kind of just it's pretty simple. But I definitely think having
that kind of attitude and keeping that perspective is really helpful for me as a
business owner. Once you experience significant traction and huge growth within your company,
the assumption is that you haven't made but there will always be things in business
that we'd rather not have to do. I think entrepreneurship has really been glamorized
in the media recently, and I think that it's definitely something that you know,
the media loves to cover, which is amazing, but there definitely are
aspects that are not as fun. And so I mean, there's a million
things I can think of that I don't necessarily want to do in a given
week or month, but we have to do one is right now top mind.
We're going to have to move warehouses in about a month, which is
actually very exciting because we're growing our current warehouse. But what that means for
me is, you know, working an entire weekend helping load up our moving
trucks, helping box up inventory, helping unboxed and unpack and set up a
new warehouse. So there's a lot of physical labor involved when you have a
business with actual products and inventory. Again, you know, not something that
we were thinking about when we were writing a business plan from our kitchen table,
but it's just kind of a reality. I think when it is something
that you love, even the things that you don't want to do as much,
don't feel as bad like you really do. You can find joy in
them. You can find kind of the willingness to do them because you know
ultimately what that means, again, me having to move for a weekend and
kind of set up this warehouse and do a lot of physical labor. That
what that really means is our businesses growing and we're able to provide the service
to even more people, and we're going to have that much more of an
efficient warehouse with that much more inventory. So again, trying to find the
deeper meaning allows you to rise above it. But definitely think that there are
things that come with entrepreneurship that aren't as fun as you know everybody might think.
Our growth has been pretty steady, so nothing that kind of ever derailed
us or felt unmanageable, which again I would attest to the fact that we
don't have any like outside cash injections that force us to scale very quickly outside
of what we are necessarily like feels right to us, so very lucky in
that sense. But inter growth, I mean, we've always kind of hired
and added people as we've seen a need for them. So we won't necessarily
hire somebody until we're sure of what that person's day to day role and how
they fit into the overall structure of the company is going to be. So
right now, you know, we were actively hiring for fulfillment. We have
a really good sales and marketing kind of team, and so those are kind
of the two sides of the business that have experienced the most growth. I
think in the next phase of growth, we're probably going to look to expand
a little bit on our tech side, a little bit more on our operations,
So those are kind of like where we're looking to invest next. But
I would say growth has always felt, you know, as much as it's
been challenging at times, and sometimes I would say, especially Q four is
crazy for us, it can feel a little bit overwhelming, it also has
always kind of felt like we're right where we need to be. I think
great leaders one thing is definitely vision, So having kind of a vision and
a plan for how things are going to go in the future. I think
seeing opportunities where other people don't is really really important. I think a great
leader can do that very well. I also think clarity, So another thing
with great leaders is that they know how to focus on the task at hand
while still thinking five steps ahead. So it's like, how do you balance
kind of this great deal of focus and clarity and productivity with this vision for
the future and how you you see things playing out, you know, far
far into the future. I also think that great leaders are really bold,
and so they are willing to take risks, willing to kind of take a
gamble, whether that's with a hire or a partnership or you know, just
in any in any facet of business. I think that great leader really do
know how to take a calculated risk. Of course, they need to kind
of what the consequences might be and do a little bit of evaluation there before
just acting brashly. But having the kind of courage and the boldness to do
something a little bit different in a way that it's never been done before.
I think that not only helps move the business forward, but it's inspirational to
everybody kind of below them, which is really important for leaders. My most
important thing is like having a morning routine, so I think really helps keep
me kind of focused and grounded from the beginning of the day. And if
I don't get to do my morning routine, I always kind of notice a
shift in my day and it's not exactly where I need it to be.
So for me, that's waking up at you know, getting eight hours of
sleep, which I know is crazy, but I need that and so I
found that, and then I really like to either meditat or journal in the
morning, I like to work out, I like to you know, eat
kind of a healthy breakfast, and then you know, get into the office.
I don't like to check my email first thing in the morning. I
like to wait about an hour because I usually have something more important and kind
of need to set myself up in the right headspace instead of reacting to everything.
I am kind of being, you know, setting myself up for those
conversations that I need to have and the things that I need to answer.
So those are kind of some small ones. And then I think at the
office, I'm a big list maker, so I'm really into making lists,
kind of setting goals for the week, but also daily tasks and seeing how
those tasks fit into the larger goals. So you really again it goes back
to the whole vision but clarity ideas, so making sure that the vision is
the goal for the week, but the clarity is how how can I get
five things done on Monday that are going to help me get to the bigger
goal that I set for this week. So kind of you know, those
are probably the big ones. And then also just a general balance is really
important. So I am very committed to my personal relationships and whether that's friends
or family. I think it's very important to make time for the things that
really feed your soul. And so with that, you know, making time
for those people, having those phone calls to catch up with people, you
know, grabbing drinks or a happy hour or dinner with somebody you care about
every couple of days. I think it's it's really important to kind of maintain
your relationships and know that anything you do outside of work that's kind of helping
you become a more well rounded person. You're going to bring that great energy
into work and it's going to make everything flow a lot better. Success for
me looks like going home at the end of every day and feeling like I
gave it my all. So that's kind of for me like a day to
day marker of success. I think it's not about achieving everything on my to
do list, but it's did I kind of put in the effort that is
just going to propel me forward? And can I be proud of the day
that I've lived, Because ultimately every day adds up to your life, you
know, So that for me is success kind of on a day to day
scale. I would say, if I'm just measuring my own level of success.
It really is tied so deeply to my happiness, and so I think
that success for me looks like being happy in the role that I'm in and
knowing that I'm contributing positively to my community, you know, the world we
live in. That is the only thing that really matters to me on a
success standpoint, which is again why I think for us building this type of
company that is so gratitude, you powered by gratitude, and really we get
to see and witness all these beautiful relationships between people every single day, we
really do feel like we're in this very lucky position. And I don't think
you can ever say, oh, you know, we're successful, because I
think it's just a constant pursuit of that idea. But I do feel like
I am happy with the fact that this is the type of company that we've
been able to build, and I'm proud that this is kind of what we're
putting in the world. So I feel as successful as I can feel right
now, knowing that you know, I'm not at the end of any journey,
but I'm just kind of going through it. I'm a Yana Angel,
and thank you for listening to a Millie produced by Mazie Media. If you
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