About the Gift Co.
Posted by Founder- Jean Grima on 2017 Nov 27th
We have a fascinating story for you! Our founder Jean Grima worked in the food distribution business for over 8 years as an account executive selling over 20,000 skus of food products. From there she moved on to UPS and worked as a Senior Executive servicing accounts that shipped upwards of 2000 packages a day. Combined Jean possesses over 20 years of food and distribution experience. Through her experience she identified that the gifting industry needed a more innovative and cost-effective means of gift distribution. Additionally, Jean has the full understanding of Corporate needs-multi gifting and ideally a one-stop-shop gifting platform.
Our mission-offer tasty and unique treats, without the big-ticket price of expensive brand names. While brand recognition is important to us here at the Gift Co. We also recognize local vendors who have high quality small batch food items-without the cost of expensive brand names. Our carbon foot print is also very important to us as we care about the future of our planet. For the past 12 years we have been searching for local vendors who offer amazing products without high prices. We have also developed our own brands to minimize the high costs of strong brands, as well secondary distribution that raises the costs of the gifts we sell.
Our Brands:
Whata Basket-Established in 2007 and Canada’s fastest growing gift basket brand. Why? Well we offer unique gift ideas, with a mix of cost effective brands, and local artisan products. Word of mouth is spreading quickly about our brands as we have very strong customer service ethics, and meeting the demands of our customers. While Whata Basket has a stunning line-up, we also are your personal shopper and gift delivery service. So, we just don’t sell gift baskets, but a service to save you time!
Christmas Baskits-Established in 2014-The name speaks for itself-Lavish Holiday Gifting!
Manbox-Established in 2015-Manbox is a curated men’s gift box nailed down in a crate-pry bar to open! Manbox is our fastest growing brand with 1000’s of happy customers.
Hello Luxe-Established in 2017. A women’s only curated gift box line. Our mission-allowing you to gift women with items they will never buy for themselves! Whether it is a busy mother, an executive, a nurturer, we find most women put others before themselves and never spoil themselves. Hello Luxe allows you to treat her with unique eclectic gifts that she can use every day and probably won’t splurge to buy for herself. We made a point of putting very unique and eclectic gifts in every box, and designing different themes to suit any women. Hello Luxe is not a gift that will be consumed in a few days, but rather full of gift items that will last a life time. Most importantly Hello Luxe is about the memories it creates. She won’t forget the day she received a knock at the door, and there was a delivery for her in a mysterious black box. She won’t forget the excitement she felt when she opened her Hello Luxe gift card, and knew she was about to experience something great. She won’t forget what it felt like to carefully undo the bow, lift the lid, and gently peel away the tissue enclosed in her gift. She won’t forget the unique items she received that day sent by you!
Zach Brown Nut House-Established in 2014. We used many packaging companies for all of our confections. We began to find that many of these items were packaged months before we received them, the product before it was packaged was sitting in the warehouse for quite some time. Then of course we had to pay the markup, the shipping etc.…We realized that we could offer our customers a much fresher product at the half the cost by developing our own brand and taking over the packaging. Hence Zach Brown was created. Created to offer you a fresher product at half the cost! Additionally, creating this brand has allowed us to create the most unique and funky nut trays you have ever seen. We have some big plans for this brand, so keep checking back with us!
Kesington Candle Co-Established 2017. Once again, we found that Soy Candle prices are through the roof. We also discovered that many of these candles are mass produced in the Asia’s with no real guarantee of what is in these products. Is it 100% Soy? Is it made with 100% pure essentials oils? So many unknown’s. Additionally, the transit time from overseas is 3-4 months. This time in transit hampers with the integrity of the product, and ultimately the overall experience. Kensington Candle Co is made in small batches to ensure freshness and product integrity. But again, without the cost of an expensive brand name, and third-party sellers increasing prices to you the customer.
Santa’s Wish List- We found that the market was lacking unique Christmas gift items for children in Canada. While there are several options in the US, there aren’t any here in Canada. After all we all live in igloos? Don’t we y’all? Santa’s Wishlist was created to offer busy mommies, daddies, and grandparents a cost-effective way to kick off the Holiday season for the little ones. We are aware that you could probably do it on your own, but at what cost really and how much time? We did the work for you. You can do it in 10 minutes with the Gift Co. Did we mention we are a Canadian company?
Store Front-We currently operate out of a warehouse environment and we actively are looking for a store front, so we can spend more time with you in person. But we won’t settle and are very focused on finding the perfect space, so we are central to our very large customer base. More importantly we don’t want to go out and get a 20,000-square foot facility in a central location. It just means we will have to increase our prices a great deal! Our mission is to offer you the best price possible. We recognize that times are changing, and our society is becoming more comfortable with online purchases. So, we are working with our advisors thinking both long term and short term on this one for you. We are about your experience, we care about saving you time, and we care about saving you money. We encourage you to read our testimonials as it is proof of the quality and service that we offer.
Our Brand-We always love having this conversation. We recognize that there are other strong brands out there. We ask ourselves why? Why are these brands strong etc.? Often enough it is because of years of service. Even marketing for that matter. Let’s face it-we can mass market we are the best, have the best brands, and are the best. This comes at a real high cost. Again, at the cost to you the customer. So, we are quite subtle in our marketing approaches and don’t have to spend a whole lot of money trying to tell you who we are. The quality, price, recipient experience, uniqueness, website experience, customer service, and our carbon foot print speak for itself. While mass marketing, social media and so on are the way of the future-so is word of mouth. We’ve built a business on it. Technology will always change, but word of mouth will always be the most powerful tool-at no cost. Which means no cost to you, our customer. The Gift Co. is an authentic and genuine company with a very tight team of individuals. Most of us have been working together for years, and we are very customer focused. We strongly encourage you to give us a try as we do have a strong brand that was built on ethics, morals and values. Our team genuinely cares about you our customer, and about your recipient experience.
Is Bigger Better?
This is the fun part. We get to educate you on gift baskets. Have you ever received a huge gift basket and you were beaming with joy? But as you were unraveling your gift you were left with a bunch of boxes and not a whole lot of yummy fresh treats? Well we don’t operate that way here at the Gift Co. Your recipients experience is a reflection of you, and the gift you sent. We’ve done several market tests and have bought these types of baskets. We’ve weighed them on arrival, and then weighed them boxes emptied and with actual food products in hand. We encourage you to look closely at our gifts and you will find that there is very minimal packaging and a whole lot of product you can see. We strive to have very little packaging, fresh food product that not only looks great, but tastes great too! So, in other words we care only about the amount of volume your recipient is left with. Not a huge gift of boxes.
We hope our about us page has helped you get to know us a little more. Our founder Jean Grima is very customer focused and spends most of her time with customers. If you have more questions, you can call us directly and ask for Jean yourself. Please enjoy our catalogue and know we are here to make gifting simplified for you and a seamless process.