Working on your business, not in your business
Welcome back to this week's breakdown of the DTCX Exceptional Ecommerce podcast! Chris Meade sat down with Chelsea Moore, the CEO and co-founder of BOXFOX, to chat about what it takes to grow an 8-figure online gifting retailer. Watch the full episode below ⤵
If you're trying to step up your gifting game, Chelsea's got the perfect solution for you.
After graduating college, Chelsea and her co-founders felt that the little community they had built over the past 4 years had disbanded, with people moving away, starting families, and entering new careers. With life beginning to move fast, and their friends and family going through major events, they wondered how they could be part of people's lives from a far.
Enter BOXFOX — a way to build custom gifts and boxes from all of your favorite brands that you love, in one, easy to navigate place.
Building an 8-figure online retailer has certainly had its challenges, but Chelsea shared with Chris what has worked best for her and her team at BOXFOX. ⤵
Keeping it in house 🏠
BOXFOX's main goal is to curate and create gifts that beautifully represent not only their brand, but the retailers they work with. According to Chelsea, the best way to do this is to keep all of their fulfillment in house. Having every order hand-packed and fulfilled in their own warehouse is more cost-efficient than going with a 3PL vendor, and gives them the flexibility to keep their standards high with the presentation of their curated boxes.
Making deals 🤝
Partnering with big brands has proven to be a challenge for BOXFOX, especially in the early days. With a misconception of them being a subscription service, and certain industries using only very specific distribution channels, it took a lot of ground work to make deals with big brands.
By showing retailers that they prioritize the aesthetic of their product and capture them in a beautiful way, as well as taking on inventory liability, Chelsea and her team were able to capture the attention of and work with big brands like Corkcicle and Ouai.
Working on the business vs. in the business 💼
When it comes to running a business, there comes a time where founders like to shift from working in the business to stepping back and working from the outside. For BOXFOX's founders, this came around year 5
Chelsea does note that while her and fellow co-founder Jenny have definitely stepped back a bit, this definitely ebbs and flows on a seasonal basis. During busy seasons like Christmas, they've found themselves working in their warehouse full time on top of their other duties.
Forecasting the future ☂️
Accurate projecting and forecasting has always been top-of-mind for Chelsea and her team, and they've hit their projections head-on every single year — up until 2021, that is. With the disastrous iOS changes that heavily affected digital advertising efforts, BOXFOX found themselves off-track by mid-2021. How did they fix this? They swallowed their ego and re-projected their numbers mid-year for the 3rd & 4th quarters, allowing them to prepare for the rest of the year and get back on track.
Want to learn more about Ecommerce growth through the personal trials and tribulations of industry professionals? Subscribe to DTCX Exceptional Ecommerce on Spotify or wherever you get your Podcasts. Then, hop on over to the DTCX Facebook group and join in on the conversation.
