Today we’d like to introduce you to Ashley Blakely.
Hi Ashley, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I’m Ashley, Chief Marketing Technology Officer and Co-founder of Box of Zeal Gift Co., an online gifting platform that offers thoughtfully curated and highly personalized gift boxes for both personal and corporate gifting. I launched the company in November of 2020 with my two sorority sisters, Norayi Mace and Marissa Price. Prior to the pandemic, each of us yearned to give gifts to those we cared about beyond the typical flowers or the afterthought of a generic gift card. It was that frustration, combined with the desire for entrepreneurship spurred from the calls to action to start and support black-owned businesses in 2020, created the spark that started Box of Zeal.
A few months later, our e-commerce site was born and customers were able to pick an expertly curated option by us or build the perfect gift box for any occasion through our build-a-box platform.
We started Box of Zeal with a clear mission: to help people create moments and memories filled with Zeal – even when they can’t physically be together.
Our approach to business is centered around the power of gifting to build authentic connections. We’re committed to making elevated gifting an accessible, affordable, personal and meaningful to those who give with Zeal and those who receive it!
We’re proud to be a black-owned and women-owned gifting business, shipping from Atlanta and servicing corporate and individual customers around the US.
As for me personally, I’m an accomplished digital marketer with over 10 years of experience in new media marketing, particularly in the technology arena. As Chief Marketing Technology officer at Box of Zeal Gift Co. my background and experience in new media and technology at companies like Google, YouTube, AT&T, and Walmart is perfect for a small business like ours, where we all have to wear many hats.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The road hasn’t been super smooth, but we’ve also been quite fortunate. As the person responsible for leading us to be a technology-forward company, I can tell you we’ve had a bumpy road getting to a perfect website. Before our first birthday as a company, we’ve rebuilt our website 3 times and the first time we had to rebuild it was the day before our originally launch.
Finding the right developers and technological help to get our signature build-a-box platform and corporate gifting portals to where they are today took a lot of time and patience. Luckily, we’ve found a good team and we have a lot on the roadmap to make gifting even easier for businesses and individuals.
Beyond that, we still learn day by day on the best ways to curate gifts, our pricing models, gifts to source, and how to get our name in front of the people who need us.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Box of Zeal Gift Co?
One additional thing that readers should know is we’re really looking to expand our corporate gifting concierge offerings. We’re proud to have work with brands like the Las Vegas Raiders, Grainger, and Emory Healthcare for gifts and looking forward to working with many more, particularly this holiday season.
And we’re extending our offerings with custom branded gifting portals for businesses and local next day doorstep delivery in the Atlanta area.
One additional thing we’re proud of is remaining profitable in our first year while still offer affordable gifting options for both our business and individual customers. We chalk this up to finding incredible deals, a consisting pricing model, a little ingenuity, and always passing great pricing on back to our customers.
Can you share something surprising about yourself?
We do 99% of our custom design work in house. When starting this business, I knew I needed to bring my sorority sister and now partner, Norayi into the business. She has a ton of design equipment and can customize just about anything, beautifully. Our individual customers get to benefit from that with the custom candles, mugs, and other items in our store and businesses benefit with the branded items with offer at a more affordable rate with lower minimums than our competitors.
Pricing:
- Ready to Ship boxes range from $24-$95
- Customers can build their own box or shop our marketplace and add gifts to their cart that range from $2-$25 each
- We’ve helped businesses curate custom gifts boxes that ranged from $20-$300 per box
Contact Info:
- Email: info@boxofzeal.com
- Website: https://boxofzeal.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/boxofzeal/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BoxOfZeal
- Corporate Holiday Lookbook: https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/20137950/2021%20Holiday%20Lookbook.pdf
