After a brush with death from a childhood illness, I have always tried to live life positively with a can do attitude and smile on my face!

Back in April of 2020 when we found ourselves in the grips of a pandemic, I was put on furlough and was unsure what the future held for me.

After deciding to send out a little letterbox gift to our working from home colleagues, my husband Adam and I set up Colleague Box. A side project at the time that I was able to do whilst working from home.

After the success of our first ‘batch’, other companies heard about what we were doing and wanted to use our product and service to send some letterbox positivity to their colleagues too.

Before long, I was able to start working at Colleague Box full time and left my previous job. A side project became my career and little did I know I was about to embark on the biggest learning curve of my life!

Learning on the job about marketing, branding, PR, brand awareness, buyer personas…an alien world to me and far cry from the insurance checking admin role I had just left!

But not wanting too shy away from a challenge, I set about shouting about Colleague Box, got us national media coverage, TV appearances and radio interviews. Guest speaking on webinars, and interviews all paying off. We went from having one box in our collection, The Original Colleague Box, to now having over 50 gift boxes to choose from.

We sent out our first box in May and now, 10 months on we have sold over 85,000 boxes and have turned over more than £1million. We have two properties and have taken on our very own colleagues!

It’s been hard work particularly juggling homeschooling a three year old and 13 year old daughters! (Oh and a puppy too!) I faced some of the toughest days in my work life but also felt the most proud to see what we have been able to achieve.

For me, it’s much more than a gift box company, it’s putting smiles on faces and for me, that’s priceless.