Lockdown. Businesses had to think outside the box to secure their future. But businesswoman Shauna Gallagher flipped the idea and thought inside the box, in fact, inside the ‘Letter Box’.
Based at the Buttermarket in Enniskillen, Shauna put her idea to the test when she developed her new idea ‘Letterbox Gift Set’. And what a success it has been.
With stock that she had she thought wouldn’t it be great to give someone you love or think a lot of a little lift during Lockdown. “I had received a gift some time ago when a family member had died and I was really touched by it,” she explained. “I was trying to think of how I could recreate that because I was looking at how long we were going to stay at home and not see each other under Lockdown. I was really conscious of people not knowing whether or not they would have money. That was where the Letterbox Gift idea came out of and thankfully I got really busy with it.”
The Letterbox Gift is a parcel that’s small enough to go through your letterbox and in it there are things like a bar of chocolate, a bag of bath salts, herbal tea, lip butter and other gifts. “It was something that was low cost but at the same time saying to people, ‘I’m thinking of you’,” she explained. So she was really busy during the first Lockdown between ‘The Letterbox Gift’ and a popular hand sanitiser she developed. But she went on, “Whenever these latest restrictions were announced recently I could have cried. I just thought, yes, I was very fortunate to be busy last time, but the thought of having to re-live that process of not being able to see anybody was really bad. “I work on my own so it is really important for me when anyone comes in through the door to browse or buy something,” she said. “That is my social interaction.”
“I do try and look at it in a positive way. but it is a lot harder this time around. It’s one of the lovely things that keeps me going – the lovely messages going to people’s Letterbox gifts and that people are so kind and thoughtful. You know that they are making that effort to communicate. “I suppose it’s a modern way of sending a card or letter to someone you care about.”
Shauna sells through her own website www.thenaturalbeautypot.co.uk and ‘Not on the High Street’ She began the new project at the beginning of April, but started running out of chocolate and boxes and even tissue paper, so I have orders a large amount of chocolate this time around.
“These are just a token to say, ‘I’m thinking about you’ and they force you to take a little time out, like boiling the kettle or eat the chocolate or run the bath and people find it overwhelming that someone has thought of them in that capacity,” she added. Box it to say… ‘I’m thinking about you!’
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