Ever wanted to send a gift box to a friend, but also support local business as well, but don’t have the time to do the running around to pick up local products?
Well now there’s a way! Erin Thomas Bektas, a local grad student at Bowling Green University, is taking part in a 12 week entrepreneurial program called The Hatch. She’s been working all semester long on hatching her idea, researching and branding it and now she’s beta testing her concept: Curated City Gifts.
It’s a gift box company featuring goods curated from small, local, women-owned businesses and packaged by city. She is piloting the program here in Dayton.
This test box featured product from 8 local women-owned businesses: Heart Mercantile Wholly Grounds Smales Pretzel Bakery Ciao Bel Fiore Fleur Thought Artisan Soap Paperreka and Peace on Fifth.
Each box will come beautifully boxed with a letter press card describing all of the products included. Here’s what this first test box includes:
Erin explained that when choosing items to include in the gift box she had to choose products that have a a long shelf life, could be easily shipped and fit her theme of women owned businesses for this first box. She envisions rolling out Columbus as the next city, where her twin sister lives. Her sister is currently handling the social media fo Curated City Gifts. Keeping it a family business, her husband is working on creating the website to sell these boxes online.
