Carrie Bradshaw might have declared war on the existence of innocence in our times, but there are some thrills that one experiences with much the same intensity as they did the first time. Say, the take off of an airplane, the sound of opera acoustics, the sight of waves at sundown, the unwrapping of a gift box. It is with the intent of inducing the lattermost thrill in its most naive and pure form that MSMbox.com has concerned itself with.
The company, just six weeks into the business of ‘gift therapy’, hasn’t advertised or begun its social media campaign and is servicing 10 to 12 orders a day. Here’s the deal: Costumers from anywhere in the country can log onto their website and place an order for either the Express box priced at `499 or the Select box for `999. The boxes will be delivered within 10 days and in Delhi NCR, just the next day. Typically, each box contains a full size product, a kit of miniatures, a nail lacquer or a lip pen for colour and a gift-voucher redeemable at a spa or a salon. The products change every month, but should a customer wish to go back to a certain product from an older box, there’s a ‘Shop Now’ option that lets them.
This isn’t just another gifting portal wrapping cute knick-knacks in crinkled butter paper inside a hot-pink and bright-yellow box. “We’re a discovery platform. We don’t allow customers to tell us what they want in their box. All our website lists is the brands we use, the rest is a game of surprise,” says Bindu Sharma, who is a serial entrepreneur and got this start-up going. Sharma, who has been running the beauty blog MyStyleMile.com since 2012, is putting her knowledge of the industry to good use. As much as their business seems to suggest, they don’t just sit around packing boxes all day. They set out every month to explore malls and markets, sampling all kinds of beauty and grooming products, rejecting and approving them in Gordon Ramsay snobbery. A soft giggle at the find of a moisturising lip-liner, a loud chuckle at the proud discovery of a face-wash fit for any skin type; life’s in little pleasures they say. Each member adds a different kind of spunk to the brand. Dhanashree Sowani is a zumba trainer and her visualisation is as energetic; she’s the one behind the fun colours and motifs. Kavita Joshi Rai, who’s on a mission to rescue the world of stray animals one pup and one kitten at a time, understands the delicate nuances of skin and hair care and tries on every product herself. Vivek Hans is a gamer who invents strategy for the beauty box brand and Shiveshwar Singh, who writes for passion, lends imagination and depth. They’re not exactly the Brady Bunch, but stand together in their love for creating and spreading material happiness.
The purpose is two-fold; to give Indian and international brands a wild and sudden reach. While high-end brands like Kama Ayurveda are limited to premium retail outlets in metros, there are brands like Organic Harvest that have been around for a while and haven’t found a platform. Besides, brands like Lakme, Maybelline, Color Bar and Innisfree launch fresh collections that the monthly boxes keep pace with.
The idea is to acquaint customers with new products and get them to experiment. “If you receive things in small samples as gifts, you actually end up trying them,” says Sharma, who hopes to take women away from that one cream or powder they’ve been using for decades. In six months time, the brand will start selling fashion boxes that might open to reveal a scarf, a pair of beach flip-flops, a neck-choker or a bracelet, eye-lash curlers, fake nails, even headphones.
In magical ways, what’s inside an unopened box has already spilled out of it, in spirit, in sentiment.