When one of our customers receives a product from Bridge in the Box – they will get a lovely parcel – most likely gift wrapped if they have chosen that option.
They have travelled from clicking on ‘buy now’, making payment to receiving their purchase.
However, the journey to make that possible is rather longer.

With a new product, I will have started with an idea, based on customer requests and our existing range of products – normally scribbling away in a notebook making a not very coherent diagram but with a perfect image in my head! This is not entirely helpful for ‘the friendly printer’ who has to translate my scribble into a useable format.
From there, I will be talking to and visiting manufacturers, showing them my plans and finding out how it can be made (preferably fsc certified and kind to the planet), in how many units to make it financially viable and how long it will take.

Often a new product comprises more than one item – a box, playing cards, packaging etc., so several producers are involved along with multiple costings and timings.
The moment comes when I have to make the final decision to ‘press the button’ on production of the product and sort out the finance.
After several nerve wracking weeks waiting, the new products arrive – often causing gentle traffic jams in our village as delivery lorries discover their nifty trailers cannot navigate a gravel drive and rather more manual lifting than planned is involved!
I take a deep breath as the boxes are opened, checking for quality and any flaws or problems, hoping we have done the right thing and, most importantly, that our customers will like it.
Once the items are photographed and loaded onto our website and all the relevant work required working on the backend of the site has been done they are ready to be sold.
It never stops being a ‘doing a happy dance’ moment when customers place an order!
So, next time you order something from a small business like mine – remember the journey.