In 2020, Michelle Scerbo and Carrie Weiner founded The Little Black Box® to make meaningful gifting easy for all while giving back to the communities around us. The vision of The Little Black Box® is to redefine the gifting industry by ingraining giving into gift giving, while providing the highest level of quality of products and service. Unlike other gifting companies, The Little Black Box® is a truly bespoke service, really elevating what it means to give a meaningful gift. “The Little Black Box® places uplifting other women and small businesses at the center of everything we do, sourcing primarily products that cannot be found via large distributors and donating a portion of each purchase to Alternatives for Girls. However, as The Little Black Box® brand grew, it was paramount that our community impact grew along with us. To widen this impact, we created Citizen Society – our sister brand and product line – to further the philanthropic arm of our company. Through Citizen Society, we work with unique grassroots nonprofits around the country, like The LEWIS Registry and The Trevor Project, not only through donations but also through active engagement with the causes they bring to light.”
“Our ultimate vision for the Citizen Society brand is to become a larger hub of meaningful conversation across many diverse communities, promoting engagement and involvement with key issues, and making giving back to others the norm in the context of a society that tends to value consumerism more than activism.”
Wedding Season is upon us:
FWM: How important is community to you?
Community is of central importance to me and the entire Little Black Box team. Beyond supporting women-owned brands and organizations that service women directly such as Alternatives for Girls by donating a portion of proceeds from every box sold, we strive to bring business and community together in a new and personal way. As The Little Black Box® brand grew, it was paramount that our community impact grew along with us. To widen this impact, we created Citizen Society – our sister brand and product line – to further the philanthropic arm of our company by promoting engagement and involvement with key social issues. Through Citizen Society, we work with unique grassroots nonprofits around the country, not only through donations but also through active engagement with the causes they bring to light. For example, as moms to children with cognitive/mental disabilities, Carrie and I both worry daily that our sons will suffer due to their inability to communicate properly with authority figures, in particular police officers who may misinterpret their behavior as aggression and harm them. As a result, Carrie and I have partnered with local organizations to help educate law enforcement officers on how to properly interact with the special needs community. This led to our partnership with The LEWIS Registry to further develop this type of crucial education and honor both victims of police injustice as well as fallen officers with exclusive LBB x LEWIS boxes.
FWM: Share your background.
I started my journey as an entrepreneur over twelve years ago when I started my first company, a nonprofit called Wish Upon a Teen, which supports teengagers dealing with life-threatening illnesses. I met Carrie through Wish Upon a Teen, and we became fast friends. While we supported each other through divorces, raising kids with special needs, and the ups and downs of parenthood, we also realized that our business skills complemented one another and ultimately decided to start our own company. Combining my entrepreneurial experience with Carrie’s thriving career in design, we created The Little Black Box® to elevate the meaning of gifting while also creating a platform to empower other women and inspire change in our community.
FWM: Tell us about The Little Black Box®.
The Little Black Box® is all about fostering human connection, especially in the context of a pandemic that separated (and continues to separate) many of us from our peers and loved ones. Whether we accomplish this through helping our clients give a heartfelt personalized gift to one special person or stellar employee via The Little Black Box®, or through opening their eyes to a cause that affects millions via a Citizen Society initiative, connection is what we are all about. Our community engagement certainly differentiates us from other brands, as does our product itself. Unlike other gift boxes, every Little Black Box is a bespoke collection of exquisite products that feel true to each recipient’s unique identity. Not only do we offer pre-curated boxes for any occasion, but we also offer the ability for our clients to build their own boxes or to utilize our VIP gifting services for a white-glove, luxury personal shopping experience. Combining our passion for high-quality goods and “gifts you want to keep”, Carrie and I created LB² to reinvent personal and corporate gifting in “the new normal” of the pandemic and beyond.
FWM: There is a lot of creativity to your gift boxes. You have “Your Furry Friend Box,” “The Who Inspires You Box,” “Fashionista Box,” “The Wellness Box,” and others. How did launching your company spark your creativity?
Being creative is the best part of the day! We absolutely love creating the new boxes, and finding new products created by amazing women entrepreneurs for each of the new boxes. Creating our own products through the Citizen Society brand – like our always-popular Turkish Cotton Bathrobes – has always been a fun creative endeavor as well. As an interior designer, Carrie in particular is amazing at finding that creative stride and sourcing unique items. When creating each of our boxes, we always put ourselves in the shoes of a buyer, and also source inspiration from our own lives. For example, The Wellness Box was inspired by our own challenges with work/life balance during the pandemic (and as busy moms). We drew inspiration from items that helped us relax and find time for ourselves during the day, and in turn offered those kinds of products to our customers with the hope of helping them unwind as well.
FWM: Share the favorites of 2022.
Our favorite boxes of 2022 so far are The Furry Friends Box, The Savory Box, and The Perfect Baby Shower Box. We are also thrilled to now offer our clients the option of purchasing the products found in our boxes as single items, as we received a ton of feedback from shoppers who loved these products and wanted to be able to purchase refills or single items for themselves. Of the individual items, we are loving the handpicked books – which are not only beautiful on a shelf but spark meaningful conversations around important social issues. Every month, we are featuring and discounting a Citizen Society “Book of the Month,” and sparking conversation via social media about the topics that these books explore.
FWM: Mother’s Day is around the corner. What special gift box can we find for mom?
We will be launching a few new boxes for Mother’s Day this year, but a few of our favorites for mom are The Ultimate Spa Box, The Wellness Box, The Spa Box, The Tea Lovers Box, and The Fashionista Box!
FWM: “Two Brands One Vision” Explain
We are proud to present both the Little Black Box® and Citizen Society brands together in service of our larger vision of fostering deeper connection through meaningful gifting, while giving back to the community. While The Little Black Box is our main brand, Citizen Society was created as a second brand underneath The Little Black Box® umbrella to focus specifically on community activism.
FWM: Tell us about the Citizen Society Brands and your vision to help the community.
Carrie and I created Citizen Society as a white label brand to outsource products for The Little Black Box® and to house all of our community initiatives. Through Citizen Society, we are able to create and sell our own beautiful luxury products (like our candles, which are hand-poured by a single-woman business out of Atlanta), enabling us to donate an even larger proportion of our proceeds to charity with every purchase. More importantly, Citizen Society acts as the hub for all of our community engagement initiatives and nonprofit partnerships. We facilitate awareness and conversation around key social issues through our Book Club initiative as well as active engagement with unique grassroots nonprofits around the country, like The LEWIS Registry.
FWM: What have you learned along the way?
We have learned a LOT along the way. There are many challenges involved with every step of growing a business. As women founders, we have certainly found it more difficult at times to be heard or taken seriously, a challenge that only made us pursue our goals harder, and stay even more committed to our mission. When I was in the early stages of building the company, a friend of mine gave me a piece of advice that stuck with me: let the company evolve in an authentic and organic way, and don’t restrict your imagination. The Little Black Box® and Citizen Society are truly authentic extensions of my partner Carrie and I, and reflect both what we value and what we desire to give back to the world. We created these brands based on items and services that we ourselves wanted, and built the idea of reciprocity into the very fabric of both companies. I’ve learned that this authenticity has been key to our success, and that has been one of the biggest lessons for me.
FWM: You also offer VIP Gifting Services. Why do celebrities love this service?
The pinnacle of bespoke gifting, each one of our luxury VIP boxes is curated by one of our white-glove Concierge shoppers to make the perfect gift or extravagant party favor. Full of only the most elegant, indulgent items – think that limited edition Hermes scarf, those initialed Baccarat crystal whiskey glasses, that La Mer face cream, or that new iPad Pro – these boxes take personal shopping to the next level. Each box is delivered with unique, custom packaging and a note of your choice, and our Concierge can even order unique wrappings personalized to your company, event, or individual. We offer VIP boxes in three sure-to-impress tiers: Diamond, Platinum, and Centurion. Celebrities love this service because it is truly tailored specifically to their high-end tastes, without them ever needing to leave the house or office and face the paparazzi!
FWM: Tell us about your corporate gifting and what are the favorite selections among your clients.
We take great pride in our corporate gifting service. We absolutely love working with different companies and organizations to create bespoke gifts that make a lasting impression on staff and clients, and generate a contagious buzz. It doesn’t matter if you’re a small business or have thousands of employees, we specialize in creating on-brand gifts that show appreciation to clients, impress a sought after candidate, or recognize your star employees. We will help you customize your entire box as well as incorporate your brand colors, include your logo in the packaging, or even brand a product for you. We recently did a great set of corporate boxes for KPMG, which included pre-made margaritas and rocks glass, a mini charcuterie board, cheese, crackers, nuts, and a beautiful ceramic bowl as well as Fiverr which included a fun picnic blanket, reusable bamboo plates and cups and a Fiverr logo’d frisbee.
FWM: What is the best compliment that you have received?
It is hard to pick one, but we have received some amazing feedback from many of our corporate clients as well as celebrities! Faith Evans recently posted a Little Black Box tribute via her Instagram, remarking on how much she loved the luxury self-care box we put together for her. A regular corporate client of ours, Jamie Weiner at the Manhattes Group wrote that “Little Black Box® has been an incredible addition to our corporate client gifting. We love the flexibility of working directly with them to customize each box for each of our clients!” All of the love is so appreciated, and is one of the many things that inspires our team on a daily basis!
FWM: What gift boxes can we expect over the next few months?
We have some amazing new boxes that we will be launching in time for wedding season, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day, which will include some incredible products by new women-owned vendors that we will be featuring! We are also continuing to work with our nonprofit partners on box and product collaborations to help them further their reach.
FWM: Please share your social media.
Instagram: @the_littleblackbox and @thecitizensociety
Facebook: Little Black Box, LLC and Citizen Society
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-little-black-box/ Twitter: @citizensociety4
Spotify: The Little Black Box (check out our new Women’s Month playlist!)
