SAINT JOHN – Last March, Ingrid Munroe, owner of curated gift box business, The NB Box, was worried her business wouldn’t survive the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We lost three events on Friday and I was like, ‘Oh no, it’s over, the business is dead,’” said Munroe. “I was really worried because a lot of retailers, especially brick-and-mortar [ones], were closing and we didn’t know what was going to happen.”

The NB Box, which opened in 2018, curates gift boxes of a variety of locally made New Brunswick goods, from food to stationery products, that are accessible and convenient to purchase and be given as gifts.

She and her husband Rob decided to make the leap into offering free Canada-wide shipping for orders over $50 to incentivize people to buy enough so they could keep ordering from their suppliers, who had lost most of their wholesale business.

“Business exploded overnight – it was insane, unmanageable almost, and that was also right before Mother’s Day which is a really big holiday for us in general, along with Christmas,” she said.

She says the pandemic ended up boosting her business, describing it as tricky for an owner and difficult on a personal level.

For 10 weeks both Munroe and her husband filled and packaged orders, sometimes 17 hours a day from their home while managing their three children during the lockdown.

Their home was bisected right down the middle with the kids not being allowed on the lower half where the business production was set up.

Due to social-distancing requirements, only two people at a time could work at the house, working six-hour shifts. Demand was so high that The NB Box shut down on December 1 until December 7 to catch up with its orders.

“On top of that I feel a lot of guilt and sadness about benefiting from such a terrible, tragic time, but I feel a responsibility to help people stay connected to each other,” she said. “I think the pandemic has probably accelerated our growth by three-to-five years.”

Looking back, Munroe thinks the combination of the growth of the “buy local” movement, the ease of online shopping and NB Boxes’ products created a perfect storm that rapidly grew her business.

“I think the more people realize what is available to them locally, the less they’re inclined to look outside of their local communities for the stuff they need. I honestly can’t think of one thing that I have been looking for in the last 12 months that I haven’t been able to find somebody who was doing it here,” she said. “You’re also supporting a family that you know with locally who lives in your community too.”

The NB Box recently hired its first employees and purchased a commercial building in Saint John’s North End. Munroe confirms they will move the business there later this spring and expand their product lines.

The NB Box plans to expand with the opening of a second company in the spring, which will focus on creating gift boxes from all four Atlantic Canada provinces.

“We have tons of clients in Nova Scotia and P.E.I. already,” she said.  “They love supporting local, but they would love more options and Nova Scotia, in particular, has a very, very robust product-based business community, so there’s lots to pull from there.”

Corporations and larger businesses have evolved to become The NB Box’s largest customer base.

“We’re doing lots of gifts where we’re sending out boxes of things and every employee is getting them at the same time and then opening them together on a live Zoom call,” Munroe said. “I really, really enjoyed that part of the business because I feel like we’re part of this movement where we’re helping big businesses do something that supports local small businesses in an accessible, convenient way.”