In the 15 years that Shakeel Lal worked in the insurance industry, he sent his fair share of gift boxes. In fact, when he started Hampers R Us in late 2020 he was spending over $3,000 a month in gifts for clients and business contacts.
And while Shak is (clearly!) passionate about gifting, he found it frustrating how long he had to spend searching for suitable gift boxes and was disappointed at the lack of options to send hampers that didn’t fall within the most common gifting occasions (such as to express sympathy or cultural celebrations)
This is how Hampers R Us was born; Shak made it his mission to make corporate gifting better and easier.
Bringing the vision to life
Shak wanted his gift boxes to have beautiful packaging to match the quality of the products he thoughtfully curated to go inside.
The problem? Sourcing custom-made, quality, and affordable packaging turned out to be a lot more complex than he ever anticipated.
Initial research into custom packaging led Shak to Alibaba. Needless to say, that route was a dead-end. He was overwhelmed by the number of options on offer; didn’t understand the jargon and was worried about trusting these faceless suppliers with a task that could make or break his business.
Well-meaning (but clueless!) friends suggested he should visit China to assess potential suppliers. He was running out of ideas.
Eventually Shak reached out to another sourcing agency (which we shall not name) and things took a turn for the worse: unclear pricing led him to a nasty surprise and he was stung with predatory pricing, far beyond the scope of a start-up.
After hitting many roadblocks Shak finally had the break he so badly needed: a 2am Facebook scroll put him in front of an Epic Sourcing ad. Without wasting any time, he contacted us straight away.
That middle-of-the-night enquiry triggered a chain of events that would change the course of his business forever. (Thanks Meta!)
Once an expert sourcing agent came into play, everything started to fall into place: negotiating contracts, verifying suppliers, ordering samples, negotiating MOQ’s, planning shipping, delivery and even providing extra muscle at the Ports of Auckland, Epic provided an all-in-one solution.
“Eventually, I handed everything to TK, there was no way I could do it on my own. I handed him the notes, and he made it happen.” Shakeel Lal, Hampers R Us.
With Epic by their side, Hampers R Us has steadily grown and has now expanded their product range, with gift packages available for all sorts of occasions, including births, weddings, anniversaries and even Halloween!
You can check their full range on their website: https://hampersrus.co.nz
