How this entrepreneur hit pay dirt selling rocks

Emotion-laced storytelling fuels sales

TGrowth Curve he best products don’t sell function or features. They sell stories. Small human dramas that push emotional buttons: pride, love, hope, fun, courage, success.

In today’s wine market, for example, the grape that tells the best story about its earthy artisanal origins or its fruity finish will command higher prices. Emotion-laced storytelling fuels plenty of brands. But the best thing about such stories is they know no limits. Your best marketing tool is not just free, but infinitely renewable.

Barely a year old, Winnipeg-based gift company Little Box of Rocks (LBOR) is reinventing the Hallmark moment. Instead of sending flowers or a card to cheer up friends, salute their achievement or celebrate a birthday, LBOR will ship them an artfully designed gift box of crystals — a permanent “bouquet” of colours and textures that will bring pleasure for years to come.

LBOR is the brainchild of Kiera Fogg, 32, a former TV news anchor and PR agent who had been a stay-at-home mom of three for five years. She watched her entrepreneurial mother sell everything from pizza to pantyhose door-to-door, and knew she wanted to start a business. After a few attempts at multi-level marketing and writing a book, she took inspiration from her love of crystals, born out of summer days scrounging for stones on family camping trips. Back then, she found mainly iron pyrite (fool’s gold). Now she is turning rocks into stories, and stories into cash.

Fogg drew on all her skills as a graduate in creative communications from Red River College and the University of Winnipeg. She studied various minerals, then devised meaningful arrangements. Her $45 “Halo” bouquet (“Angels are with you”), for example, includes brightly polished samples of celestite, howlite, clear quartz and rose quartz.

Every part of the packaging says “special,” from the muslin sachet the rocks are shipped in to the warm, made-in-Canada wooden boxes used to display your treasures. LBOR encourages customers to include a personal message with each box; they are printed on a fine-paper scroll, and recipients are urged never to reveal the secret message. Fogg says this sacred pact protects the energy and intention of the bouquet.

“We’ve had marriage proposals, people celebrating the end of chemotherapy, and one from a daughter to a mother saying, ‘I don’t want it to be this way,’ ” Fogg said. “People say things they don’t usually write on a greeting card.”

Fogg couldn’t afford to hire a designer, so she taught herself photography and Photoshop, and snapped all the product photos on her kitchen counter. She estimates her startup costs were $10,000. “I spent a full year refining the product,” she said. “I knew it had to be done right. We had to create a luxury feel.”

Besides dealing with suppliers, who include mining operations and mineral distributors in India, Brazil and around the world, Fogg does all the marketing. At first, she sent out letters to U.S. magazines and gift guides and heard nothing back. Then last December, she hit pay dirt: write-ups in two gift guides put out by Hollywood influencers Gwyneth Paltrow and Cameron Diaz. “Three months into the business, things just erupted,” she said. This holiday season, she expects orders to triple to 100 a day.

To handle the rush, LBOR depends on one full-time production manager, and four part-time employees, including two “stylists” who fulfil orders on an assembly line arranged on tables in Fogg’s basement.

Corporate orders generate a third of her sales, as companies seek more memorable ways to connect with their customers and employees. And she’s “been forced to look at wholesaling,” as retailers from the U.S., Australia and other markets clamour to sell LBOR in their stores. Fogg sees this as a challenge, since her markup has always been low. Still, she expects to start shipping to select gift shops in mid-2017.

How will she manage all this success? Fogg said she learned a lot from appearing earlier this year on Dragons’ Den. But she can’t reveal any details until the episode airs on Dec. 7.