CHURCH HILL — Want to banish both Scrooge and the Grinch this season? The story behind Happy Crates is sure to make your heart grow a few sizes.
Lauren Leonard of Church Hill, the owner and founder of Happy Crates and Happy Crates Printing, has made it her business to deliver smiles. She and her team deliver carefully curate boxes of toys and other small items for children battling cancer. Leonard knows first hand the struggle parents face, as she has also been in the trenches of childhood cancer since her oldest child, Darren, was diagnosed with brain cancer at eight weeks old. She has learned that attitude can make a huge difference and that everyone wants to help.
Leonard first began the business a few years ago, but saw opportunity to expand her mission this year, still, “Small business is really hard. Small business with a kid with cancer is even harder and small business with that and COVID-19 is 100 times harder,” she said.
Looking back on the journey that brought them this far Leonard recalls, “Darren was going through all his treatments since he was eight weeks old, I was able to be with him every step of the way and not have to go somewhere and work 40 hours a week. Now it’s my full time gig and I am running 100 mph. It’s exactly what I want to do and it never feels like work.”
And being busy means adding more staff. “I just got a new designer. I got her right out of design college and she has been awesome. Kendal Brandt. And we have a marketing girl on our team now,” said Leonard.
Now Happy Crates is expanding beyond just kids with cancer. They have created a fun, positive brand that appeals to people of all ages.
“Our gift crates are expanding. Literally every week we are adding new things and partnering with new brands. We say they are good for 3 to 103 years old,” she said.
The founder wondered after doing holiday shopping and packing it all up and mailing it. How could they deliver all of their brands that they love in a one stop shop? You pick out whichever crate looks best and we add a really cool card to it gets shipped off for them for free. You can send these crates for any reason for any season.
Another new addition is the screen printing press at Leonard’s Smile Factory. “We print for our own brand now and that is very new to us. So all of our apparel is kindness apparel positive. All of it is positivity and kindness and in all things that we feel the world needs right now. We also build all of our gift crates here and keep all of our inventory here,” she said.
Happy Printing, the new addition to Happy Crates, now offers local printing for other brands as well.
“We will be offering embroidery in January of 2021,” said Leonard, “We are definitely going to be a one stop shop for brands, because we care a lot about quality. We don’t take people’s brands lightly. We definitely go above and beyond because we know what it is like to have our own brand. We are really proud of our apparel,” she said.
A favorite design of Leonard’s, “Tired as a Mother” is printed on one of their shirts and can be delivered with a pound of locally roasted Rise Up coffee and a slinky.
COVID has helped them focus their offerings.
“You want to give a really cool gift without a lot of work. We do a lot of research and we pull together the top brands from all over the US. It makes me happy to be working with these brands that I know a lot about. Sometimes we find these brands that you aren’t going to find a Walmart and Target. They are the needle in the haystack type brands that are just amazing. What we do do is we feature them in our crates and put them together and make shopping really easy for somebody to give a great gift and know confidently that when you shop with us, whoever’s getting the gift is going to really get something nice,” said Leonard.
No business thrives without great marketing.
“Kara writes all of our copy and all of our emails. She really caught the drift of our brand really fast. Right now we have our Facebook. It’s been a lot of exposure for us. And then we have our email list of all of our current customers. They come back over and over for different designs we have launched,” she said.
“As far as the apparel goes, we release a new design every single month. A portion of all these goes towards our mission to send these crates to children fighting cancer. Mostly right now the hospitals that we deliver to are on the East Coast, but as we grow, we hope to be shipping all across the US every single month. Every once in a while we will get pictures back of kids opening those crates. You can’t put a value on that,” she said.
Happy Crates aspires to ship these crates out to children’s hospitals every single month and multiple hospitals at the same time. They have found success reaching out to the social workers at hospitals. It is fun for the social workers because they get to go from room to room and deliver these crates.
“You have no idea what it is like to deliver these and see the smile that goes across their face like literally everything from that day that was a struggle, whether it is surgery or chemo or bad counts. That crate totally changes things and that is like my favorite part,” said Leondard.
“Just a t-shirt to say, ‘Hey I see you. This is really hard right now. Chin up, put a smile on your face.’”
Spreading the good all around is part of the brand. Alex’s Lemonade Stand based in Pennsylvania also supports children with cancer, and in September Happy Crates donated $2,282 to them from apparel sales. Alex’s raises a lot of money for childhood cancer research as well as supporting families that have hotel bills or travel expenses for hospital visits, said Leonard.
If she had to boil down her mission statement down to a single line Leonard said she would say, “Happy Crates, kid’s gift and subscription company. A portion of everything we do will help us to send children fighting cancer.”
And for the Christmas season, they started a great COVID safe way to get in the holiday spirit. Miles of Smiles is a holiday lights contest for Queen Anne’s County. Anyone can sign up for one of 100 spots. Each spot costs $50 and it starts December 14. You can learn more on www.happycratesgives.org.
“You register your house and get a sign from Happy Crates that you put in your front yard. People can vote for your house by text. People really responded last year to get a map of where all the coolest lights in the county are. There will be prizes in five categories: Most Creative, Most Beautiful, Most Traditional and Most Variety (The Clark Griswold Award). The registration fee allows us to send two crates to kids fighting cancer.
Seeing their Tiffany blue boxes that say ‘Smiles Delivered’ is a hopeful sight. To think that our gift giving could be good giving too is the best we can do.
