Small business: Tis’ the season for The Duo sisters of luxury gifting company

Sisters Lydia Harris (left) and Jessica Davidson founded luxury gifting company The Duo. Photo / Supplied

Jessica Davidson, one half of the Matakana-based sisters who founded The Duo, talks to the Herald about swapping her big job in the city for starting a luxury gifting business, allowing her to spend more time at home with family.

What does your business do?

The Duo is designed to take away the stress of gift-giving. Using our honed eye for detail, we source bespoke gifts for clients big or small, crafting beautiful yet functional and thoughtful gifts tailored to fit any brief.

How does it work?

We offer our clients and customers two options. Either a very simple online journey to purchase, wrap and send gifts. We have incorporated a number of custom-built elements into our back end which makes our offering unique relative to the market. It means the buying journey is seamless and caters for all customer needs. You can buy for instance 20 different gifts, for 20 different staff, with each gift wrapped and the message bespoke to that person and you can do all of this in one transaction. Every other gift site you’d need to make 20 separate transactions to achieve this.

Alternatively, the other option is a completely bespoke, personalised service where we chat through the client’s needs and then, using our extensive network, we’ll either source or work with our artisans to design and make the perfect gift, right down to custom packaging and handwritten cards.

What was the motivation to start The Duo?

The initial motivation was life balance. We both had big jobs in the city, nannies spending more time with our children than we were and commuting from where our families live in Matakana - which was two hours a day in the car. We were missing key moments and milestones in our young children’s lives and while we both loved our jobs it was at the sacrifice of balance.

We’re both hard workers and ultimately the motivation of being able to work our own hours, and provide balance back into our families’ lives while also taking on a challenge was too hard to resist.

What did you both do before The Duo?

Most of my career has been in advertising. I worked in some great New Zealand agencies before heading to London and spending a number of years working for Saatchi & Saatchi. More recently I ran the marketing and communications for Augusta (now Centuria) a large commercial property funds manager. Lydia started out in PR, then moved into real estate and worked for Bayleys for a number of years. Before we launched The Duo she worked alongside Nick Mowbray at Zuru.

The Duo sources bespoke gifts for clients. Photo / Supplied

What products do you gift?

Championing locally owned brands is an integral part of our ethos so supporting and promoting NZ artisans is what we’re all about. This country is home to so much talent and we make it a priority to collaborate with and promote our partners who offer the best in Kiwi produce. Our gifts range from beautiful homeware accessories to high-end expertly crafted handmade knives to gorgeous woollen weekend bags. We love taking briefs and then sourcing gifts that perfectly fit that brief. The most unique brief we’ve ever worked on was to design and have glassware made that matched the personality of the receivers.

How many orders do you typically handle in a month?

The Duo is celebrating one year in a few weeks, so we’re constantly growing and the numbers are changing as brand awareness increases. This month, being November, we currently have over 1000 gifts heading out the door.

How big is your team?

Lydia and I drive everything in the business, with support from our business analyst, and design and creative team who work across social, packaging and brand. We are constantly working with our web development team to ensure the best possible customer experience. We are also very lucky to have a team who supports us in busy periods throughout the year and helps to get a large number of gifts out the door.

How much has the business grown since you started?

The response has exceeded expectations. We’ve grown by 300 per cent in terms of the number of gifts sent out, working with clients on personalised orders as large as 1500 gifts. We doubled our commercial targets/revenue, and visitors to the website are growing by an average of 20 per cent month on month as well as inquiries through the website.

What’s the major focus for the business right now?

The major focus for us right now is growth, we have spent a huge amount of resource and time getting our product right and developing an amazing experience for our clients, and the feedback has been really positive. So now, coming into Christmas, which is one of our biggest periods, and into 2023, we are in a big growth mode.

What challenges is the business facing at the moment?

We have faced a number of challenges from day dot, a lot of them coming from launching a business amidst a global pandemic, it has been a huge learning curve. However, most recently we have been dealing with a range of shipping challenges which have been tough to navigate although we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Harris (left) and Davidson started The Duo a year ago. Photo / Supplied

Where do you see The Duo in the next three to five years?

Our goal is to be the largest premium gifting company in New Zealand. We want to grow our stable of luxury brands with an emphasis on supporting emerging local artisans, and to continue to deliver amazing service to a whole range of clients. Alongside that, we are hoping to launch in Australia at some point; our tech-stack has been built to seamlessly allow for this. We are also working on a couple of expansion projects focusing on diversifying our offering. We’re busy ladies.

What advice do you give others thinking about starting their own business?

Starting a business is hard, time-intensive, anxiety-inducing and really puts you through the emotional wringer. But at the same time, we would do it all again, it’s so empowering to wake up each day and incrementally work towards building something you believe can be special.

Also, back yourself, you can do more than you think in a week, a month and a year. Looking back, although we are only a small business, we are so proud of how much we have managed to achieve in the last 12 months. You have to believe in yourself and trust your instinct.