Sofea and her mother made a pretty interesting observation prior to starting up their own business.
They noted how gifts are expensive, especially if they are perishable like flowers, and they don’t last for a very long time either. That realisation led them to starting up Cheer Parcel, as a means to bridge the gap between gifts and price regulation.
Parcels With A Surprise
Cheer Parcel is a Malaysian gift delivery and subscription box service that has the surprise element tagged to it. Every 20th of the month, parcels of different themes are launched and the parcel items will change accordingly.
Each parcel, which is called the ‘Current Parcel’ of the month, consists of hand-picked items inclusive of food, and non-perishable items such as notebooks or stationery, depending on the theme that month.
After every month, the parcel will become a Customised Parcel which the team can ship them out to customers upon request. Some of the past parcels include the Christmas Parcel and Study Parcel.
Current Parcels are priced at RM38 including delivery within Malaysia with the exception of Premium Current Parcels which can go up to RM148. Sofea mentioned, “Premium parcels are seasonal and targeted to customers who are looking for a more exquisite or high value gift for their loved ones.”
A Simple Act Of Thanks
Cheer Parcel is based on care packages which are more common in Western countries, where specially curated packages consisting of items of need and of comfort are packed neatly into a box and shipped out to a loved one.
Cheer Parcel is replicating the idea for Malaysians and alongside the gift package, customers can also include a special message to add a personal touch to the gift box.
Co-founder of Cheer Parcel, Sofea told Vulcan Post, “Some of the customers take our Cheer Parcels very seriously and depend on us to help their family and friends recover from an ordeal. Thus, we encourage them to express their thoughts and feelings through the messages with hopes that it will bring warmth and happiness to the recipients.”
Interestingly, the Cheer Parcel team comprises of Sofea, her mother, father and younger brother so they keep the business within the family. Sofea shared that there are no major hardships thus far. The key to working with family is teamwork and understanding, and it has helped thus far with their reach.
The Challenge With Gifting
Being a small startup with a limited fanbase, the team finds difficulty, like any small-scale startups, with getting their brand out there. “Getting the word out is definitely the toughest part on the business—advertising can be very expensive,” Sofea said.
Even so, they think they have done pretty well for themselves in the first 5 months of inception. “For the first 5 months of full operation, we have prepared over to 150 Cheer Parcels ranging from RM38 to RM300 each parcel,” Sofea said.
They want to leverage off their belief that gifting is always an ‘in-thing’. “With our lifestyles getting more and more hectic, a service which helps to make our loved ones happy is certainly valuable. The challenge would be to keep our prices affordable, and to maintain our standards and quality,” Sofea added.
Cheer Parcel has the potential to scale due to the reasoning that people are always lazy when it comes to purchasing last-minute gifts for their loved ones anyway—what more when it is for less popular gifting occasions such as Chinese New Year and Siblings Day?
Through their service, Malaysians get to ‘add to basket’ whatever gifts they have planned out, and not have to worry about forgetting, and that is one area where the team can definitely take advantage of, moving forward.
