One twelfth of the year is already done. How? Where did that go?
Yesterday I framed it like that in my head and honestly… it made me panic a little. One of twelve. Finished.
If you read my January “back at it” chat, you’ll know that this Christmas (you know what I mean… Christmas 2025 🙈) was my fifth Christmas running Catherine’s Originals. A bit of a milestone really.
Every year, from Christmas Eve until the first Monday back in January, we completely shut down. Emails off. Work phones in drawers. Machines unplugged. The whole team properly switches off.
Which is probably why it can feel like we’ve ghosted you in the New Year period. I promise we haven’t. I’ll make that clearer on the website this year.
Over the past five years, I’ve learnt so much. And one thing is guaranteed: every Christmas, something goes wrong. Without fail.
But somehow, every year, we pull through.
For those of you who are newer here, maybe you found us through a Facebook ad this, I want to tell you the story, the stuff you don’t read on a Facebook ad.
Christmas 2021, Henfield
The idea of a Selection Box came to me randomly, quickly and a bit magically.
December 2020. Another year vegan. Another year watching my family dive into the classic festive chocolate tubs. Another year missing out. So in 2021, I decided to create my own. Just for my family and me initially.
I had no chocolate background. No business experience. I had just turned 18. But I had a need. A craving. And I knew I couldn’t be the only one who wanted more than chocolate tuffles or a boring bar!
One of the first things I did, was pick up the phone and call a random number I found on the Cadbury’s website. I somehow got through to a woman, told her my plan and asked for help. I asked if they (Cadbury’s) would want to help make my box. I never heard back. I’m kinda glad I didn’t, to be fair.
But that led to a lot of random searches into the early hours and figuring out how on earth to make a selection box.
That year, I wrote in my goals book that I wanted to sell 20,000 boxes. We sold 500 and lost thousands.
Two rainy days at Brighton’s Christmas market, a Monday and Tuesday. Practically empty. Our stand was a white camping table. No tablecloth. We had brown cardboard boxes with a basic circular sticker. The chocolates tasted… okay. But they sold.
And to the few people I met over those two days, I knew there were so many others looking for what I was too.
Christmas 2022, York
Year two came around quickly. I was stuck trying to develop recipes, packaging and figure out how to scale. Making everything by hand meant we were running at a loss.
Jamie’s family friend (who now works closely with us) put us in touch with Sophie from York. A trip up north later, we were introduced to another chocolate guru and found ourselves renting a chocolate kitchen for two weeks, with my brother and mum sharing a bunkbed room. Random, true and wouldn’t happen now.
In November, with snow on the roads, Jamie, my mum, Will and I drove up and made thousands of chocolates by day and hand-wrapped them by night.
We didn’t even have time to make full selection boxes, so we created what I called “Stocking Filler Bags”. They sold out within days.
After that Christmas, I spent months speaking to potential co-manufacturers.
There were a lot of time wasters. (I call them time w*nkers).
And a lot of people not taking me seriously. So we thought best do it ourselves.
A year of fundraising, grants, competitions and investment later, we moved into our West Sussex factory in Summer 2023.
Six weeks of building it (in Vibram barefoot shoes, honestly, stupid) and by September we were in. Machines arrived. Production started in our very own Catherine’s Original Factory.
We made and sold around 6,500 selection boxes that Christmas. Our customer base grew from a few hundred to 5,000 in two months.
Fiona (our wrapping machine) didn’t work, so we sent out unwrapped chocolate. 😳 But it was still a success
Christmas 2024, our second year in the factory
The mission was simple:
• Have enough stock
• And make sure it is wrapped
We worked with experts to improve Fiona. The wrapping became passable. But I over-corrected stock. We made too many selection boxes.
We went into January 2025 with 6,000 boxes sitting there. How on earth were we going to shift those in Jan?
Christmas 2025, last Christmas.
The goals were bigger, and expectations were higher.
Double Catherine’s Originals.
Launch an Advent Calendar.
Launch a summer range.
Be at two Christmas markets, instead of one.
Grow the team.…
We grew to 13 people at points.
Our customer base grew to 40,000 Choco Lovers.
We sold out of selection boxes mid-December.
And didn’t have time to make more.
Over five years, Jamie and I have experienced so much:
All-time high cocoa prices. Learning how to production plan for six+ product lines.
Buying machines that turned out to be built incorrectly. Realising working with friends and family isn’t always straightforward. Being on panels with Will Shu and trying not to feel intimidated. Launching into Gatwick. Creating Easter Eggs Seeing Killer Whales on our team trip to Iceland All-nighters in the factory, pizza and coffee fueled. Driving through six borders in 24 hours this week to get to ISM. Cashflow, after cashflow issue, Business plan V1, V2 and V3… Notes, to-do lists, more notes, Brown box, after brown box. Reorganising the warehouse 20+ times!
It feels like we have experienced it all, we most certainly haven’t.
2026
When we came back from our break this year, ready to go again, we crunched the numbers properly. And realised things weren’t stacking up. We haven’t raised prices once. While cocoa prices soared last year, we thought we had enough margin to absorb it. We didn’t.
January has been about restructuring. Replanning. Making hard and really important decisions.
We have had to raise prices. Something we avoided for five years.
We’re making internal changes to stop feeling like we’re constantly chasing our tails.
It’s been stressful. I won’t sugarcoat it. But we’re pulling through and we are not going anywhere.
To the OGs, the ones who got one of those brown cylinder boxes or a stocking filler bag, you are legends for reading this and being here today 👊🏼
To the newbies, stick with us. Bear with us. Stay tuned.
You’re part of something seriously special in this crazy chocolate world, run by essentially complete amateurs who care, perhaps, way too much and are figuring it out as we go, to deliver you the best, yummiest, most fun and fair vegan chocs the world has seen.
Stay sweet,
Catherine x