We’re spicing things up in today's chapter of our ten-year journey. We’ll share how we ventured into the world of curry and chillies, turning up the heat with our first major product – 'Hot Stuff in a Matchbox’.
3. The one with…the hot stuff (where it REALLY began)
Inspired by generations of their families, the game was afoot to create the ultimate token gift.
That checklist again:
- It had to deliver the sentiment, i.e. have a touching, funny or good message.
- It had to have something that represented the sentiment, ideally a little thing that could not easily be bought in a shop or not needed in quantity.
- It had to fit in a matchbox, just because.
- The matchbox itself had to be well designed on nostalgic themes of matchbox labels.
- It had to look beautiful.
- Be affordable
- Not matter if it got thrown away. ..
So how hard could it be?
Actually, it was much harder than they thought!
One of their first ideas was a curry takeaway in a matchbox (back to the school idea!).
They thought this was an ideal “man gift” – food, hot things, cooking for fun.
It was a complete failure.
Hayley researched recipes. Emma sourced the finest spices but they could not get enough curry spices in a matchbox for even an onion bhaji.
Then Emma received a package of tiny bottles she’d only bought because she thought they would fit in a matchbox and inspiration struck, partly due to Emma’s husband’s chiili obsession.!
“What was the ultimate curry experience?”
All the elements were there – the hottest chilli powder in the world, in four tiny glass bottles. Powders so rare they could not be bought in supermarkets. Emma managed to source four authentic chilli powders which were at the time the hottest in the world from a specialist trader.
Meanwhile, Hayley developed little ‘trump’ cards extolling the qualities of the chillis for afficionados, including country of origin, Scoville score and a leaflet with fun, easy chilli recipes.
The whole thing came together when Emma came up with the title ‘Hot Stuff in a matchbox’.
Little did they know what future awaited them.
