First impressions are key when it comes to anything, but that is especially true when it comes to luxury products.

This is one of many reasons why chocolates, jewellery and electronics come in elaborate boxes, often heavily segmented, embossed and with additional tactile elements to not only make it safe but make the out-of-box experience that little bit more special.

People love the unboxing experience and want even the first part of the experience to feel special, and custom box manufacturers play a big role in making that enjoyable.

However, every great idea needs an innovator, so who was the first person to see the potential for a special cardboard box, and what did it store and protect?

Heart-Shaped Box

In the middle of the 19th century, Queen Victoria’s supplier of chocolate was struggling, despite being the pioneer of a deeply popular industry.

John Cadbury founded a chocolate making company with his brother Benjamin, but whilst they did make one of the first ever chocolate bars, the company’s focus on drinking chocolate and inability to adapt put them in serious trouble.

Their chocolate was gritty and greasy, something made far worse by the developments of their arch rival Fry’s of Bristol, who came up with the chocolate cream that melted in the mouth of the consumer. Selling this alongside tea and coffee made Cadbury’s a jack-of-all-trades but without any speciality of their own.

Everything Cadbury’s sold, somebody else sold better, and since tea, coffee and drinking chocolate were far from everyday essentials at the time, quality mattered more than anything else, especially when Cadbury’s did very little to stand out from anyone else at the time.

By the time Mr Cadbury’s son Richard and George took over in 1861, the company was spiralling towards disaster. Half of their employees had been laid off, the company was losing money and it seemed like they had missed their chance to be at the forefront of a massive industry.

Light at the end of the tunnel

This changed within five years. An improved method for processing cocoa meant that their drinking chocolate was a lot better because it removed cocoa butter from the process, making it far less greasy and ensuring it mixed better when prepared.

This gave them an excess of cocoa butter, but they quickly found a use for the waste product by using it to create bars of chocolate and other delicious confections.

The same year the Cadbury Sons took over, they introduced Fancy Boxes, one of the first mass-produced boxes of chocolate in the United Kingdom, and one that realised the power of presentation in selling boxes of chocolate.

Using paintings of beautiful alpine settings and sketches of the Cadbury family, the link between the boxes and meaningful gifts became very quickly set in the minds of Victorian families. Within just five years, Cadbury was profitable again.

However, Richard Cadbury would take it a step further in 1868 by selling them in boxes in the shape of a heart.

Feel the love

Sold in time for Valentine’s Day, the heart-shaped box emblazoned with rosebuds, drawings of Cupid and other classic hallmarks of romantic love became a massive success.

There had always been a lengthy tradition of chocolate being the food of love, but not only were the chocolates very popular and packaged in a very appealing way for both the buyer and the object of their affection, but the box itself became part of the tradition.

Chocolate boxes tend to be remarkably sturdy, smell nice and look beautiful, so many people who received a box of chocolates for Valentine’s Day would store love letters, little gifts and other mementoes even long after the celebratory day is over.

This would later extend to other boxes of chocolate, which would end up becoming remarkably practical boxes, something that in the era of Victorian austerity mattered a lot for justifying any luxury purchase.

One of the greatest pieces of marketing was to embrace this dual use, as it turned an edible and inherently disposable product into one that happens to endure and appeals to the courtly love ideals of Victorian England.

As mass produced cardboard box production became cheaper and more versatile, they became increasingly ubiquitous and not just within the realms of the luxury chocolate industry.

They would take this concept even further with the development of the Easter egg in the 1870s, and from then until the Second World War, the celebration boxes became increasingly elaborate and unique. It would take sugar rationing for the boxes to disappear and shrink.

Nowadays, the concept is found in everything luxurious, and even some non-luxury items that will use clever space-saving solutions to store wires, attachments and other parts.