During my adolescence my grandmother would spend several days at a time baking multiple batches of what is now the Original flavor of Marlo’s Bakeshop’s soft-baked biscotti. Once baked twice and cooled, she packed them up- three to four layers high- in old Royal Dansk butter cookie tins and shipped them to family members all over the country (you had to return the empty tins if you ever expected to get a refill).  This was a regular, irregular occurrence meaning you knew you could count on receiving a tin of cookies a couple of times per year but when that would actually happen was completely unknown and up to her whims and baking moods.  Her soft-baked biscotti became an addiction that everyone in my family enjoyed being at the mercy of. It felt like a rite of passage into adulthood when I finally got my own personal tin in college.  I proceeded to lock myself in my dorm room and eat two-thirds of the tin by myself the first day I received them....

When I started Marlo’s Bakeshop in 2012 I was still working a full-time job at a software company so I didn’t have all the hours in the day to dedicate to growing the brand and pursuing sales.  What this first year afforded me though was a period in which I could give out samples of the cookies to friends, strangers and family and cull feedback and suggestions on flavor, appearance and how they would like to see it packaged. Simultaneously, I started working with a designer and spent about  9 months of that year developing the design concept for our retail box.

Read more about our packaging design journey on About.com