An Honest Look Back at 2025

And like usual, we packed a lot into just one year here at Marigold & Grey. It's funny how you don’t even really realize how much your business accomplishes in a year until you actually sit down to write something like this. Proof that we can all probably stand to slow down and savor the wins a little more rather than so quickly moving onto whatever comes next. Before I commit to an official New Years Resolution, let’s get into it...

2025 had us out and about! We were introduced to Zillow’s Premier Agents at their annual conference as their new preferred gifting vendor. And with the conference being in Vegas, Katie, Clair and I of course had to fit in some fun Vegas things too.

Our team designed and hosted a completely custom pop-up shop gifting experience in Savannah, Katie and I sponsored a table at the Make a Wish Women’s Luncheon at the Salamander Hotel in DC (during peak cherry blossom season!), and of course we made several trips to Aramark headquarters in Philly for strategy meetings with their marketing teams to further grow our partnership.

This year involved innovation and change! Some of these changes we’d had on our to-do lists for a long (long!) time. Feels so good to have them in the “done” column!

We up-leveled the quality of our e-commerce gift box styles and standardized colors and designs across the entire ready-to-ship gift collection! By ordering in even larger quantities, we were able to keep our online shop prices relatively stable even though supply costs were steadily on the rise.

We introduced the ability for clients to have their gift recipients provide their own addresses instead of our clients having to provide bulk address lists and worry whether or not the addresses are current and correct.

And the biggest innovation of all was deciding that we would officially offer pop-up shop gifting experiences to our corporate clients. We’ve done many for partnership type events but never as a full-blown offering. Stay tuned for more announcements on this in the New Year but we can’t wait to come on site and help your attendees play a hands-on role in selecting parts of their event welcome gifts and have fun with our team!

This year involved big name clients and big gift quantities. We executed our largest project to date for Clark Construction, with well over 5,000 gifts (here).

We did some highly customized gifts for the Washington Commanders - a total 'pinch me' project for this lifelong fan girl (here and here). (And even skipped work one day this summer to attend their training camp!) 

We were also honored to gift with brands such as Meta, Adobe, and more. We even got to do a custom Halloween design for the first time in M&G history!

This year brought growth and change to our team M&G! Paulette was promoted to a full-time gift designer, which led us to hire Anne to fill her role as Studio Concierge. Both have been absolute rockstars in their new roles and the business has immediately benefited from these changes.

And of course, some life changes have resulted in us having to bid farewell to a few longtime team members. Chloe is stepping away from her part time design role as she welcomes her second baby, and our beloved Production Team Lead Jeanne officially retired this month to care for first grand baby full time. (We will be hosting a Grandma Baby Shower for Jeanne in January so be sure to follow along!) We are so excited for these new seasons of life for both of these team members but miss them already. We all secretly hope they’ll find their way back to us and would of course welcome them back with open arms!

This year meant new corporate gifting trends! We saw a huge increase in brand name luxury items being included in custom gift designs in addition to the small batch artisan brands we are known for sourcing from. Think: Jacquemus, Diptique, Aesop, Dagne Dover, Chappy Wrap, Le Labo, Meta (yes, the tech glasses!), and more Yetis than ever before.

We saw a steep increase in the use of tote bags as opposed to gift boxes for events where most attendees travel in from out of town. (You may even remember seeing the navy blue waterproof caned tote bags go viral on our Instagram account?)

We did a ton of custom gifting for sporting events such as the Super Bowl, F1 racing, Nascar at the Daytona 500, and too many pickleball designs to count.

We also designed a ton of gifts for corporate incentive trips, all of which were themed around the location of each event, including international events in Spain and Denmark.

In our online gift shop, we saw a massive shift towards our experiential gift designs which is a trend that continued from 2024. Designs like Let’s Paint, Binge Watch Ready, Bake It Til You Make It, and Sunday Suppers were some of your favorites!

We invested in our team M&G. At the top of 2025, I decided to give everyone their birthdays off as an addition day of PTO. It was such a joy hearing what everyone planned for their special day off - lots of spa days and shopping days and downtime just for themselves (which was exactly what I had in mind when making the decision to implement this).

We also had a floral arrangement making event for Employee Appreciation Day and while we are all amateurs, I believe it’s healthy for us to gather together to do something creative just for the sake of being creative, and something completely different than what we do creatively for our own business. The bonus was that everyone got to take home their own finished arrangements at the end of the event or display them in their offices.

In addition to mini holiday celebrations in our break room throughout the year for Chinese New Year, Valentine’s Day, Cinco de Mayo, Memorial Day, July 4th, and Halloween, we focus even more heavily on employee appreciation efforts during the holiday season due to the increased workload. Everyone needs and deserves extra recognition and a morale boost during holiday rush!

To accompany our annual Thanksgiving luncheon, we provided DIY wreath kits for our team members to take home and decorate their own live wreath to kick off the holiday season with their families and friends!

And now for the most talked about event of all….DJ Day! We hired a professional DJ (Chris Styles!) for the first week of December (always our craziest, grueling, high volume week of the year). He pumps upbeat music throughout our entire warehouse to keep things positive, and even takes requests which makes it extra interactive. We started this in 2024 and immediately knew it needed to become an annual tradition!

Fun story: when Chris first showed up for his gig in 2024, he was probably a little confused about why he was DJ’ing for a bunch of women doing gift assembly. But it didn’t take long at all to understand our vision and has since become an honorary member of team M&G! 

This year brought its fair share of challenges too. In fact, it’s unfair to only talk about what went well because it’s not all sunshine and rainbows when running a small business.

As we continue to ship to more international locations than ever before, the need to keep up with proper labeling practices for dangerous goods became even more important.

We also can’t forget about the ever-changing tariffs and the pricing pressures they have introduced, forcing us to take a hard look at our sourcing and make some hard decisions. We experienced vendors outright letting us down which means that with each project, we did everything in our power to absorb the stress, pivot our plans, and over communicate in order to deliver stress free experiences to our clients every single time no matter what problems would arise.

Our grueling yet exhilarating holiday rush is over, and our team is now returning from a much-needed extended break to rest and recover. It’s been an absolute joy looking back on 2025 and realizing how lucky I am to experience this business grow alongside such an incredible group of women and equally incredible group of clients. I don’t know what I did to get so lucky, but I do know that I’ll never take one bit of it for granted.

Happy New Year!