When Michelle Hensley, now founder and CEO of luxury gift basket and wrapping company Nifty Package Co., lost her husband, a pastor, to cancer in 2014, she was 50 years old and “had a complete identity crisis,” she says.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Nifty Package Co.
Hensley’s husband had handled their finances while she ran a nonprofit, and although she received a year-long stipend from the church after he passed, she needed to find another way to make ends meet. She still had two children at home at the time.
Hensley had to start from square one. She’d been out of the workforce for more than a decade; she didn’t know how to pay a bill online. She entrusted some money to an advisor who didn’t understand her needs as a widow and lost thousands of dollars.
After that, Hensley hired a financial coach to help her determine the next steps. The coach suggested she lean into her counseling experience and start her own business, but Hensley wasn’t interested in that path. “I’d already been in my own grief,” Hensley explains, “and I just wasn’t ready for that.”
However, Hensley was intrigued by coaching, being “arm in arm with somebody, helping them move forward with purpose.” So she got her certification for finance, life and grief coaching, ultimately taking a job in the financial services space. At one point, she considered a position as director of a rehabilitation center, but it required 60-hour weeks, and Hensley didn’t want to spend that much time away from her children.
“I just hustled like everyone else, but I had no idea what the cost of a good was.”
Hensley was determined to find a way to work when and where she wanted to — and she wanted to lift up other women entrepreneurs along the way, too. When she shared her goal with her sons, they suggested she revisit a business she’d had years before: gift baskets. Hensley liked the idea and asked her daughter-in-law and a few other women if they’d be interested in joining her business and working from home.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Nifty Package Co.
They were: Nifty Package Co. was born in 2015. Hensley kept working in financial services and building Nifty Package as a side hustle, learning a lot about entrepreneurship along the way. “I just hustled like everyone else, but I had no idea what the cost of a good was,” Hensley says. “I didn’t understand profit. I gave everything away. But I learned to go out and start talking to people even though I was terrified. So, I would just go and share that I have this gift basket company.”
Related: She Started a Side Hustle That Earned More Than $1 Million in Year 1: ‘Manifest Your Best Life’
It wasn’t long before Nifty Package Co. evolved to offer luxury baskets to meet the demands of its clientele. Hensley kept her day job and funneled all of the side hustle’s profits back into the business. Then, a few years later, during the 2018 holiday season, inspiration struck again — Hensley discovered a new way to grow her side hustle.
“I was up every day, 3:45 a.m., praying and reading my Bible and looking out the window,” Hensley recalls, “and I see my van sitting there, and it’s not being used, and so I thought, Gosh, that van is sitting there, not creating any income, and I wonder if I could drive around and wrap people’s gifts. I already make gifts. I wonder if I can wrap them.”
“I was so tired, but I had a business, another addition.”
Hensley immediately put up a web page advertising the gift-wrapping service, and within four days, a current client who disliked wrapping gifts wanted to hire her. So Hensley loaded all of her supplies into the van, drove over and got to work, excited when she finished the job until she realized her mistake — “I didn’t label the gifts,” Hensley recalls. “I had to unwrap and rewrap every single gift. I was so tired, but I had a business, another addition.”
At the time, Hensley didn’t know much about social media marketing, but she experimented with sharing her side hustle on Instagram, and eventually, her photos gained traction on the platform. In 2019, Too Faced Cosmetics requested her design services. It was Hensley’s first major inquiry: 400 gifts to wrap.
Then, one day, Hensley received a call from the Kardashians’ estate manager. She wondered if it was a joke and didn’t really know who the Kardashians were, she says. Her sons filled her in, and then Hensley and her team were in Calabasas, showing Kim Kardashian their gift-wrap designs. Several ideas missed the mark — until Hensley presented a style featuring a Furoshiki, a Japanese wrapping cloth, which was a hit.
Those projects helped launch Hensley’s side hustle, which was quickly becoming a full-fledged career, into the corporate and celebrity spheres. Nifty Package Co. continued to focus on locally sourced and high-end products to stand apart from competitors and add to its impressive client roster, which includes Justin Bieber and Hailey Bieber, Meta, Van Cleef & Arpels, Mont Blanc, Hugo Boss, Versace and Coach, among many others.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Nifty Package Co.
“They all get treated the same way, whether it’s a $20 gift wrap or a $100,000 gift wrap.”
Last year was a pivotal one for the business, Hensley says. Nifty Package Co. doubled in size, and its gift-wrapping services made up 68% of all sales — more than $316,000 worth. Not surprisingly, Nifty Package Co.’s biggest quarter happens during the holiday season, when it sees about 50% of its annual revenue.
About three years ago, Hensley started to explore franchising opportunities. Nifty Package Co. now has a licensing program that “provides the tools, support and guidance [licensees] need to flourish in the world of personalized gift experiences.” Today, the business boasts over 20 people on its local team and 60 across the U.S.
“Those are contracted staff,” Hensley says, “so they’re doing side hustles. They’re single moms. They are older moms. They are older women who’ve never been married but need work. Maybe they’re retired, or they’re gift basket [business] owners, and they want to add wrapping.”
Image Credit: Courtesy of Nifty Package Co.
These days, Nifty Package Co. is no longer a side hustle for Hensely but a full-blown business and career — one that she credits her family and support network with helping her realize.
And as Nifty Package Co. continues to grow, Hensley plans to uphold the company’s “whole premise” of “bringing joy.” “[We have] a system in place that [ensures] every gift, every person who orders a gift, every person who has us come out and do a gift wrap, they all get treated the same way, really well, whether it’s a $20 gift wrap or a $100,000 gift wrap.”
This article is part of our ongoing Women Entrepreneur® series highlighting the stories, challenges and triumphs of running a business as a woman.
