The Story Behind the Ribbon: Giving Vintage Treasures the Presentation They Deserve

Some businesses begin with a carefully prepared business plan.

Others begin with a shared passion, a little curiosity and some birthday and Christmas money.

For Danielle and her daughter Eleanor, it was the latter.

In 2012, they invested money Eleanor had received from her grandparents into a large collection of vintage powder compacts. They had admired these beautiful pieces for some time, and the opportunity to turn something they enjoyed collecting into a small business seemed too good to miss.

That decision became The Vintage Compact Shop.

More than a decade later, these remarkable pieces of twentieth-century design have travelled from Danielle’s business to collectors across the world.

And since 2019, a little piece of our printed ribbon made here in the UK has travelled with many of them.

Meet Danielle and The Vintage Compact Shop

There is something captivating about a beautiful vintage powder compact.

Created during an era when even everyday accessories were designed to last, many were beautifully engineered from brass, precious metals and enamel, with intricate decoration that would be extraordinarily expensive to reproduce today.

Danielle particularly admires pieces dating from the early to middle twentieth century.

Names such as Stratton and Kigu remain enormously popular with collectors. Kigu’s origins can be traced to Hungarian goldsmith Josef Kiaschek, while Stratton was owned by a company renowned for its engineering expertise — something Danielle says is immediately apparent in the quality of its compacts.

At the very top of the collecting world are precious-metal examples, including sterling silver compacts decorated with hand-painted guilloché enamel and exceptionally rare solid-gold vanity cases.

But rarity isn’t always immediately obvious.

And that’s where Danielle’s knowledge becomes particularly important.

More Than Simply Selling Something Vintage

When Danielle acquires a compact she doesn’t recognise, it doesn’t immediately appear for sale.

Instead, it sits on a shelf in her office.

Sometimes for quite some time.

Before offering it to a customer, Danielle wants to understand approximately when it was made, who made it and, where possible, something of the history behind it.

That’s important because the vintage world has its pitfalls. Pieces that appear extraordinarily rare aren’t necessarily genuine, and even experienced collectors can occasionally be fooled.

Research has therefore become an important part of The Vintage Compact Shop.

One particularly special discovery was a fully hallmarked gold Edwardian minaudière crafted by Paul Ettlinger and imported into London in 1904. Danielle subsequently discovered the original patent relating to the vanity case and was able to add another chapter to the history of an already extraordinary object.

When time permits, she publishes her research so that collectors and anyone interested in these makers can discover their stories too.

Read Danielle’s research into Paul Ettlinger and the Edwardian gold vanity case

A Little Piece of History in Every Parcel

Perhaps our favourite detail about The Vintage Compact Shop is what happens when one of these treasures finds a new home.

Danielle doesn’t simply pack the compact and post it.

Every piece is accompanied by information about its history.

And if a returning collector subsequently purchases another piece by the same maker, Danielle doesn’t just send the same information again. She finds a different aspect of that maker’s history to include.

It’s a wonderful touch.

Her customers aren’t simply buying an object.

They’re becoming custodians of a small piece of history.

Today, those customers are predominantly in the UK and America, although The Vintage Compact Shop has sent vintage treasures much further afield — including Japan, the Middle East, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Singapore and Chile.

Which brings us to the packaging.

“Our Gift Presentation Just Wasn’t Good Enough – We needed Custom Printed Ribbon“

More than ten years ago, Eleanor found an influencer who agreed to showcase one of their vintage compacts.

It should have been a wonderfully exciting opportunity.

There was just one problem.

Eleanor looked at their existing packaging and told her mum that their gift presentation simply wasn’t good enough.

Danielle agreed.

Before that compact could be sent, something had to change.

Her first idea was to have The Vintage Compact Shop name or trademarked imagery printed directly onto presentation boxes.

So she contacted several UK printers.

The cheapest quotation was around £500 for just 100 boxes.

For a small independent business, it simply wasn’t practical. Danielle didn’t want to pass such a substantial packaging cost on to her customers.

There had to be another way.

And eventually she thought of ribbon.

Our Part in the Story

Danielle found Personalised Printed Ribbons and rang us for a chat. The Vintage Compact Shop first ordered from us in 2019.

Instead of commissioning expensive bespoke boxes, she could buy good-quality plain presentation boxes and transform them herself.

The ribbon we’ve produced for The Vintage Compact Shop is deliberately simple and timeless: bridal white satin printed with THE VINTAGE COMPACT SHOP.

It works beautifully alongside Danielle’s much more elaborate presentation.

She takes a plain black lidded box and painstakingly decorates it with burgundy and black ribbon, reflecting the colours used throughout The Vintage Compact Shop’s branding.

Finally, our off white white personalised ribbon sits across the centre carrying the business name.

The result looks anything but off-the-shelf.

And remarkably, each box takes Danielle around 30 minutes to decorate by hand.

That’s an extraordinary amount of care for something most businesses would regard simply as packaging.

But then, these aren’t ordinary products.

The Finished Result

There is a lovely symmetry to Danielle’s presentation.

Inside the box sits an object someone may have carefully designed and crafted 50, 70 or even 100 years ago.

Outside is packaging that has been carefully created by hand for its next owner.

Originally, Danielle would even alter the decoration of each box to complement the individual compact inside. Today she has settled on the distinctive burgundy and black combination that has become part of The Vintage Compact Shop’s identity.

The personalised white ribbon provides the finishing touch.

And that solution to an expensive packaging problem has endured.

Danielle has continued ordering her ribbon from us since 2019.

Why This Ribbon Worked

This is one of those projects that demonstrates something we’ve seen countless times since we began printing ribbon in 2007.

Bespoke packaging doesn’t necessarily require bespoke boxes.

For a small business, having hundreds of boxes professionally printed can involve considerable expense — and potentially leave you with packaging you can’t use if your branding, box size or products change.

A relatively simple personalised ribbon can turn a plain stock box into something that feels completely individual to the business.

In Danielle’s case, it also leaves her free to do what she does so beautifully: add the layers of burgundy and black ribbon herself and create presentation worthy of the treasure inside.

What We’ve Learned

We’ve worked with Danielle since 2019, but hearing the complete story behind her business has made us look at those familiar rolls of white ribbon rather differently.

Until now, we’d known what we printed.

We hadn’t known quite how much history was travelling alongside it.

That’s one of the reasons we created The Story Behind the Ribbon.

Behind an apparently simple order for white satin ribbon can be a mother and daughter who started a business with birthday and Christmas money.

A collector determined to establish the history of an object before she’ll sell it.

A 120-year-old gold vanity case whose patent has been rediscovered.

A beautifully wrapped parcel travelling halfway around the world.

And somewhere inside it, a little piece of history beginning its life with a new custodian, and they will also have a little piece of our ribbon with their compact.

Sometimes you have to ask the customer to discover what you’ve really been part of.

Behind Every Ribbon

Customer: The Vintage Compact Shop
Customer Since: 2019
Business Founded: 2012
Specialism: Antique and vintage powder compacts & vanity accessories
Ribbon: Bridal White Satin
Print: The Vintage Compact Shop
Font: Garamond
Used For: Bespoke gift presentation
Customers: Collectors in the UK and around the world

Inspired by this story?

Danielle’s solution is a lovely example of how a simple personalised ribbon can give plain gift boxes a completely bespoke identity without the cost or commitment of custom-printed packaging.

If you’re developing gift packaging for your own business, we can help you find a ribbon and print combination that works with your existing branding — whether you already know exactly what you want or need a little help bringing the idea together, we’d love to talk to you.