A message of transparency

Dear Katra Subscribers,

Happy Summer! We hope this year has been good to you.

If you're reading this, then that means you just received your Spring 2022 Box. We want to acknowledge that this box should've gotten to you a little over a month and a half ago. Here at The Katra Box, we strongly believe in transparency and honesty, so we are here to take accountability of the delay of this box, and we deeply apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused you. We thank you for your patience and your understanding.

This past Spring was the perfect storm for us at The Katra Box. This past season, we not only continued to be affected by supply chain issues but, more notably, our founder was in the middle of personal crises that set back our ability to navigate the supply chain issues in a timely manner.

We'll start with addressing the supply chain issues. As you know, we often work with socially conscious companies that participate in fair-trade and fair compensation practices with artisans and farmers abroad, including South Asia. We have continued to see many areas around the world continuing to be affected by COVID-19 and its variants, particularly those countries with higher social, health, and economic inequalities. This means that many artisans and farmers and their respective teams have been severely affected (namely, by a shortage of personnel and materials), and are not able to function at the rates they previously were able to. As such, two products we had expected to feature in our Spring Box had to be dropped close to our release date because the partnering brands were unable to receive the products / materials from their supplies oversees in order to send to us. We certainly understand this lack of fulfillment and do not blame our partners or their suppliers whatsoever.

Running a small business is no easy feat, particularly not in a post-COVID world, but we recognize there will be times we have to put out fires out and quickly address last-minute issues, so that we can get our completed boxes out to our subscribers every season in a timely manner. We are up to this task and typically well-equipped to navigate these issues in ways that do not affect our customers. So this brings up our second part of the perfect storm. We'd like to share a message directly from our founder, Ghonva:

"In an effort to stay true to our business value of being transparent, I want to share that this past Winter & Spring were an extremely tough time for me due to personal and familial issues I was navigating myself and simultaneously supporting others to navigate. For the sake of privacy, I won't be sharing the details of the multiplicity of grief and turmoil I was facing, but I want to be honest in how severely it affected my mental health. I was in a bad, bad place. I completely dropped the ball once the two expected partners last-minute could no longer be in our Spring Box, and for that I take full accountability. We talk about mental health, being yourself unapologetically, and transparency a lot on our social media, and we want to be clear that it is not performative. So I'm taking a chance and being vulnerable with you all -- not at all to take away from any frustration or inconvenience of your box delay, but rather to practice what we preach. I am deeply sorry for the delay of your Spring Box getting to you, and I hope this does not break the trust between you and our brand. We promise to make it right."

Though we know it doesn't take away the inconvenience of your delayed box, as an apology we have included a free product in your box! And in addition to this, we would like to gift you a $15 coupon to use on anything in our shop with code ON_US. This will be valid until the end of the year (12/31/22)!

As always, if you have absolutely any questions or concerns, you can reach us via email (hello@thekatrabox.com) and we will be more than happy to help.
We thank you all for your patience with us. We are committed to always getting you your boxes on time, and even more, we are committed to always remaining transparent with you all. We hope you absolutely love your Spring Box.

xoxo,
The Katra Box Team