Purdy's Chocolates

Our venture into package design started years ago with a crumpled piece of paper in a waste paper basket.

Back in the late ‘80’s, in the corner office of Purdy’s Chocolates, owner Charles Flavelle and Bernie Hadley-Beauregard met to review the progress of a packaging design project for an innovative line of chocolates called “Hedgehogs”.

The studio we had hired struggled with the design. Exasperated, Bernie drew onto a sheet of paper the design that he would implement, “if it were him” doing the design.

…a doodle of an innovative triangular box form.

…a drawing of an iconic Hedgehog shape.

…and the classic purple swirl graphics of Purdy’s Purple signature box.

Suddenly, in self doubt, Bernie crumpled up the doodle, and tossed it into the wastebasket.

Charles paused for a moment. Stood up, rescued the design from the basket, un-crumpled it in his hands, and confidently stated:

“This is exactly what we should do”.

And so they did.

All good things combined: amazing chocolates, stellar packaging, and excellent customer service helped launch Purdy’s Hedgehogs into the marketplace with great success. Purdy’s Hedgehogs sales took off like wildfire - becoming the company’s top selling item to this very day.

All that from a crumpled piece of paper.