Cosy Killer Box | Meet The Maker

This is part of uOpen’s ‘Meet The Maker’ interview series - your exclusive opportunity to get to know the real people and personalities behind the subscription boxes you know and love, and the ones you will soon come to!

What sparked your decision to start up your box and how did you get started?
We launched back in 2017 after writing a unique delivery method of a game for Crime Con. We realised the serialised delivery of puzzles to develop a murder mystery story had merit and could work well as a serialised story.

Murder mysteries originally started out as serialized stories ( Think of Sherlock Holmes. The short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle were originally in the Strand Magazine before the compendiums were published as books)

We originally developed the idea and took it to Kickstarter to see if we could raise the money we needed to launch. We did! And so "Inheritance of Murder" was born. a Year later, with our sleuths saying goodbye to year one, there was a demand for a year 2 and so "The Curse of Humanrah" was launched on kickstarter and then released, and this year we've done the same for "The Murder at Malborough House". The challenge is always to get a feeling of freshness into the stories despite them being puzzle and cipher orientated. But each one is unique and our customers stick with us for years!

Describe your box in three words?
Intriguing, mysterious, challenging

Where did your box name come from?
We wanted to evoke the idea of a cosy armchair detective. So Cosykiller was the ideal choice. I love the alliteration!

Are you a creator or curator?
Creator - We create everything in each box from the storyline to the clues and props.

What was your most popular box? 
An Inheritance of Murder is still our most popular story.

How many people are involved with producing your subscription box?
There are four of us in the office tasked with Cosy Killer subscription. I handle the writing, Della does most of the design. Faye handles order fullfillment for UK and rest of world, Tina handles the warehousing shipments for the USA, and we have another woman called Kim who deals with our USA warehouse shipments as Cosykiller is so popular in the States we've had to start warehousing over there!

Which subscription boxes do you subscribe to?
I get a whisky subscription box for my husband currently. He likes his whisky and unlike me, he has more time to sit down and enjoy the finer things in life. I don't really have time to open a subscription box! I'm too busy with my writing work and running the business.

Name a celebrity subscriber you’d love to have as a customer?
I'd love to have Benadict Cumberbatch, David Tennant, or Shaun Evans as a subscriber. They're my top favourite TV detectives.

If you could put anything in your box, with money or scarcity no object, what would it be?
We spend a lot of time doing a lot by hand to make our boxes unique. You wouldn't believe the hours we spend crumpling paper to make it less "pristine". I even make the leather (faux) bound journals for box 1 of Curse of Humanrah by hand each month (with blisters to prove it). If money was no object I'd get a real handwritten diary into everyone's boxes, and include a lot more scent and touchy-feely objects. I'd also include a real wooden crate to store the story in at the conclusion.

What do you love about uOpen?
It's a UK based subscription service. We're a bit behind the curve on subscription services.

Do you have any other information or feedback that you'd like to share?
 In addition to managing the Cosy Killer and Red Herring business projects, Jo is also a published crime writer with her own novel The Missing Witness in print. Red Herring Games also runs a yearly "residential" experience. This year's is the 13th - 15th November and will form a prequel to the 2021 story. You can find more information about the event and the dinner party games over at Red Herring Games.

A big thanks to Jo for taking part in the interview. We love the concept of Cosy Killer and think it will be a big hit with our uOpen audience. We look forward to hearing feedback from customers and finding out who can crack the case.

Please Share and Grab a Discount
As you can see, the Cosy Killer team are an independent small business working hard to create an amazing product, To show your support and help with exposure please share this post with anyone that may enjoy receiving the Cosy Killer box. Plus as a thank you for reading this far, use THANKS10 to grab a 10% discount off your first box today!