A Neighbourhood Win: Three Years of Outside the Box, One Very Special Moment 🏆
5 min read · Community · New Farm · August 2026
There are some moments in business that make you stop for a second.
Not because everything suddenly feels finished, but because you realise just how far you have travelled.
For the team at Outside the Box, being named a 2026 Local Business Awards – Brisbane City winner in the Antique, Art & Gift Store category was one of those moments. ✨
Three years ago, Outside the Box began with creativity at its centre and a simple ambition: to build something that felt different. Something personal. Something people could walk into and immediately feel was part gallery, part gift store, part creative escape — and unmistakably local.
There was no perfect roadmap.
There were simply ideas, determination, plenty of experimentation and an enormous amount of work behind the scenes.
Today, receiving this recognition feels less like reaching a finish line and more like celebrating everyone who helped us get here.
Three Years Behind One Award
A photograph of an award can capture the celebration.
What it cannot capture are the thousands of small moments that came before it.
The late nights rearranging displays. The mornings spent preparing the café before the doors opened. The new products that worked beautifully and the ideas that needed another attempt. The paintings, pet portraits, gifts and creative projects slowly filling the walls.
There were busy weekends when the shop was full of conversation and colour, and quieter moments when we questioned what we should try next.
Like most small businesses, our story has never been perfectly linear.
There have been exciting highs, challenging periods, unexpected problems and countless lessons along the way. But throughout all of it, one thing remained constant: we kept creating. 🎨
That persistence is a huge part of what makes this award meaningful.
It recognises the beautiful part of small business, certainly. But for us, it also represents everything people do not always see — the resilience, patience and determination required to keep building something you believe in.
The Creative Heart Behind Outside the Box
At the centre of the Outside the Box story is Kazz.
Her art, imagination and wonderfully individual way of seeing the world have shaped the personality of the business from the beginning.
Outside the Box was never intended to feel like a conventional retail store.
It was meant to be somewhere you could discover something unexpected.
You might arrive looking for a gift and leave talking about a painting. You might stop in for coffee and find yourself browsing locally created pieces. You might bring a photograph of your pet and eventually see it transformed into an artwork.
Over time, that idea has continued to evolve.
Today, Outside the Box brings together art, gifts, custom creations, a gluten-free café, workshops and hands-on creative experiences under one roof. ☕️
There is a little bit of everything — and that is precisely the point.
The business has grown by allowing creativity to lead rather than trying to fit neatly into one category.
Built With Our Neighbourhood
But a local business is never built by its owners and team alone.
It is built by a neighbourhood. 💛
It is built by the person who walks through the door for the first time, loves what they find and comes back six months later.
It is built by the regular customer who stops in for coffee.
By the family searching for something to do on a weekend.
By the person who chooses a locally made gift instead of ordering something generic online.
By someone leaving a thoughtful review, sharing a post with a friend or simply saying, “You should go and see this little place in New Farm.”
Those gestures can feel small.
For an independent business, they are anything but.
Every purchase, recommendation, conversation and visit contributes to keeping local businesses alive. More importantly, it helps create the kind of neighbourhood people actually want to spend time in — one filled with independent cafés, galleries, makers, artists and businesses with their own personalities.
That is why this award belongs to our customers and community just as much as it belongs to us.
To Our Team
Then there are the people who make everything happen when nobody is watching.
Our team has grown alongside the business, often learning, adapting and solving things as we go.
Small businesses rarely have the luxury of saying, “That isn’t my department.”
Everyone helps.
Someone might be serving customers one moment, organising products the next and helping prepare for an event later that afternoon.
There are new ideas constantly being tested. Things change quickly. Busy periods arrive. Unexpected problems inevitably appear.
And through all of it, our team continues to show up with energy, creativity and care.
To everyone who has contributed to Outside the Box over the last three years: thank you.
This recognition belongs to you too. ❤️
Why Local Recognition Matters
Awards are wonderful, but what makes the Local Business Awards particularly meaningful is what they represent.
They celebrate businesses operating within their communities every single day.
Behind each finalist is usually a relatively small group of people taking very big responsibility for something they care deeply about.
They are employing local people, supporting suppliers, creating places for communities to gather and continually finding ways to remain relevant in an increasingly competitive environment.
For independent businesses, recognition like this provides something incredibly valuable: a reminder that people notice.
They notice the effort.
They notice the details.
They notice when someone is genuinely trying to create something special.
To the Local Business Awards, thank you for continuing to recognise and celebrate the businesses that contribute so much character to Brisbane’s neighbourhoods.
We are immensely proud to be among them.
The Next Chapter
Three years feels simultaneously very long and very short.
When we look back, so much has changed.
Outside the Box has grown beyond what we originally imagined, but in many ways the heart of it remains exactly the same.
We still want people to discover something unusual.
We still want art to feel approachable.
We still want customers to walk in, have a conversation and feel welcome.
And we still get excited about the next idea. ✨
There is plenty more we want to create, improve and explore. Winning this award does not make us want to slow down.
Quite the opposite.
It reminds us why we started.
So, to every person who has walked through our doors over these three years — whether you bought a painting, found a gift, ordered a coffee, attended a workshop, commissioned a portrait, brought your children in to create something, followed us online or simply told somebody else about us — thank you.
Thank you for supporting Kazz.
Thank you for supporting our team.
Thank you for supporting an independent local business.
And thank you for allowing our slightly unusual little corner of New Farm to keep evolving.
Three years. Plenty of late nights. More than a few ups and downs. Countless wonderful customers. And now, one very special award. 🏆
We could not be more grateful.
With love,
Kazz & the Outside the Box team 💛