About Us Timeline
2004 - The birth of Bella Baskets started off by a local woman who created a business in her garage by making beautiful gift baskets with locally-made Humboldt products. She worked it for two years until she sold Bella Baskets to a local Eureka Veteran Mark Sanchez who made the “Humbolicious!”gift baskets for eight years until his very sad and early passing in 2013. It was a shock to many. His wife and family held it all together with the amazing local support ffrom our local community.
2015 - Bella Baskets was purchased by a Eureka/Arcata native, Patty Niskey and is the sole proprietor, operator and designer. With her drive & 30 years of retail management experience, set a goal to be the next “H*ckory Farms”of Humboldt County. Packaging and creating perfect ensembles in a beautiful presentation to share with friends and family across the globe.
2017 - Bella Baskets expanded and added a store next door purely of locally-made items called “Humboldt Marketplace”. D.B.A. became “Bella Baskets Humboldt Marketplace” continuing to create alternative gift boxes and baskets to ship around the world.
2018 - A factory style template was developed to produce a high volume of gift baskets and ship them out all day long. Humboldt Marketplace became the hub to accommodate our clients shipping needs.
2019 - New beginnings. With great sacrifice of accommodating our walk-in customers, Bella Baskets Humboldt Marketplace had to discontinue the Brick and Mortar side of the business due to an illness in the family. Continuing to ship and deliver daily. With the help of our local makers, we maintained quality customer service with direct to home/office delivery. All the while the entire year of 2019 Patty focused on various shipping boxes and measurements, sizes and styles to accommodate client orders efficiently. Finally our team came up with our eco-friendly kraft style gift boxes and fresh live greenery. We sold our first 100 gift boxes Christmas of 2019, saving the universe from the use of 100 plastic bags and reducing the carbon footprint by 20%.
2020 - Covid Pandemic and the new Humboldt Marketplace website. Shipping and delivering became high demand during the Covid Pandemic. Using our award winning local products, creating beautiful ensembles to warm the hearts of many. The birth of our new Humboldt Marketplace website featuring all of the new ensembles with fresh cut greenery became a nationwide success. Attracting foodies around the world to send comfort from Humboldt to their friends and family. Shipping from three separate locations for two solid years. Experiencing high volume without missing any corporate deadlines and maintaining local and many non-local clients and their delivery & shipping needs. Local helping local, helping hands from local vendors and friends got us through this very unusual busy and challenging times.
2022 - Bella finds a new location! Humboldt Marketplace shipping center establishes a factory setting in the old Fire & Light show room at Food Works in Arcata. Shipping fresh line-caught smoked salmon, Cypress Grove Cheeses and many award winning local products… having access to everything at our fingertips. We ship it all inside of our eco-friendly gift boxes displayed in a beautiful presentation. We launched our Humboldt Marketplace private label with eco-friendly pouches reducing portion size and price point to accommodate a more conservative budget with our NEW “A Taste Of Humboldt” gift box!
2023 - Currently Bella Baskets Store moves to the new Arcata location complete with all of its original components. Available by appointment only or order to pick up and/or select options of ribbon and various styles of gift boxes & gift baskets. Celebrating 18 years of business of which would not have happened without people like you! Thank you! We appreciate all of your continued support.