2022: Our Year of Special Projects

At the beginning of 2022, we set our goal for the year to be the creation of special projects with each of our team members that we could share with our customers. Before we went on our store break in January, Neil and I had a little meeting with our team and announced to everyone that we would love for each of them to think of something they would like to create for Yoseka, and we would help them make it. 

When everyone had their ideas set, we began to work on them at Yoseka and over the next few months, during happy hours, at the end of each work day, in the back of the store, Ashley, Jane and Christine developed their ideas, drew out their designs, we set up meetings with local businesses, had late night calls with companies in Taiwan and saw these projects to the finish line. 

Jane's Yoseka Museum Postcard/Pencil Board finished printing first in March. Next was Ashley's Note Writing Pad and most recently, we shared with everyone Christine's Fountain Pen Bookmark. 

With our June 1st release of Yoseka Refresh and our Yoseka Ceramics Ink Series, we are so happy to be able to share the final two installments of our Yoseka Special Projects. Our Ceramics Ink Series is one that Neil and I have actually been working on since last year. It is our joint special project and it was perfect timing that these inks were completed around the same time as our team's collaborative special project, the Yoseka 申 Refresh Fountain Pen. 

Our main motivation for these special projects was to encourage our team to use their creativity, which we wanted to share with you all, and we are proud that we have gotten to a place where we are able to devote some of our time during each work day to creation, design and experimentation with the things that inspire us most. 

When hiring for Yoseka, I look for people who are positive, intelligent and resilient and I look for someone who has a goal in mind for their own life that can be in line with what we are trying to accomplish at Yoseka. I ask anyone who is joining our team what they want to do in the future and I make a note of this because it's important to me and Neil to help our team members achieve their personal goals beyond Yoseka. We have a talented team, and Neil and I firmly believe that there will come a time for each of our team members to outgrow Yoseka and leave us to pursue something even more important to them. 

Since we started our shop and got our first online order, Neil and I never took lightly the fact that someone would choose to shop with us so we have always tried to ship orders out as quickly as possible and working on online orders is the first thing we do when we get in everyday. Our team fulfills the previous day's orders, checks that there are no mistakes in every order, we make ink samples, Yoseka Boxes, Letter Writing Kits, we make trips to our shop for some things that are only kept there, we write notes, we edit orders and answer questions pertaining to orders, and then we pack them and ship them out.

Once these are completed, our team members break to do different things. Keeping their personal goals and interests in mind, we decide who will do what. Sometimes these afternoon projects can be completed in a couple of hours, sometimes a few days and sometimes it'll be something they can work on over a few weeks. And sometimes, if someone is feeling a little tired and needs a break, their afternoon project can just be to reorganize some products in our storage. Our team's afternoon projects have turned into informative blog posts, beautiful ink guides, silly but interesting TikToks, products like our Yoseka Tote, our 由 Origin Fountain Pen, and now this year's series of special projects.

Our hope for these special projects is that they give our team members the chance to learn something at Yoseka that they can apply to their own goals, that they give our team members something fun to look forward to working on. Whenever someone new joins our team, Neil and I explain that one aspect of their future at Yoseka is to create something with their name on it, to make something meaningful for themselves that they would like to share with others. They can market it however they'd like and they can also use Yoseka as a launchpad to get the word out, and they receive a share of the profits. Soraya, Ashley, Christine and Jane have all heard this many times and they undoubtedly know quite well this part of their future at Yoseka. But Neil and I understood that if you've never made something before, the idea of doing it could be quite daunting. We ourselves were in that very position just a few years ago. 

Our 2022 special projects were our way of encouraging our team to follow their ideas confidently and to be honest, we needed some encouragement ourselves since we're still quite new at this. Now that all of our special projects are here, we couldn't be happier with how they turned out and we hope this means you'll be seeing more from us soon. 

Thank you all for supporting us, making these special projects possible and allowing us to dream bigger dreams for our Yoseka family. 

See all of our Yoseka Special Projects.