Happy New Year from all of us here at Yoseka Stationery!
Year end always makes me feel sentimental and reflective so I thought I'd send out a little wrap up of our year, and oh, what an amazing year it has been here. 2021 has been filled with memorable events from start to finish.
At the end of the year in 2020, as a team, we decided that 2021 would be the year we ventured to YouTube. We set that as a goal for ourselves this year and it has been really fun to watch our dreams come to fruition. Creating YouTube videos was interesting for us because it gave us an opportunity to further connect with those of you who are further away, answer questions about products in informative videos and beyond that, a goal of ours from the beginning was actually to be able to monetize our channel so that we could distribute any earnings among our hardworking team.
We like to think of ourselves as more than just a retail store and ask our team members to come in everyday thinking about how their actions can contribute to improvements at Yoseka that can further help those in the stationery community. We make it out to be a big job and certainly set our standards very high and as a result, we wish to be able to compensate everyone the amount they deserve. Our goal is for YouTube revenue to make things a little easier on everyone and to be able to set things up so that we are able to carve out more time for our team members to engage in the creative tasks they are inspired to do instead of just the daily to-dos that are obviously necessary as well. Halfway through the year, we were able to begin checking off that little box on our YouTube videos to monetize on the videos and what this means is that we're able to collect some spare change from ads. We hope that this spare change will one day add up to more than just the few dollars here and there we use to contribute to snacks at the shop, but we are so excited about this start. We've gotten some questions along the way about why we decided to do this and so I thought I'd share why here. Thank you so much to anyone who's watched a video of ours because you really helped to make this dream come true.
In January, another long-time dream of ours also came true. The Shopkeepers blog and Instagram account reached out to us and featured us on their website as one of the best new shops! Being alongside many other world-famous and beautifully thought out shops was truly such an honor and we knew 2021 would be a great year after starting here.
This year in May, we also released our Origin series, which had been a year in the making. Neil and I have long had ambitions to make our own Yoseka products and with the Origin release, we were able to work on our own Sailor pen, ink and pen tray with our friend Shuya. Beyond the mere satisfaction of seeing our ideas come to life through these products, the launch was made a success by our amazing team. We have long dreamt of being able to put the Yoseka name on products we love, but never would we have thought that we would have the support of such a talented group of people whose ideas would contribute to their success in ways beyond what Neil and I are capable of. And to top it all off, once we began shipping orders out, the cherry on top was truly seeing our products being incorporated into your writing, planning, studying and creating routines.
Quickly after that, we finally were able to re-open our shop for browsing after having been closed since the beginning of the pandemic! I've said this before, but Yoseka is not itself without the shop being open in my opinion. We were nervous about reopening and once we did, Neil and I would often joke to each other how rusty we were and how we had forgotten to talk to people, but really, I love it so much. Thanks to anyone who paid us a visit in the new space and if you haven't had a chance yet, we hope to see you in 2022!
In the second half of the year, things slowed down briefly at Yoseka for some of our very own milestones--the birth of Jacob and Soraya and Connor's wedding. As September approached, we geared up for lots of preorders and more orders than ever before on Hobonichi Day and thus began our busy planner season leading into a wonderful holiday season.
As we approach the end of 2021, I'm thankful more than ever for what we've built here at Yoseka and I'm so happy that we can look back on the year and feel proud of what we've accomplished. This week's break has been restorative and such a happy time for me, Neil and Jacob (it's also been quite necessary as we took this time to sleep train Jacob and boy am I relieved we did that!!) We thank you all for your support throughout the year that enabled us to do this and our team thanks you as well.
We can't wait to come back and start 2022. We have lots of new goals and plans for the year and are excited to share them with everyone, but an important announcement for now...we have decided to postpone our re-opening for another two weeks due to the rising positivity rates right now. To keep everyone safe, we'll hold off on opening our shop for browsing but we will continue to be here for local pickups and of course, for online orders. Our team will be back in the shop working on everyone's orders from the break starting this Sunday and we hope to be caught up very soon. For anyone planning a visit in-person, we're so sorry for the last minute change, but we will see you on January 19th, our new date for re-opening. Thank you all for your incredible patience, kindness, support and friendship.
-Daisy
Year end always makes me feel sentimental and reflective so I thought I'd send out a little wrap up of our year, and oh, what an amazing year it has been here. 2021 has been filled with memorable events from start to finish.
At the end of the year in 2020, as a team, we decided that 2021 would be the year we ventured to YouTube. We set that as a goal for ourselves this year and it has been really fun to watch our dreams come to fruition. Creating YouTube videos was interesting for us because it gave us an opportunity to further connect with those of you who are further away, answer questions about products in informative videos and beyond that, a goal of ours from the beginning was actually to be able to monetize our channel so that we could distribute any earnings among our hardworking team.
We like to think of ourselves as more than just a retail store and ask our team members to come in everyday thinking about how their actions can contribute to improvements at Yoseka that can further help those in the stationery community. We make it out to be a big job and certainly set our standards very high and as a result, we wish to be able to compensate everyone the amount they deserve. Our goal is for YouTube revenue to make things a little easier on everyone and to be able to set things up so that we are able to carve out more time for our team members to engage in the creative tasks they are inspired to do instead of just the daily to-dos that are obviously necessary as well. Halfway through the year, we were able to begin checking off that little box on our YouTube videos to monetize on the videos and what this means is that we're able to collect some spare change from ads. We hope that this spare change will one day add up to more than just the few dollars here and there we use to contribute to snacks at the shop, but we are so excited about this start. We've gotten some questions along the way about why we decided to do this and so I thought I'd share why here. Thank you so much to anyone who's watched a video of ours because you really helped to make this dream come true.
In January, another long-time dream of ours also came true. The Shopkeepers blog and Instagram account reached out to us and featured us on their website as one of the best new shops! Being alongside many other world-famous and beautifully thought out shops was truly such an honor and we knew 2021 would be a great year after starting here.
This year in May, we also released our Origin series, which had been a year in the making. Neil and I have long had ambitions to make our own Yoseka products and with the Origin release, we were able to work on our own Sailor pen, ink and pen tray with our friend Shuya. Beyond the mere satisfaction of seeing our ideas come to life through these products, the launch was made a success by our amazing team. We have long dreamt of being able to put the Yoseka name on products we love, but never would we have thought that we would have the support of such a talented group of people whose ideas would contribute to their success in ways beyond what Neil and I are capable of. And to top it all off, once we began shipping orders out, the cherry on top was truly seeing our products being incorporated into your writing, planning, studying and creating routines.
Quickly after that, we finally were able to re-open our shop for browsing after having been closed since the beginning of the pandemic! I've said this before, but Yoseka is not itself without the shop being open in my opinion. We were nervous about reopening and once we did, Neil and I would often joke to each other how rusty we were and how we had forgotten to talk to people, but really, I love it so much. Thanks to anyone who paid us a visit in the new space and if you haven't had a chance yet, we hope to see you in 2022!
In the second half of the year, things slowed down briefly at Yoseka for some of our very own milestones--the birth of Jacob and Soraya and Connor's wedding. As September approached, we geared up for lots of preorders and more orders than ever before on Hobonichi Day and thus began our busy planner season leading into a wonderful holiday season.
As we approach the end of 2021, I'm thankful more than ever for what we've built here at Yoseka and I'm so happy that we can look back on the year and feel proud of what we've accomplished. This week's break has been restorative and such a happy time for me, Neil and Jacob (it's also been quite necessary as we took this time to sleep train Jacob and boy am I relieved we did that!!) We thank you all for your support throughout the year that enabled us to do this and our team thanks you as well.
We can't wait to come back and start 2022. We have lots of new goals and plans for the year and are excited to share them with everyone, but an important announcement for now...we have decided to postpone our re-opening for another two weeks due to the rising positivity rates right now. To keep everyone safe, we'll hold off on opening our shop for browsing but we will continue to be here for local pickups and of course, for online orders. Our team will be back in the shop working on everyone's orders from the break starting this Sunday and we hope to be caught up very soon. For anyone planning a visit in-person, we're so sorry for the last minute change, but we will see you on January 19th, our new date for re-opening. Thank you all for your incredible patience, kindness, support and friendship.
-Daisy
