In this final Reflections email of the year, we want to say thank you. 

Holstee wouldn’t have survived this year without your participation, and we are incredibly grateful for the many ways you supported us.

This year was not without its challenges, both for our business and for us personally. But reviewing our year has given us the chance to celebrate our wins and make peace with some of the harder parts of this year. 

Here are a few highlights that came up for us: 

Our team. Getting to work with brilliant and passionate people is hands-down one of the things we love most about our work. Our small team spans three continents, six countries, and seven time zones. Thank you Massiel (Spain), Nicole (Maine), Bryan (France), Carrie (North Carolina), Sarah (Washington), Britannio (United Kingdom), Edward (Colombia), Madison (Colorado), Leah (Vermont), and Payton and Rachel (Arizona) for pushing us and Holstee forward this year.

 A few of us on a team call earlier this year.

Going deeper with our Holstee Members. When COVID first started impacting our community, we decided to host an online gathering for our members as an experiment. Now it’s one of the things we most look forward to every month. Each call is a reminder of the kindness, wisdom, and compassion within this community, and reinforces why we do what we do. To complement these calls, we also built a dedicated online forum for members to foster even more connections so that we can continue to learn from each other.

Launching new partnerships and products. This year we collaborated with Casper ter Kuile on our Ritual Life Planner, a product that we thoroughly enjoyed making and now get to use ourselves. We also launched our Coaches Kit, which bundled two of our most popular products, Reflection Cards and the Greater Good Toolkit. 

Building Reflection.app. In 2020, we launched Reflection.app for iOS and Android. We also introduced Reflect & Reset, a 14-day guided journaling experience within the app. And we added advanced features through a Premium option, which is now an added perk of Holstee Membership. A year ago, when Reflection.app was still in beta, it had just over 1,000 users. Today, we have more than 8,000 users who have created over 49,000 journal entries!

We had some lowlights as well...

While we feel grateful for so much this year, we certainly experienced challenges. Due to COVID, many of the small brick-and-mortar shops that carry Holstee products closed — some temporarily, others permanently — and we felt the impact as our wholesale and partnership sales slowed to a near stop.

Additionally, a few of our production partners experienced significant hardships as they were forced to reduce staff or close their facilities. While we understood the need to prioritize safety above all else, these interruptions caused some supply chain issues for us, which, in turn, affected our customers and our sales.

These setbacks brought stress and financial uncertainty to this year — but all things considered, we feel fortunate. We weren’t forced to make cuts to our team. Instead we were able to shift our attention and resources to parts of our business that we could push forward, preparing for a big 2021.

Looking ahead...

We are very excited about the coming year and the new opportunities it will bring. 

Membership updates. Our Membership benefits are constantly evolving to make the experience more meaningful and valuable. In 2021, we are changing the format of our Complete Membership, replacing the Pocket Journal with a larger Activity Booklet and updating our Digital Guides. We also have an incredible selection of art lined up for the year — seriously, this year’s art may be the best yet!

New products. We are currently exploring three new products for 2021. We don’t want to spoil these surprises, but we will say that one of them expands on a product you likely already own and love! Oh, and this will also be the first year that we are designing a product for kids... OK, we are horrible at keeping secrets... No more hints! :-) 

Continuing to develop Reflection.app. This year we will be incorporating Holstee Themed Guides into the app so you can reflect on each month’s theme directly in your journal. We are also preparing to improve analytics and journaling insights, and launch desktop apps later in 2021.

Taking the time to reflect on the past 12 months felt especially necessary for us this year. We hope you’re able to make time to do the same. 

We wish you and your family peace and joy as you celebrate the end of this year and welcome the year ahead. 

Thank you, again, for joining us on this journey.

Mike and Dave Radparvar
Co-Founders, Holstee