Weathering an Imperfect Season: Reflections on Our Past 5 Years
Five-year wedding anniversaries are celebrated with gifts of wood. Symbolizing strength, wisdom and deep roots, wood is also a fitting tribute to our company at the five-year mark.
According to the Small Business Administration, the survival rate of businesses after five years is only 50 percent. So, on this fifth anniversary, our team is grateful to be alive and poised to thrive. Why? Because we’ve cracked the code to what it takes to stay the course, rain or shine.
Hint: We’re not doing this work for the money. We understand that Memory Keeping is a long-term labor of love and we’re here as a long-term partner to support clients in the effort. Not that we’re a charity; our private-edition books can be quite expensive, and deserve to be for the personalized service and craftsmanship we put into them. But we can also work on a scale as small as several hours of consulting, beginning with a free consultation for anyone with a project to discuss.
How do we do it? We’re professionals with low overhead and plenty of work. This enables us to be selective about projects in family and heritage storytelling. We don’t mass market and prefer to focus on Memory Keepers who are serious about creating heirloom-quality stories as one-of-a-kind gifts for friends, family and future generations. We enjoy advising clients on ways to stretch their preservation budgets, such as when to rely on DIY tools like Shutterfly, and when it makes sense to invest in the best by working with us.
One such project was our first book, A Perfect Season, an expertly designed, 100% custom coffee-table book of newspaper articles and memories of our first client’s winning season of senior-year football (see our process here). After gifting these books to his fellow team members to celebrate their decades of friendship, he told us how delighted he was to have invested in the perfect gift, and how happy it made the friends who received it.
A number of our other projects enabled clients to create the perfect birthday, anniversary and retirement gifts, some of which are pictured below:
While preserving a perfect season stops at weddings for most people, Heirloom Digital provides professional capabilities for preserving a lifetime of memories. We particularly focus on supporting clients in the fall and winter of their lives, who have the time to reflect, wisdom to impart, and the commitment to invest in sharing stories with future generations—as Stan and Barbara Levenson have done. Click to view their 166-page custom book (ideally on a desktop to see the double-page spreads).
I won’t sugarcoat it. Not every season of life is enjoyable or one we want to remember. For this reason, Memory Keeping can take an emotional toll, but ultimately it empowers clients to reimagine difficult periods as challenges weathered and to make peace with the past. One recent project was particularly poignant in documenting the final chapters of Elsmarie Norby’s life. The children’s advocate and Julliard-trained pianist was determined to share her experience living in the indigenous village of San Miguel Viejo, Mexico, with the world before she left it. I’m grateful to have known her—and for those who continue to keep her legacy alive.
Whether observing it through our clients’ lives or my own, I’ve found that even painful experiences can be transformed into badges of honor over time. Reflecting on such periods later in life can enable healing and connection with those closest to us. For example, upon launching Heirloom Digital in the fall of 2019, my mother was suffering from dementia. I will always cherish the Memory Keeping we did together before she passed, which helped me appreciate her even more for the challenges she endured.
To say the world was a different place five years ago is not hyperbole. Anyone who lived, loved and lost during the height of COVID-19 can remember how abrupt the change was, and many small businesses were forced to shut down. Ours succeeded through a combination of patient capital and partnerships. It wasn’t a perfect season, but it taught us how to produce high-quality books efficiently and with superior service, thanks to excellent partners like Legacy Photo Lab and My Special Book. May our collaboration enable more families to capture all the seasons of their lives for years to come.
Photo of fall foliage by Johannes Plenio
Need help? The Heirloom Digital team is pleased to offer you a free consultation on our personalized storytelling service. Get in touch today to make an appointment and let’s visit.
