More than a decade into building Forage, with cards on shelves in stores across the country and a community that's grown well beyond what I ever expected, I've learned that the moments that matter most rarely come from big campaigns. They come from small, consistent ones that add up over time.
As a small business, I never leaned heavily on tactics to "engage" people. I believe that most of what's kept me close to my customers has been the opposite: simple, unscripted, and a little slower than what a lot of brands do.
Here are a few of the things I've leaned on over the years, even as things have grown.
I read everything, and I reply.
Every note, comment, and DM gets read, and a lot of them still get a reply from me directly and it's one of the few things I've refused to hand off. When someone tells me a card made their mom cry or a sticker sheet became a bribery tool for a toddler's bedtime routine, I want to be the one who sees it.
I like to tuck a little delight into orders when I can.
Not on every order, since that would be its own kind of unsustainable, but often enough that it's become something people mention when they write to me. Sometimes it's a handwritten line, sometimes it's an extra card or sticker sheet slipped in for no reason at all. A short surprise, even a small one, reminds people there's an actual person behind the packaging. It's the same reason I always include a handwritten thank you note on wholesale orders to the stores that carry my stationery.
I show up in person, whenever I can.
Over the years I've done more than 20 in-person events: craft shows, wholesale trade shows, pop-ups, you name it. The other year I said yes to speaking at Etsy HQ about building Forage from the ground up, which pushed me out of my comfort zone but was worth every bit of the nerves. There's something about standing across from someone, hearing what a card meant to them or watching them pick something out for a friend, that no amount of DMs can replace. You learn so much.
I do the occasional giveaway on Instagram.
Not often, and never as a growth tactic. Every so often it just feels right to give something back to the people who've stuck with me. The way I've always done it is fairly manual: collecting entries through Instagram, inputting everyone's info into a spreadsheet, and picking a winner. It works, but it takes more time than it should. I recently came across Sticker Mule's Give, a tool that makes running one of these refreshingly simple by comparison. A few things I liked when I looked into it: it automatically picks winners so there's no manual sorting through entries, it handles shipping the prize once a winner is selected, and it's built to set up in minutes rather than requiring some whole production around it. For a small giveaway here and there, that kind of simplicity is appealing.
At the end of the day, none of this is complicated. It's just a matter of deciding, over and over, to treat people like people. That's been true since I started, and it's the thing I hope never changes as things grow.