A Fresh Start - Looking Forward to 2022

To all of our faithful friends and customers,

As Alex and I have been praying and chatting about how to move forward in 2022 with Emily Can Letter, we can’t help but have this overwhelming feeling that 2022 is going to be a benchmark year for our family. Pivoting our business can be scary, but we are excited to have a fresh start.

Here’s the back story:

Whenever we were engaged to be married in 2015, I was approached by a major manufacturer about my hand lettering art that I had been posting on social media. In short, we signed a licensing deal with them to get a cut of whatever they produced and sold to stores all over the country - both to other small businesses and to big box retailers. It was a glorious check that came every month. After about 1.5 years of partnering with this company, they dropped us with no warning. It was pretty devastating to my mini muffin heart, but little did I know, it was actually a blessing in disguise. I was finally free to do my own thing! To create whatever I wanted! But what now?

Fast forward to Summer of 2018. Alex and I had been talking about getting this thing called a “laser cutter”… it was way above my pay grade at the time - I have never been blessed with the gift of being technology minded… in fact, the thought of spending thousands of dollars on a machine that I didn’t really know what to do with or how to use was super scary for me. Although Alex is not the biggest dreamer, he is is really big doer. He takes risks where I cower in fear. He stretches me to actually try, and not just be content with my life. Thank heaven for him, because little did I know the leap of faith we took would be one of the best financial decisions we’ve ever made. That first little laser cutter only lasted us about a year and a couple of months before Alex was already researching bigger and faster options. I will forever be thankful for that season, but boy whenever we got the upgrade, it was like a night and day difference! It was another big risk for us financially, and Alex had to arm wrestle me about it a couple of times (again, wallowing in the contentment), but we did it. DID IT. In October of 2019, just shortly after our first son was born, we received our “as expensive as a car, so it lives in the garage” laser cutter - the size of a queen mattress, mind you, and we hit the ground running harder than ever.

I’ll never forget those beginning days of figuring it all out - thankfully with Alex’s handyman skills, and his gift for technology, he got us all set up and trained this granny brain to work it well.

In April of 2021, I was able to quit my full time job and stay home to work on my mental health (another blog for another day), and work on our lasering business full time instead. This was the first chance I’ve ever gotten to work for myself, and it was a hard transition at first, but boy has it been a blessing to have the freedoms of being a stay at home momma with our son.

Fast forward to 2022 and here I sit, typing out this blog letter to you and looking forward to all that 2022 can bring us. We’ve come so far, and by the grace of God, we are excited about what’s to come. Personally, I am pregnant again with our second son, and due in April - fun days ahead! We are also pivoting the business to be an umbrella of different facets. We will still be doing our making and creating and designing and selling of ECL goodies - creating more new items than ever before. We will also be adding partnerships with several companies that are like minded to our company - both with quality products and with excellent customer service. We want you to know that if we recommend it, we truly believe in it. We will also be promoting items from amazon and other big box stores that we use everyday and LOVE. It’s not only going to help our family financially, but also build our community with offering lots of different items, not just what we make to order.

As I look ahead, I am truly thankful for all of the support over the years. Some of y’all have been with us since the beginning, and what a wild ride it has been! Thank you for sticking with us and hanging on for the seasons to come!

xoxo - Emily