2020: A Look Back

2020 was a year that very few people need a reflective essay about. For the most part 2020 was a year that many people look forward to forgetting. 2020 however was a very good year to embrace your roots and live slow. It was a year of bread baking, home making, and making a house a home. This was the year to take up new hobbies and learn long forgotten skills. This was a very good year for us to return to FOLK. 

The past few years FOLK had very much been gone dormant. It wasn’t anyone’s full time job and it wasn’t my personal passion. I had stepped away and worked for others all while dreaming of a day when my passions would return and I would want to return to FOLK. 2019 was a year where I could feel the glimmers of my old self coming back to life, my passions re-igniting, and a general idea that maybe I really did want to bring FOLK back to life. The problem was…FOLK had been defined by two very different chapters and identities. It began as a college summer project that celebrated American made, the little things in life, and a love of rural small towns via our original run of magazines. The second chapter was one that focused on epic landscapes and photography community and was entirely digital. To come back to life would mean having to decide which of the chapters to revisit and revive. At the time I was yearning to embrace the original chapter, but I didn’t know how to make it work. I still loved the second chapter but landscapes and photography just weren’t where I personally love in life. I told myself that if it was meant to happy it would happen and that I couldn’t force anything. Over the last parts of 2019 doors started opening and my love of small towns and the little things in life quickly came back to life. The Slow Living movement was one that had been embraced by many across America as a natural progression of the handmade and American made movements and it was one that felt very natural for me. I was raised on a very old farm in the middle of rural Kentucky. I had been living slow long before I realized the way I was raised wasn’t particularly normal. 

2019 rolled into 2020 and I was at a place where if I wanted to bring FOLK back the cards were all in place. I very quietly and privately started preparing a special issue of what I hoped would become a revival for FOLK the magazine. The issue was to be a Slow Living issue and it would release in the spring. I went to many of my friends and those I admired and asked them to be a part. In my mind I really was okay if we only sold one. I wanted to do this for me, to prove to myself I could. I wanted to do it by my rules, by myself, and with all the lessons I had learned from nine years of being in business. I knew if I did all of it myself and kept costs and overhead incredibly lean “we” could make this work. I continued preparing the issue, a slow living issue, as the world slowed to a stop. Suddenly in the spring we were all living slow. 

As the pandemic and its hold grew and the world stood still the issue went to print. I did a very humble printing and exclusively offered it through our website. Every copy was packaged and mailed from my hallway floor. One printing turned into four and the issue was selling way more than I ever expected. We had hit a cord. We were rolling. I truly cannot tell you how good it felt. It was a sense of peace I hadn’t felt in many years. After several struggles over the years it felt like all the hard learned lessons and failures had been stepping stones and lessons for what was here and on the table. 

As part of this new chapter I had the idea of creating a wonderful online marketplace for handmade goods. The idea is a miniature version of etsy…a place where you could order goods from dozens of makers and they would be drop shipped by the maker…thus allowing for a much better cut for the maker and less overhead for us. It launched in April and did really well, until the creator of the startup that hosted the start up had a nervous breakdown. The start up went out of business. This is an idea we will revisit again in the spring with a different platform. I love the idea of having an online general store, but we do not have the manpower to do it all in house. It was beautiful while it lasted and inspired us to keep going.

As we pushed into summer we began work on the two other issues for 2020. What was to be a special one time Slow Living issue turned into a trio of issues for 2020 and we are doing I believe four for 2021. The autumn and Christmas issues saw us step into our stride and felt like something we could truly be proud of. I personally love the size and format of this new era. The idea was to create a size that you could carry with you. A digest if you will.

The year also allowed us to launch wholesale. This had been a dream of mine since long before FOLK. I wanted to create products that could be produced in my own rural community and offered in small brick and mortar shops across the country. This will be something we continue to grow in 2021. My personal goal is to be in 100 stores by the end of this year and to have a person oversee this all. 

As I list all of these things off it truly feels surreal. For so long I thought that FOLK was done and that I was done along with it. There isn’t a moment that I am not thankful for what we were able to do in 2020. I want to thank each of you that were a part of the year. As we move into 2021 the goals are lofty, but the mentality of being a slow burn will continue on. 

Thank you, thank you to each of you.

Ben