This year, we celebrate eight years of Holstee. Can you believe it?! It’s been nearly a decade since our grandmother sewed that first pocket on a t-shirt prototype and seven years since we wrote the Manifesto that put us on the map. What an incredible journey it’s been!

Since day one, our team has been focused on one thing: creating and sharing products that bring meaning to the lives of our community members. Our breakout product, the Holstee Manifesto, shared our vision of a life well-lived and helped us redefine what success meant for us. But in our own journey, we realized that many of these things are much easier said than done! So over the last few years, we have dug deeper into ancient philosophy, positive psychology and the modern science of mindfulness to figure out how we could better apply the Manifesto to our day-to-day lives. We distilled those learnings into 12 core themes, which make up the framework for the Holstee Membership’s monthly guides, artwork, curated resources and blog posts.

2016 was a big year for us. Not only did we introduce these themes to the world, but (inspired by your feedback!) we also brought the membership to new heights by:

• Including fun, insightful theme-based guides in our monthly mailings
• Introducing a digital subscription and complimentary digital resources
• Shifting from greeting cards to thick, archival-quality letterpress art, with fun origami-inspired gifting envelopes for sharing the love!
• Improving packaging so subscriptions arrive beautiful and safe
• Offering bulk and custom corporate subscription

And this is just the beginning! In January, the Holstee team gathered in Seattle for our annual team retreat. As always, it was thrilling to get together and make plans for the year ahead.

So without further ado, here are a few things you can expect from us this year:

• The launch of an online community group so that as a Holstee member you can connect and share your journey with other members
• Offline events and potluck dinners (a Holstee classic!) to connect in real life
• A mobile app that brings together all things Holstee
• A completely revamped digital member experience on our website
• More robust monthly guides that curate the best insights from philosophers new and old - and make them actionable!
• A brand new gifting experience to make it even easier to share a Holstee membership with someone you care about
• Making the physical subscription available worldwide - one of our biggest requests. Stay tuned for more on this in the next few weeks!

To make these changes a reality, we will be increasing the price of all new memberships starting February 15th. If you are not yet a member, we invite you to sign up before the 15th to be grandfathered into the $12/month rate forever. You can sign up here.

If you are already a Holstee member, your existing rate will not change with these updates :-D And, thank you! We’re so grateful for your early support and we’re super excited to continue improving your experience every month as our journey continues.

Love always ✌,