It’s a bit of a plot twist. For Duncan & Stone co-founders and best friends, Sarah Autry and Stephanie Peters, there’s nothing better than an Amazon review to help them learn more about their products and what makes them valued by their customer base. The company dedicated to preserving the art of handwritten storytelling is using the digital storytelling of their customers to perfect their marketing and grow their business.
Since opening their storefront on Amazon, they’ve seen exponential growth. “We had over 120,000 customers order from us just last year and we love hearing stories about how folks are using our journals,” said Peters. Whether it’s baby showers, wedding anniversaries, birthdays, graduations or travel experiences, customers regularly describe the life moments where they’ve used Duncan & Stone products, or gifted them to friends and family. “We have customers who tell us that they buy a journal every time one of their friends has a baby, which is just amazing,” shared Peters.
Autry and Peters attribute their rapid success to the powerful marketing tools available to Amazon sellers, which they pair with the feedback they get in Amazon reviews. “We were able to use A+ Content on our listings from day one,” said Peters. This suite of tools allows sellers to enhance their storefront with rich imagery, video and detailed product information—all of which leads to increased customer engagement and sales. “Our products are elegant, beautiful objects that customers create an emotional connection to,” added Peters, “it’s critical that we can highlight the features that distinguish our brand from other journals on the market.”
Duncan & Stone was created when Autry and Peters met while working at a counseling center in Fayetteville. They were new moms at the time and wanted to document their kids’ lives in a memory book. They looked for a product to help, “but everything we found was either too cheesy or too time-intensive,” said Peters, “so we sat down and brainstormed a book with easy-to-use prompts that assisted the journaling process.” Once they had their early prototypes, Sarah and Stephanie combined their business drive with their dream-big-attitude and turned their passion project into a successful business.
In a world of fleeting social media moments, the entrepreneurs behind Duncan & Stone Paper Company believe in capturing the moments that matter most through the beauty of handwritten story telling. It’s the foundation behind their keepsake journals that help people document their life experiences.
“Our goal,” said Peters, “is to create keepsakes that will connect families for generations to come.”