Today we’d like to introduce you to Alix Burrows, Co-CEO of LitJoy Crate, as she talks about her experience building a business with her partner, Kelly Dearth.
The beginning of LitJoy was a serendipitous affair. One of those moments in life where hundreds of little things align to make something beautiful and wondrous begin!
In 2006, LitJoy co-owner Kelly created a neighborhood book club, which grew into a book club blog. She intended to build a community of readers. She would inspire dozens of book club members and thousands of blog readers to pick up a book—some for the first time in years! This deep love of literature was reflected in every detail of the book club meetings. The decorations immersed you into the pages of that month’s read. For other book clubs, everyone would dress like witches, 1800s London Christmas partygoers, or first years waiting to be sorted into their magical houses. The food was also in theme, with decadent charcuterie boards fit for Greek gods, spiced pumpkin juices, raspberry cordial, and a brave potato peel pie making an appearance. In every detail, Kelly curated a full book club experience, and it truly inspired people to read!
In 2009, LitJoy co-owner Alix launched her own company which required a great deal of crafting, writing, and event planning. As a content creator for companies big and small, she put her creative powers to work during the day and buried her nose in books at night. She created parties with giant paper cranes, antlers covered in golden shimmer, and gift boxes heaving in floral splendor. She painted a crib canary yellow for a photo shoot, wrapped tiny gift cupcake toppers, and taught herself how to use a camera. Her written articles ranged from “How to Host a perfect party for Your 1-year-old” to “when you should upgrade your smoke alarm detector” to “This is the best peach cinnamon jam ever”. And despite all the creative freedom, the job of generating content for other brands became laborious. Fate was about to make its move.
In February 2015, at an event for bloggers, Alix was invited to join Kelly’s book club by a member. She said yes—immediately. Now, you may think it was Best-Friends-At-First-Sight, but this isn’t that kind of story.
Kelly continued to run a fabulous book club but knew that there might be ways to expand the book club to a larger community and help support her family along the way. Alix loved coming to book club and trudged through her work the rest of the month. The two would exchange pleasantries during book club, and then rush off to run their lives.
Then in the fall of 2015, Kelly asked Alix for advice on “how to monetize my book club”. Alix did her best to give some advice, but, more importantly, Alix extended the invitation to Kelly to come to a women’s business conference. Kelly said yes, of course!
In January of 2016, Kelly and Alix attended the Alt Summit conference and stayed up all night obsessing over their favorite books, and favorite characters, and there was a weighty amount of Sarah J. Mass fangirling happening. After a few nights of laughing and nerding out, Kelly shared her business idea: “I want to create something like my book club but as a monthly subscription. I want to make a book club in a box.” Alix’s response was immediate: “YES! You should do that thing!” And then Kelly asked a question where all the hundreds of little things aligned to make something beautiful and wondrous: “Do you want to do it with me?”
Now, they didn’t know each other well, dear reader. They had only met 11 months before and this was their first time hanging out outside of book club. But it was written in the stars, call it a past-life intuition, or perhaps fate . . . Alix’s answer was an emphatic and immediate “Yes!”
The next day, Alix quit her job.
Within 10 days, they had a business license, a name, and an Instagram account. They each contributed $500 and leveraged credit card debt. Within 3 months they shipped their first book crates.
In the beginning, they spent every spare moment bootstrapping their new book company dream. Each had 1-year-olds and 3-year-olds who would toddle around the kitchen as they built boxes, figured out how to print labels, and styled photos for social media. They would work as moms while the littles were awake, then rush to quality-check products and read ARCs during naptime. Bedtime for babies was a second shift for Kelly and Alix, ordering books, answering customer questions, and figuring out taxes. In the beginning, it was a thrilling and exhausting haze.
In February of 2024, LitJoy will celebrate its 8th birthday.
Today we have more than 30 employees across the world, a warehouse packed with hundreds of different bookish products, and hundreds of thousands of customers around the globe. We have mourned with our community in times of loss. We have celebrated weddings, the birth of children, graduations, and recoveries with our community. LitJoy is a family that loves stories. But our greatest accomplishment and honor is being a part of our community’s stories.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
We had all the wonderful beginnings and struggles of a startup.
The first obstacle was funding. We have no investors and maintain a 50/50 ownership. In the beginning, this meant that Alix and Kelly both contributed $500 ($1,000 total) and leveraged credit card debt for a solid 2 years to get the product in hand. We bet on ourselves again and again.
Another obstacle was space! 90% of our employees work from home, so the only business space we have is our warehouse. The original LitJoy warehouse was Alix’s kitchen. When we outgrew that we moved to her garage and basement.
In 2018, we finally moved into a warehouse and quickly outgrew 4 warehouse spaces in 3 years! Now, we are in a 30,000 sq/ft warehouse will little room to grow.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Being co-CEO of LitJoy has been a remarkable experience. And the fact that two co-founders can continue to grow a startup quickly is probably the thing that sets us most apart in that startup space.
That the fact that we sell physical books directly to consumers! Almost every time we explain that LitJoy is a d2c book e-commerce company we get responses like, “You can make money doing that,” or “Wow, that’s super niche”. I love these comments. They reiterate that we have a deep knowledge of our reader community and that we are making the things that those people, our people, love!
We specifically specialize in creating a beautiful and bookish experience for readers. This is evidenced in our Collector’s Editions of fiction novels and our reader-themed merchandise. It is a product for readers, made by readers. And we are most known for those stunning collectors edition books.
While we have won a few awards over the years, we are most proud of our company culture. LitJoy’s Vision is to cultivate connection and joy through stories. The internal culture we foster is accountable to this mission, and it shows in our products and community.
Some runner-up proud moments:
– Ranking #27 on Utah 100’s fastest-growing companies
– Being the first build-your-box book subscription company
– Winning USA Today’s Top Book Box Subscription
– Being a Utah Business 2024 CEO of the Year Honoree
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
Publishing is such a fascinating industry. I think we already see the shift into more self-publishing, among new authors and established authors alike!
I also think that the culture of reading has seen a massive resurgence because of BookTok. The number of readers is growing at a rapid rate, and the majority of those new readers are picking up the hobby by picking up a romance novel! If you want to see passionate people and a wild sub-culture, check out the romance readers and fantasy readers on BookTok. It’s a blast!
When it comes to LitJoy’s future, I think we will go where the readers go. We are such a part of that community and culture so our product offerings usually hit all the trends that we are so obsessed with! This upcoming year we have some really fun plans in the romance genre. Over the next 5-10 years I see us exploring more things in self-publishing, community outreach, and other genres.
From the depths of our hearts, thank you for being a part of our dream. Thank you for your beautiful and wondrous story!
Pricing:
- Collectors or Special Edition books range from $35 – $275
- Our quarterly new-release subscription box ranges from $18.99 – $75.96
- And there are tons of fun shop items at all price points.
Contact Info:
- Website: LitJoyCrate.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/litjoycrate
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/litjoycrate
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/litjoycrate
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/litjoycrate
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@litjoycrate
Image Credits
@the.bookish.photog https://www.instagram.com/the.bookish.photog/
