Behind every Living Discount is a brand that chose connection over conversion.
I didn’t build my brand to go viral. I built it because I wanted to make something that felt personal. Real.
I run a small shop where I hand-bind linen journals. Slow work. No automation. Just paper, thread, ink, and patience. It’s the kind of business that lives between hashtags, too small for features, too honest for perfect packaging.
Most weeks, I ship a few orders. Write thank-you notes. Try to remind myself why I’m doing this. Because if I’m honest, a part of me wonders (quietly, too often) if this work even matters to anyone.
Then one night, I got an email. No subject line. Just a link. It was a Living Discount. For one of my journals.
Someone had sent it forward with a message that read:
“I wanted to send you something that holds the version of you that you’re becoming.”
I didn’t know them. I didn’t even know why this person sent it. But there it was, already in motion. Not just sent to me, those people shared, and then those people had already passed to someone else.
I stared at it for five minutes. I don’t think I blinked.
THE MERCHANT MEMO: WHY SOME BRANDS ARE CHOOSING HEART FIRST
Sponsored, but make it soulful.
It didn’t lead to a spike in orders. There was no viral moment. But the Living Discount kept going. A few clicks. A few notes. Someone attached it to a story about a woman who had to choose whether to burn a letter or to just send it anyway. They voted. The discount deepened.
The journal sold two days later, and I cried on the floor of my kitchen.
Not because of the sale. Because someone finally got it. They got exactly the work I put into it meant. It wasn’t about the journal. It was about what it was meant to hold.
Since then, I’ve seen my products move in ways no other paid ad places ever managed. A customer shared one with a friend and wrote:
“This isn’t a fix. It’s a space to feel it.”
Another sent one with no explanation, just the title of a poem.
These weren’t shoppers. They were storytellers. Carriers. People who understood that sharing a Living Discount wasn’t about discounting the thing. It was about expanding the moment around it.
SEND A GIFT THAT TELLS A BETTER STORY. START WITH A LIVING DISCOUNT.
The Invisible Architecture of Voulay’s Value System
Voulay didn’t change my business overnight. But it changed how I see it. How I hold it. Because every time someone sends a product of mine forward, not to impress, or fix, or perform, but simply to connect… it builds something I didn’t know I needed.
It makes the work feel alive. The spark that was slowly dimming inside blazed like an inferno now. People finally understood what I was trying to put out into the world. I felt like my heart was finally seen.
I still handwrite the notes. Still press the corners flat. Still stitch the spine with my favorite red thread.
But now, when a Living Discount moves through the ether webs, when a journal I made ends up holding someone’s story… I know the story didn’t start with me.
And that’s what makes it beautiful.
Not because it came from my hands. But because someone else chose to pass it on.
And somehow, that was enough.