30+ Years of Keepsakes

Birthday Keepsakes started with Karin, and it started at her kitchen table.

In 1994 she was a new mom looking for work she could do from home, because what she wanted most was time with her kids. She had seen a version of the idea before, a birthday keepsake printed on a dot matrix printer, and she thought it could be so much more than that. Something art quality. Something a mother would want to put in a baby book and still have forty years later.

She was right. The business took off in its first year.

As it grew, Karin did something that says everything about her. She offered the same arrangement to other new mothers, work they could do from home, at above average wages, so they could be with their children and still help support their families. At its largest, Birthday Keepsakes employed more than fifteen moms. There was eventually a small office and warehouse, but most of the work always happened where it started, in people's homes, around their families.

What held it all together was one idea, and Karin says it better than I could.

Treat every person and every product like it was for family.

That meant researching the headlines properly. Customizing something without charging for it because it mattered to the person asking. Paying attention to quality and to detail, because a keepsake marking the day someone arrived in the world should be something you are proud to hang on a wall. And treating every customer as though you were making a gift for someone you love.

Thirty years of that. Babies who are grown now. Grandparents who never expected to be surprised. Couples on anniversaries they thought would pass quietly.

When Karin decided it was time to step back, this could have simply ended.

Which brings me to my dad

In the mid 90s, right around when Karin was getting started, my father began giving a Birthday Keepsake to every single baby born into our circle. Friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, his own kids. If a baby arrived, a keepsake showed up. He did it for thirty years without missing anyone.

So when I had my son, I knew exactly what was coming. I had watched my dad hand these to other people's children my whole life, and now it was finally going to be my turn to be on the receiving end of it.

Then he told me he couldn't. Karin was closing Birthday Keepsakes.

It did not sit right with me. Not just because of my son, though I would be lying if I said that wasn't where it started. It was that I knew what my dad's keepsakes had meant to every family who got one. Thirty years of them, sitting framed in nurseries and hallways and on refrigerators all over. If it ended, all of that ended with it.

So I reached out to Karin.

She has spent months teaching me how she did it, patiently, in more detail than she owed me. Every keepsake I make now comes out of what she built and what she taught me.

There is something I did not expect about all this. Karin started this business so she could be home with her children. Thirty years later, I took it over after having mine. I don't think that is a coincidence so much as the kind of thing this business has always attracted.

Same tradition. Same care. New hands.

I make every keepsake myself, right here in Michigan. Karin's designs, Karin's system, Karin's standard. And her rule, the one that built this whole thing: every person and every product treated like it was for family.

My son doesn't have his yet. When we open, my dad is going to be my first customer. Thirty years on, he's still handing these out, and this time I get to be the one who makes it.

Thank you, Karin. For all of them, and for trusting me with what comes next.

— Allyssa