How is it February 2022 already? A month into the new year seems like as good a time as any to look back at 2021 and ahead to what comes next. Catalyst Books & Gifts launched last June with a pop-up event in Minneapolis, and we have been slowly building the business ever since (more details below). Thank you so much to everyone who was part of our first year! 

Recap of 2021

3 pop-up events + website launch

In addition to our pop-up launch event at the Prospect Park neighborhood yard sale in June (thank you to Signature Arts for hosting us!), we also had pop-up events at Broadway Open Streets in September and at the Holiday Geek Emporium in December. Sales at these events totaled about $500, and we made a lot of great connections with customers and community members. But our primary focus was in building the store website -- it may not seem like a lot, but we were thrilled to have had 35 orders completed through our website last year, for a total of almost $1500!

$165 donated to non-profits

The business doesn't yet have any profits per se from which to donate to non-profit organizations, but that didn't stop us! A friend kindly donated a huge collection of yarn to sell at our popup events. Combining those proceeds with a December coupon promotion, we donated a total of $165 across three amazing organizations: Academics for Black Survival and Wellness, STEAM Connection, and the Algorithmic Justice League.

Looking ahead to 2022

This year is already off to a great start. We hosted our first author event on January 21: a conversation with Dr. Jessica Hernandez as part of her virtual book tour for Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Lands Through Indigenous Science. We plan to post the event recording on YouTube soon. 

We are actively planning for future pop-ups and author events, and will try to update the blog a bit more regularly in the coming year! If you would like to receive occasional email updates about Catalyst news, events, and promotions, please sign up for our email list here.