Changes To Making Stories

Dear lovely Making Stories community,

We hope you have a beautiful March so far and are as excited as we are about the upcoming launch of Issue 1 of our new magazine!

Before we dive into all things magazine, we'd love to take a minute to talk about some recent changes to the ownership and team structure of Making Stories. We're dedicated to transparency, and we feel that walking the talk is important, so we want to share a couple of things with you.

When we started working on Making Stories about two and a half years ago, we intentionally set up our first project WOODS so that we could see whether there was interest for our idea and whether we liked the work and would want to continue doing it. Luckily, the answer to both questions was a resounding yes: You, our wonderful community, loved what we were doing, and the two of us really liked building this business together.

Fast forward to mid-2018, and what started as a side project to our 2+ other businesses had - sometimes slowly, sometimes fast - almost taken over our complete lives. With two print books and four digital collections launching within one calendar year, a team that was growing fast and ideas and opportunities coming our way left, right and centre, we found ourselves at a crossroads: The slow, intentional business we set out to create had somehow become overwhelming. On top of that, we needed to secure additional financial means for the company to get through the down periods of our (very much) seasonal business.

Over the course of the last few months of 2018, the two of us had long, intense conversations about what we wanted from Making Stories, where we wanted to take it and how much time and energy each of us was willing and able to contribute. Talking openly and honestly with each other about difficult topics like this has always been one of the things both of us cherish most in this partnership.

After some deliberation, we came up with a solution that feels good and true for both of us, and that we feel is the right one for Making Stories moving forward: We've changed our ownership structure from a 50:50 partnership to an 85:15 split with Hanna Lisa owning 85% of Making Stories and Verena 15%. Hanna Lisa has taken over as sole Managing Director as of January 1, 2019. With regards to the tasks and time investment that come with running a company like Making Stories, our new work allocation reflects the new ownership structure, too: We both share the core creative decisions, and, in addition to that, Hanna Lisa is responsible for day-to-day strategy and business as well as the team management.

The second bigger change to how we work is that at the end of last year, we've had to face the tough financial realities of running a young business that's grown too fast too much. We loved expanding our team in 2018, which made the realisation that we had taken on too high fixed cost for our current revenue structure incredibly painful. As a result, three of our wonderful team members - Ruth, Alina and Martin - have transferred into project-based roles, meaning they're supporting us in peak times from now on.

We hope that you find this glimpse into the inner workings of Making Stories helpful and interesting. As always, we share these stories because we believe deeply in the value of transparency. If you have any questions around this, please just leave a comment below or email us!

Warmly,

Hanna Lisa & Verena