GoKawiilKey Takeaways Siegel began to replicate historical documents for family and friends.
Interest grew, so Siegel turned it into a subscription and set up a Shopify site.
Partnering with Uncommon Goods and appearing on Shark Tank fueled the business.
This as-told-to story is based on a conversation with Ari Siegel, founder of History By Mail, a subscription-based business selling replicas of historical documents. The piece has been edited for length and clarity.
Growing up, I was always a history buff. Both of my grandfathers were in World War II, so I heard them tell war stories.
Image Credit: Courtesy of History By Mail. Ari Siegel.
I went on to become an intern at the U.S. Senate. I gave tours of the U.S. Capitol building. One day, when I was at the Library of Congress, they had some documents on display. They had recently discovered they were just sitting in boxes. One was a letter from President Abraham Lincoln. It gave me chills. I felt transported back to the Civil War era. It didn’t seem right that documents that belong to the American people are just sitting in a box, in a warehouse somewhere.
Using Shopify and Facebook ads to start the side hustle
So I started to replicate the letter for family and friends, not as a side hustle or business. They loved it. So I created more documents. They wanted it in a regular cadence, so I made it a subscription. Then, in 2019, in January, I put up a Shopify site and put a little bit of money towards Facebook ads. That’s when the project actually formally became a business, History By Mail. By that time, I was working for a real estate developer in Brooklyn.
There’s a whole process when it comes to manufacturing and printing. First, we have to search for documents that tell a compelling story and look visually appealing. If it’s an interesting story, but doesn’t look like much, it’s not going to capture people’s attention. And vice versa, if it looks really cool, but there’s no real story, there’s nothing to tell. Then, I have to obtain the use rights to actually replicate the document. Oftentimes, we’re licensing a document from a museum, private collection or university. Then we have to touch it up. We have to replicate it on paper to make it as close to the original as possible. Then I write a context story that goes along with it, and that needs to be edited.
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