This episode of the Northwest Arkansas Founders Podcast features the team behind Duncan & Stone Paper Co. — Garrett Peters, Stephanie Peters, and Sarah Autry — discussing how they built a keepsake journal and gift business that now does e-commerce across Amazon, Etsy, and their own Shopify store. They trace the origin story back to Sarah quietly hand-making pregnancy prayer cards from her living room, Stephanie recognizing the business potential, and a family medical crisis that pushed them to seriously commit. A scrappy weekend at a stationery conference in LA, sketched-out plans on a cardboard box, and a risky $30,000 wire transfer for their first inventory order set the company in motion just before the pandemic — which, unexpectedly, became a growth catalyst as people stuck at home began filling out baby books.

The conversation then moves into the mechanics of scaling an online consumer brand: navigating Amazon dupes and copycats, structuring ownership (52% women-owned, quarterly financial reviews, an annual planning retreat), managing cash flow and inventory forecasting for seasonal spikes, and deliberately staying lean with just four full-time owners and outsourced specialists instead of an office and large staff. They dig into marketing economics (ad spend, return on ad spend, shifting traffic from Amazon to their own Shopify store), product strategy (designing a "funnel" of journals across life stages), and the unpredictability of channels like TikTok. The episode closes on reflections about partnering with best friends, protecting relationships through trust and quick communication, and how each founder defines success — mostly in terms of financial stability and time with family rather than pure revenue growth, even as they debate whether to scale toward $10 million.

Key moments:

• 2:00 – Team introduces the business and Amazon/Etsy brand-building approach
• 5:06 – Discussion of Amazon copycats, dupes, and trademark/copyright protection
• 7:28 – Origin story: Sarah's stationery side hustle and the pregnancy prayer cards
• 19:02 – Landing the manufacturer, the $30,000 first order, and pallets in the garage
• 24:01 – Garrett quits his job to go all-in on the company
• 28:42 – Scaling numbers: from 10 pallets in year one to 200 pallets today
• 35:25 – Why they've kept the team to just four people, no office
• 51:55 – Breaking down e-commerce mechanics: cost of goods, ad spend, ROAS
• 69:36 – Each founder defines what success means to them

Three key takeaways:

1. Know your "why" before you grind. Multiple founders emphasize that a clear, personal reason behind the business — not just wanting extra income — is what sustains people through the hardest years of building a company.
2. Structure and clarity protect both the business and the friendships. Formalizing ownership splits, roles, and communication norms (quick apologies, staying in your lane, quarterly financial reviews) before money is on the line kept the founders' partnership and friendships intact.
3. Growth isn't always the goal. Despite having a path to double revenue, the team repeatedly chooses to stay lean and intentional, prioritizing time with family over maximum scale — success is measured holistically, not just in dollars.