Chanda was having tea with her mom one day when the idea suddenly hit: take the elf tradition from her childhood and turn it into a book. They began working on it together but both realized quickly that they were out of their element. "The crazy thing about it too is that none of us had any experience in manufacturing, or certainly Mom and I didn't have any experience in anything we were about to get into," Chanda said.
The mother-daughter duo sold 500 units at their first book signing with mostly just friends and family. "I tell people all the time who want to write a book or write a story, 'Your real step is to think about after all your family and friends buy it, now what?'" Chanda said. "We started going to local markets and local fairs and, literally one by one, stopping parents and telling them our story and telling them about this family tradition and what we think it means for them. That’s how it started to spread, by word of mouth."
