How Hex Used Handwritten Thank You Notes To Build Brand Loyalty
When HEX launched, almost nobody had heard of the company. The Los Angeles-based accessories brand was selling cases and bags for phones, laptops, and tech gear in a crowded category full of established competitors. Every customer who placed an order was essentially taking a chance on a brand they knew nothing about.
Rather than leaning on polished branding or paid advertising to build credibility, HEX’s employees personally wrote and shipped over 13,000 handwritten thank-you notes to early customers. Years later, Hex credits the handwritten thank-you notes with helping turn first-time buyers into the repeat customers who built HEX’s early base.
If you want every early customer interaction to say something good about your brand, Scribe can help you send handwritten notes at scale, without losing the personal voice that defines you. Get started today and receive 200 handwritten letters free.
The Challenge Every New Brand Faces
When a brand is new, customers don’t have much to go on. There are no reviews to read, no word of mouth to rely on, and no history with the company to draw from. The first purchase is a small leap of faith, and what happens after the box arrives often determines whether they ever order again.
For an unknown brand, that post-purchase moment carries even more weight. The customer is still deciding whether the company is worth trusting, and whatever they find in that box will shape that answer. Most brands don’t give that moment much thought, but HEX saw that moment as an opportunity and used handwritten notes to fill it with something that actually said something about who they were.
How HEX Used Handwritten Notes To Define Its Brand
HEX’s handwritten notes weren’t generic thank-you cards. Employees wrote them in the same casual voice customers would find throughout the rest of the brand, using words like “rad” and “stoked” instead of formal corporate language. From the very beginning, the note sounded like HEX.
The note also arrived at an important moment. After customers had finished opening their order, the handwritten message was one of the last things they saw before putting the box away. That gave HEX another opportunity to make a positive impression after the excitement of receiving the product.
Every note thanked customers for their purchase and introduced them to the company’s personality. Instead of ending the experience with a receipt or promotional insert, customers finished it with a message that felt personal and gave them a better sense of the people behind the brand.
Why A Handwritten Note Stands Out, And Why That Matters
There’s a reason this worked beyond just tone. Open any package today, and the things inside are almost always printed. None of it is addressed to you personally, and all of it looks like it was made for thousands of other people, too.
A handwritten note breaks that pattern immediately. It’s not polished. It might have a slightly crooked line or an ink smudge. And that’s exactly why it gets noticed. Customers can tell, almost instantly, that someone took the time to write it by hand instead of hitting print.
That small difference does something bigger than just stand out. It makes the customer feel like the company actually saw them, not just their order number. For HEX, that mattered even more because the brand was unknown. A handwritten note from a company you’ve never heard of makes customers feel like it treats people differently. It’s the difference between feeling like a transaction and feeling like someone cared enough to notice you were there.
How Handwritten Notes Helped Hex Become An Established Brand
HEX sent handwritten notes to create a strong customer experience, and the strategy worked. Industry coverage credits the handwritten thank-you note campaign as an important part of HEX’s early growth, helping the company build stronger relationships with customers and turn first-time buyers into repeat purchasers.
As the company grew, those personal touches helped HEX stand out in a category where products can often look very similar. Long before the brand had widespread recognition, it gave customers something memorable to associate with the company, both in tone and in the simple feeling of being noticed.
In a market where the product alone often isn’t enough to stand out, HEX gave customers a reason to remember it and come back, before it had built recognition any other way. It’s a similar dynamic to how Chewy used handwritten notes to build one of the most loyal customer bases in ecommerce, just at a much earlier stage of growth, when every interaction still carries outsized weight.
How Scribe Helps You Define Your Brand At Scale
Hex’s original approach is hard to sustain. Employees personally writing thousands of notes works well in the early days, but that method becomes nearly impossible once a company ships hundreds or thousands of orders a month.
This is the gap Scribe is built to close. Using real pens, robotic arms, and natural handwriting variation, Scribe creates handwritten notes that genuinely look and feel human, so your brand’s voice comes through clearly and your customers still feel noticed, no matter how many orders you’re shipping. Through integrations with the CRM and ecommerce tools you’re already using, you can automatically trigger a handwritten note after a customer’s first purchase, the exact moment HEX focused on, with no batch minimums required.
What made HEX’s notes work was what they said about the brand and how they made customers feel at the exact moment they were forming their first impression. Scribe lets you protect that moment as you scale your business.
How to Apply HEX’s Approach to Your Own Business
HEX’s story is a reminder that a brand’s identity is shaped by how customers experience it, one interaction at a time, especially at the beginning, when they have nothing else to go on. By using handwritten notes that stood out and made people feel cared for from the very first order, HEX turned first-time buyers into repeat customers, helping it grow into an established name.
If you want your early customer interactions to say something specific and genuine about your brand, Scribe can help you build a handwritten outreach program that scales with you. Schedule a demo today and see how handwritten notes can help establish your brand and turn first-time buyers into loyal, repeat customers.