Sometimes a bad situation can inspire a great new venture, which is what happened when Matthew Baloglow launched his business, Journalfy.
“My fiancée and I founded Journalfy at the start of 2024 from an incident that happened to me back in 2015,” he recalls.
“In my family home of 25 years, we experienced a devastating house fire that resulted in the entire house and 99.99 per cent of the contents within being reduced to ashes—thankfully no one was injured in the fire.
“Besides the very few items that were saved as the house was ablaze—some of them including my old travel journals—there was still a handful of them that fell victim to the fire.
“Reflecting back, there were probably two things I became particularly aware of. As time goes on, our memory can fade or be tainted and so even though during the moment we don’t think this will happen, it eventually will. Another thing I realised was that although I thought my memories were safe in my travel journals, these words are also susceptible of being erased for if the journals should become lost or damaged.”
These realisations eventually led to Journalfy being created.
“Our travel journals are unique in the sense that we’re bridging that gap between the physical and digital worlds,” Baloglow explains.
“There’s something uniquely special and cathartic when it comes to writing pen to paper, so it’s this tradition we want to maintain, however, having the option to protect, preserve and propel these physically written journal entries with the Journalfy app—so you can create a digital backup of your physical journal—is something that makes journaling with Journalfy even more meaningful.
“We also have an exciting new travel journal we’ll be releasing by the end of September called ‘freestyle edition’.”
The journals are made from 99 per cent recycled or recyclable materials and through its partnership with Pencils of Promise, for every five journals sold, they donate two water filters to underserved children from around the world.
One thing he noticed when exhibiting at Life Instyle is that with every trade show they do, the more known their travel journals become.
“This was now our third Life Instyle event. We did our first one in Melbourne last year, one in Sydney at the start of this year and then back in Melbourne. It’s not uncommon that we’ll have retailers say they’ve either heard about us from a friend or customer, or that they’ve seen us on social media.
“We always try to have fun with what we do and it’s at the core of our company. We feel that the retailers and exhibitors perceive this and so it’s something that we quite often receive feedback on.”
You can find more brands, collections and innovations from the Melbourne gift fairs in our gift fair feature in the latest Spring edition.
