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Happy Friday – Danny here. If you like good signs, smarter decisions, and tiny acts of rebellion (like launching a VHS rental shop in 2025), this issue’s for you.
Also, the time has come: scroll down this email (preferably after reading it first) for all the info on how you can snag a free, limited-edition For Starters cap 👀 🧢
→ A quick heads up: I’m off to Mallorca tomorrow to hike around and unplug, so there won’t be a newsletter next week. I’ll be back in your inbox on the 9th, hopefully with better calves and a notebook full of small biz inspo.
In this issue:
Inspo ➠ Shop signs we love 😍
Advice ➠ Decision-making tips
Ideas ➠ Obsolete but delightful
Resources ➠ Slow productivity
Town Hall ➠ For Starters caps!
👋 Did a smart friend forward this to you? For Starters is your essential weekly briefing for the next generation of small business owners – written by Danny Giacopelli, former editor of Courier magazine and host of Monocle’s The Entrepreneurs podcast.
📥️ Subscribe for free and get small biz inspo & advice in your inbox, every Friday AM.
The brothers Peart | Credit: Alex Lesage
1. I’ve been a fan of GOODEE for a while. Launched in 2019 by brothers Byron and Dexter Peart (who also co-founded the cult fashion brand WANT Les Essentiels back in 2007), GOODEE is their online shop selling the sort of stuff you feel good buying: design-led homeware and lifestyle products from responsible brands and artisans around the world. All of it looks great, is functional and makes a positive social or environmental impact. So it was cool to see them open their very first physical shop just a few weeks ago: a 1,000 square-foot space in Montreal. Swing by and say hi! 👋 → Another example of what long-term, values-first brand building can lead to.
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2. Elsewhere in Canada, sewing machine expert Tobias Binder is opening up a next generation sewing centre in Toronto called Downtown Sewing. Tobias, who plans to sell new/used machines, and offer tune-ups, repairs, classes and workshops, learned his trade by going realllly deep: sewing upcycled clothes for his own brand, doing alterations for a dry cleaners, repairing machines for mask-sewing volunteers during Covid, working as an educator and sales rep for manufacturer Janome, and attending the ‘Fix Sewing Machine Institute’. Tobias even gave up his spot as drummer of Toronto-based band SHEBAD (!) to focus on his sewing machine career. Legend. 🪡 → I love when people turn their niche skills into niche (but profitable and awesome) businesses.
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3. I’d say a good half of the people I talk to have a dream of building a local bookstore that’s also a cafe that’s also a vintage shop slash something else. So… to all the starters out there actually running one of these magical neighbourhood spots, I tip my hat to you – you’re living someone’s (a lot of people’s!) dream. → Tomorrow, two new such dream-followers – husband-wife duo James and Josie – are opening up Recluse Books, an indie bookstore in Fort Worth, Texas (tomorrow also happens to be Independent Bookstore Day, which I’m sure you already knew). 📚️ → One thing they’re immediately doing right: their little snail logo (below) is 🤌
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4. Small biz sign inspo! I’m obsessed with this hand-painted, spinning sign outside Los Angeles deli GGIATA. It was made by artist Bill Rebholz, whose work is incredible. It reminds me of one of my favorite creative people: Koy Suntichotinun, a San Diego-based sign painter who works with tons of awesome small businesses. Check out this beautiful sign he created a few days ago for a NYC pop-up run by the Korean-American brand Sundae School. ✨ → More street-level retail whimsy like this, please.
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5. Pieter Van Hooydonck was once a photographer, before retraining as a welder, and then discovering the art of stained glass. Today, he makes gorgeous stained glass windows by hand in Antwerp – not a far cry from his original profession, where light, colour and glass are the stars. Check out his work and order a panel for your bedroom or kitchen window to keep out prying eyes 👀
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6. On a busy street in the Neukölln neighbourhood of Berlin, right next to a lush park, there’s an architect-designed, light-filled building called Publix. The six-story building serves as a co-working space, atelier, cafe, film/audio studios, and office space for journalists, media people and pro-democracy organisations – a sort of “editorial utopia,” the director, Maria Exner, has said. It’s honestly the kind of place that Europeans – Germans, Swiss, and Scandinavian countries in particular – do so well. I wanna move in. (I mean, look at this place…) 🏫
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7. And frustrated by the endless cables and screens in our lives, father-daughter duo Ken and Alana set out to bring nature to workspaces. At age 54, Ken went back to school to learn woodworking and began prototyping a standing desk – designed in Seattle, handcrafted in Tokyo – that looked beautiful and functioned beautifully, too. Alana, who’d been a software engineer for a decade, tested their idea by loading the prototypes in the trunk of her car and working remotely with it from 28 Airbnbs:
“As long as I had an outlet, I had a stable, reliable workstation that I could set up in under 5 minutes, allowing me to fit work into my life and not the other way around,” Alana says.
After 6 years and 10 design iterations, they've finally launched it: TANKEN The Standing Desk.
A starter station | kenwork.jp
A balm for decision-fatigue
Decision-making is one of the fundamental skills that every starter will grapple with 100 times a day – Should I quit my job or do it on the side? Should I raise money or bootstrap? Do I need a co-founder or not?
Vicki Tan, a San Francisco-based designer who’s worked at Pinterest, Spotify, Headspace, Lyft and Google, has just released a delightful, interactive book to navigating life's uncertainties, grounded in storytelling and the science of cognitive bias. It’s called Ask This Book A Question (grab a copy here). And Vicki was kind enough to share some of the book’s pages with us. (Thanks Vicki!)
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Obsolete… but delightful → Hunting for a biz idea? Why not resurrect something that Zuckerberg, Moore’s Law or AI has made obsolete, but that people once loved? Like… music cassettes. Ok, the quality might not have the je ne sais quois warmth of vinyl or the crisp precision of CDs, but they’re fun – and they look cool stacked in your car’s glove box.
A few years ago, UK-based music lover Silas Gregory launched Chalkpit, a record label that’s trying to keep cassette culture alive. Chalkpit uses its own in-house cassette manufacturing facility to promote new music, released physically in cassette format. → Meanwhile, Night Owl Video, an old-school VHS, DVD and Blu-ray shop, just opened in Brooklyn. They plan to do rentals soon. Take that Netflix / Amazon Prime / Apple TV / Max / Paramount / Disney / Hulu. And why not? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you can just do things.
Can you think of something else that’s been made redundant by tech and time? You might find a gem of a forgotten product or service with a dose of nostalgia and lots of biz potential 💫
🛠️ Tools
– A company called Icon just launched and is getting lots of buzz. They claim to be “the world’s first AI CMO” and can “plan, create & run 1000s of winning ads end-to-end.”
📚️ Read, watch, listen
– Three Factories, $355,000 and the Maddening Quest to Make a Clear Can. Why an energy drinks company drained most of its startup funds designing a clear plastic container with an aluminum top. WSJ
– How Chef Erik Ramirez Went From Dropping Out of Culinary School to Opening Five Restaurants in Less Than a Decade. This month, the chef who’s been modernizing Peruvian classics expands with a sizzling twist: a Japanese-Peruvian izakaya in Hudson Yards. Cultured
– Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal Newport. Penguin
– A beautiful discovery: how woodworking is helping people carve out inner peace. The craft is gaining popularity among those in search of a way to slow down, switch off and improve mental health. Guardian
– This Woman-Run Winery Is Pushing Lebanon’s Wine Industry Forward. Lebanon’s wine industry has experienced everything from daily electric outages to literal war. Despite the tumult, the founders of Heya Wines are empowering women in a male-dominated field. Bon Appetit
– This Catskills retailer found a building so great, she changed her entire life and career. Kimberly Bevan, owner of Bevan Interiors and Briar, on 'how she came across the stunning building that inspired her complete pivot’. Business of Home
🧠 Findings
1/10 → The portion of job-seeking Harvard Business School students who were unemployed three months after graduation in 2022. And the same portion in 2024? 1/4. Start your own business, people! The world is changing – fast.
🙃 Just for fun
– Check out this beautiful book: The Observer's Guide to Japanese Vending Machines by Tanner Bowden. (Yes, more vending machines, sorry).
Alright, friends – I’ve got 20 For Starters caps! They’re high quality and I’m giving them away for free. I want to see you in the street wearing one so we can do this…
#teamstarter
All I’m asking in return is for you to get 6 friends – ideally someone starting something new and not random cousins – to sign up to For Starters.
The first 20 people to get 6 small biz friends to sign up using your unique referral code will get a cap.
*Since I’ve got only 20 caps, there’s a possibility you might get 6 people to sign up but 20 people have already beat you to it. If so, I’m sorry – and you’ll have my eternal gratitude.*
I’ll email you if you’re one of the lucky 20. This is an experiment. Thank you so much for being a part of this community. And good luck! 😃