- For Starters
- Posts
- Back to school
For Starters is the essential weekly briefing for the next generation of small business owners. Inspiration and ideas, every Friday – for free. It’s curated by Danny Giacopelli, formerly of Monocle and Courier magazines. Enjoy!
Hey starter! Read on for…
Inspiration ➠ Paint the town blue
Advice ➠ Online vs offline money
Ideas ➠ Workslop and mall rats
Tools ➠ More vibecoding tools
Town Hall ➠ Subscriber shoutouts
➠ Get inspired
Collection → inspiration → product
1. Back to school. Callum Dawes has done it all — baked bread, poured candles, even blended perfume. But when screens started to take over the Manchester-based graphic designer’s life, he reached for something simpler: a notebook. In particular, the school exercise book — those humble, utilitarian, dog-eared books we used back when we were kids and full-time learners.
Callum couldn’t find a modern one that also had the quality he wanted, so like a good starter, he just made his own. Enter PREST Works — a new brand and a multiyear exploration into what it means to make:
“PREST is built on the belief that we’re all makers. That making isn't a nice-to-have or something reserved for “creative types”. It’s essential to us as humans. It’s how we process the world, explore ideas and move things forward,” Callum says.
“For anyone who’s ever felt stuck behind a screen, PREST is there to offer you a way back into making. It’s there for the first sketch, the messy notes or the late-night ideas that might turn into something more.”
A batch of 80
→ PREST’s first ‘batch’ of (very blue!) books dropped this week — grab one before they run out. And sign up to Callum’s great newsletter where he goes deep behind the scenes into his product journey. 📘📘📘
2. Indigo dreams. Sticking with the blue/making themes, Tokyo-based Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Sybilla Patrizia has just released a gorgeous-looking documentary called A Color I Named Blue, which tells the tale of Kenta Watanabe and Shinya Kato, two of Japan’s last remaining aishi, or indigo artisans who produce their own dye. Kato also happens to be colorblind. Watch the trailer here 💙
3. Smells sustainable. Disposable diapers are really, really, really bad for the environment. Just how bad? The first disposable diaper ever made is still, somehow, stinking up a landfill.
In Austin, entrepreneur Miki Agrawal, who previously founded Tushy, a bidet brand, and Thinx, a line of period- and leak-proof underwear, has teamed up with Tero Isokauppila, the Finnish founder of popular mushroom coffee brand Four Sigmatic, to tackle this problem. They’re building a company called Hiro Technologies.
Their product → A diaper with 50% less plastic, that, once used, goes into a packet made with magical plastic-eating fungi. 💩🍄♻️
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➠ Starter wisdom
Online isn’t always better than offline.
In this wild new AI age, that’s something you have to keep telling yourself.
To that end, I loved reading this highly insightful conversation between Sari Azout, founder of the app Sublime, and Robin Sloan, the novelist, coder, artist, and olive oil maker — in particular, their discussion about the differences between making online vs offline money.
Robin:
“It’s wild that you can make money online, but when it comes to content and writing or art, the online money math is just absolutely punishing.
You could be an aspiring YouTuber and post some really cool creative videos that get 100,000 views, and you’d be saying, “Well, that’s not going to cut it, right?” That’s not a living, which is insane.
Flip it around: I’ve been printing these little zines right here in my office on a Riso graph printer. I lay them out and design them on my computer. I’ve been printing them in editions ranging from 500 to 1,000. These aren’t web numbers, but they sell out fast because I have a pretty substantial email list. I sell them for $7 each. You do that math, and you’re like, “Hey, that’s pretty good.”
How many YouTube views, Spotify plays, or Substack subscriptions do you need to hit that number?”
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➠ Good idea!
1. Some new biz concepts/ideas/trends…
2. Buy a mom-and-pop biz! → Why they’re ‘gateway-drug businesses’—
3. Pay attention to passionfruit → The flavor of the year?
4. Small biz in malls? → Big-box and restaurant chains are closing in malls, making room for better deals for small businesses:
“According to a recent report by CNBC, entrepreneurs are not only finding vacant space in malls available to rent. They’re also often negotiating considerable deals on rent rates, business setup assistance, continual occupancy services, and shorter lease durations from owners. Some shopping centers set aside space for smaller businesses on more flexible terms, in hopes of converting them to longer-term leases, according to ICSC, a trade association of shopping center owners.”
5. Permanent collections (clothes, not art) → Swedish menswear brand Asket says it won’t make any more products. After their 50th product – Italian merino-wool trousers – they’re locking the line into a permanent collection. They’ll move forward aiming to ‘perfect the manufacturing of each piece.’ Say it with me: Fewer, better things.
6. Matcha mania → What do Kyoto’s tea ceremony experts think of the global matcha boom? They’re surprisingly okay with it!
7. Catalogs are back → At least they are for Outline:
“Last spring, Outline, a three-year-old multibrand boutique on Atlantic Avenue in the Boerum Hill neighborhood, replaced its e-commerce with analog altogether. Customers in New York City and beyond can call, email, text or direct message the store over Instagram to place an order. The feat was so effective that the owners decided to do it again.”
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➠ Toolbox
🛠️ Resources
Anything is a very new vibecoding tool. Vibecoding, for those in the back: an AI-powered coding tool that helps you build apps/sites via natural language prompts. Whereas other vibecoding tools often stop at the meh prototype phase, Anything’s claim to fame is that it helps you build a proper revenue-generating biz out of it, with features like databases and payment functionality. Haven’t tried it yet. Give it a go this weekend?
📚️ Reads
Judy's Family Cafe sells pancakes and personality. I talked to the viral restaurant about their social media strategy. Link in Bio
Step Into the Brewtique. Why is every store also a coffee shop? Grub Street
The unsexy work of building a thriving vintage business. The Main
How SharkNinja convinces you that you absolutely need its viral household gizmos. Sherwood
Grillo’s CMO Mark Luker on the power of experiential marketing and pop-ups. AdAge
The Quintessentially American Story of Indian Pizza. The New Yorker
‘Crafts are like medicine!’: Gen Z and the rapid rise of cosy hobbies. Guardian
When AI Failed to See Who Belongs Outdoors, This Photographer Set Out to Re-Train It. Outside
Dalston's Secret Gelateria. SLOP
How James Hoffmann became king of the coffee nerds. FT ($)
🧠 Findings
40% → The percentage decline over the last 20 years of Americans who read for pleasure.
20% → “Coffee prices in the US have surged more than 20% in the last year, as duties on some of the world’s biggest producers take effect.”
🙃 Fun
The Internet Phone Book, an elusive, rare, fun, annual printed book, is back in stock.
Check out the new game Discounty (which sounds awfully similar to the Japanese game inKONBINI, featured in For Starters Issue 1):
“Manage your own discount supermarket! Get caught up in small-town drama, organize and plan your shop's layout, and strike lucrative trade deals as you expand your secretive aunt's business empire. Selling more frozen fries will surely heal this broken community... right?”
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➠ Town Hall
For Starters subscriber Matthew Knight runs a super insightful research project every year exploring the mental health of freelancers and self-employed people.
It’s called Leapers. This year is the 6th edition. Matthew tells us more…
“Every year Leapers runs a survey asking the self-employed about their mental health, to better understand how you’re doing. The work highlights the gaps in support and the challenges the self-employed face, plus it’s a useful tool to reflect upon what influences your own mental health.
The more people who take part, the better we can see the reality of working for yourself — and where organisations, communities, hirers and government need to work harder to support the self-employed.”
We’ve got a TON of starters in this community who could inform this research in a real way. Click here to take part!
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