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.
Hey, starter! Read on for…
Inspiration ➠ A few good robots
Advice ➠ Build something durable
Ideas ➠ Post-Japan Depression
Resources ➠ Small biz grants
Town Hall ➠ Community shoutouts
👋 For Starters is read by 9,200+ people, including new subscribers Fred, co-founder of Pary Moppins in London, and Marco, a product designer in Madrid. Welcome!
➠ Get inspired
Work in progress | Credit
1. Fix you. Over in Lisbon, Ricardo Bessoa has got something incredible going on. His business Coolnvintage restores old-school Land Rovers into works of art. His team of 17 people spends up to 3 years on a car (which costs upwards of £150,000). Peek behind the scenes of his workshop here. (They also publish books!)
2. A fashionable robot. More machines: loved learning about Oliver Davila Chasan and David Faes’s biz Kathedra, which builds robots tailor-made for upholstery. Find a niche, get going, execute.
3. Manufacture Métis. And Cédric Plumey quit his job at Louis Vuitton and traded Paris for Étupes, a town of 4,000 people in France’s northeast, where he's resurrecting an old-school weaving tradition. Absolutely love this story.
4. Show your true colours. If you’re not yet aware of the colourful, joyful, one-of-a-kind (like, really) shop Silly, located in beautiful Margate, UK, you need to remedy that – quick. If only more retail looked like this!
5. Print ain’t dead. Check out this interview in Marie Claire with Anika Jade Levy and Madeline Cash, who founded the mega-popular literary print title Forever Magazine, which has grown from “a 700-copy zine to print runs of more than 2,500 that sell out almost immediately.”
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