Hey, starter! Read on for…

—Danny (tell me your biz dreams: [email protected])

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1. Life in the slow lane. In Woodstock, New York, husband-and-wife starters Russ and Natalie Tannen have just swung open the doors to Routine Pleasure, a beautiful outdoors shop selling equipment “for fast and slow pursuits.” The two have nailed that elusive I wanna spend time hanging out in this place vibe, setting up shop in a beloved former art supply store and stocking it with their curation of trail-running, hiking, birding, camping, fly fishing and gardening gear. 🏕

While Russ is an ultra-marathon runner and Natalie is a gardener, the two are new to the outdoor biz, and also new to the area – they bought a place nearby in 2024 after years of visiting. But they’re not new to the… business biz: Natalie spent years in fashion and accessories, while Russ worked for more than a decade helping to build the ticketing platform DICE. (And the pipeline from startup rat-race to rural shopkeeper continues apace...) → Check out this great piece in local press.

2. Haggis onigiri. For a far-too-short 1 year and 3 months, Japanese couple Tetsuya Tada and Yuriko Takara were the proprietors of Kissa Orwell, a Japanese-influenced snack biz slinging egg rolls, onigiri, coffee and tea from an adorable, exceedingly tiny, converted police box in Edinburgh. I wrote about them in For Starters way back when they opened. They’ve gained a loyal following since then, but all dreams come to an end: they were on a two-year visa (Yuriko jokingly says they chose Scotland for their love of shortbread), and they’re back in Japan.

And yet… they’re now doing the dream in reverse: they’ve just opened up a new Scottish-themed shop in Kyoto! It’s called Wee Caledonia (along with a bar called Sláinte Mhath.) → Let’s hope Scotland doesn’t end up playing Japan in the World Cup, otherwise there will be a *serious* conflict of interest with these two… 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇯🇵

3. Inoki Bathhouse. Love this thread by Victor Li, husband of Helen Yin, who walks us through how Helen bootstrapped her biz to $1.5m/year with zero investors. They’re now hiring for two roles in Toronto. 👏

4. Island life. And in the fishing village of Henningsvaer, in Norway’s idyllic Lofoten Islands, shopkeeper Arne runs an absolutely delightful little store called A Day By The Sea, which he built himself along with some handy friends. Arne sells books, clothes, surfboards, and local craft “celebrating island life in the arctic.” → Booking a ticket asap... 🌊

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Starter Stack, in partnership with Whatnot

Last Friday I explained why Whatnot – the live selling app – is such an interesting channel for starters. This week, let’s meet one.

Victoria Glenn runs Westcoastshop. She’s been reselling online since 1999, and by her own admission was a little bored of the same old listings. Then she found Whatnot. 

“I realized reselling can be fun again,” she tells For Starters. For her first live show, she was nervous, sold pre-owned clothing straight from her own closet at $7 to $10 apiece, and nearly sold out to an audience of about 17. Whatnot’s been her main channel ever since.

Today the business is a family affair, with her husband moderating shows and handling customer service and her daughter and brother pitching in. It’s also a much bigger operation than when she started on Whatnot in 2022: 100,000+ items of fashion, beauty, and home decor sold, and around half through flash sales, her go-to for shifting inventory fast. Auctions are also effective and can lead to a higher final sale price, she says: “Try both and see what works best for you.”

So what would she tell a starter going live next week with zero followers? Victoria’s most practical tip: join a ‘raid train’, where sellers send their audience straight to the next person’s show at the end of their own – one of the fastest ways for new viewers to find you. 

Beyond that, be your most authentic self – “The camera doesn’t lie,” she says – and start slow: “It’s easy to dive right in, but I believe in slow growth to prevent making mistakes. Live selling, like all businesses, takes time to build and grow.”

→ Got things to sell and a bit of personality to bring? Just go for it, Victoria says. You have to start somewhere. ✨

During lockdown, Thérèse M’Boungoubaya got fed up with her perpetually dry feet – a lifelong insecurity – and ordered every foot cream on the market. None ticked every box. So she decided to make her own.

This wasn’t her first rodeo. Years earlier, Thérèse had built and sold a subscription beauty box brand, then sharpened her craft at the likes of L’Oréal. So when she spotted a gap for a premium footcare product, she knew exactly what to do.

The result is KOBA, and her secret weapon is safou, a nourishing oil pressed from an African fruit that Thérèse grew up eating in Congolese cooking, yet which is almost unheard of in Western beauty. It’s become a proper family affair too: her mom, a chemist, suggested the ingredient, and her dad, a pharmacist, turned into a literal farmer to grow and cold-press the oil himself.

→ Below, For Starters caught up with Thérèse, who tells us how she turned a personal frustration into a bootstrapped beauty brand and the often unglamorous reality of running the show…

💬 Hey Thérèse! How’d you come up with the idea for KOBA?

It was during Covid. I have very dry skin and feet especially – it’s always been one of my insecurities. And during lockdown I started thinking more about this. I was working in the beauty industry and exposed to all sorts of brands and products, so I decided to order every foot cream on the market to find something that would fix my issue in the long term. None ticked all the boxes. Either the formula was too chemical, or the texture was too thick, greasy, or sticky, or I didn’t like the scent, or the packaging was bad. 

It became very clear there was a gap in the footcare market for a premium product. I wasn’t looking for an idea – the idea came to me. There was clearly a need and an opportunity. So I decided to do it.

💬 Prior to this you built and sold a startup and spent time in huge beauty companies. What did you learn? 

True, this isn’t my first rodeo. I built a subscription beauty box brand and, around 15 years ago, we sold it to a French competitor who was trying to enter the UK market. I stayed on and ran the business for them for a year and a half, before going to work for Sarah Chapman and then L’Oréal. I learned so much at L’Oréal – how to launch a brand in a foreign market, how to create and design a product, how to get feedback from testers during the development phase.

💬 Tell us about safou, KOBA’s secret sauce.

We use an ingredient that no one else is using in the western world. Safou has been used for generations in Africa, but it’s mostly a fruit. You’ll find it in Congo, where my family is from, in Cameroon, Gabon, and also Nigeria. Initially it was used to treat skin diseases or help heal wounds faster. The fruit is rich in fatty acids, amino acid, vitamin C, vitamin E. It’s nourishing, antiseptic, anti-inflammatory, and great for your skin and hair. It prevents the appearance of dandruff, gives shine to your hair and speeds up the growth. When I was growing up I’d always eaten the fruit as it’s part of Congolese cuisine, but I wasn’t aware of all of these skin properties. 

💬 So how did you make the connection between safou and beauty?

I had a conversation with my mom, a chemist. I was explaining what I want to achieve – high skin hydration and nourishment – but also something that stood out in the market. She recommended safou oil. Now you’ll find this ingredient in all our formulas. It’s the bread and butter of the brand. Initially it was just me and my foot cream, and now it’s become a family business. My father produces the oil for us!

💬 Wow, how’d you rope him into it?

He’s a pharmacist, so he knew about all these ingredients. I was telling him I found a company in Cameroon who can provide the safou oil, but we can’t rely on just one supplier – we needed to become self-sufficient. We have safou trees in Congo, so why don’t we just do it ourselves? That’s how he got involved. He’s now turned into a farmer and is producing all our safou oil in Congo. He had to learn by doing. For six months each year, he produces it in small batches, then we ship the oil to our labs in France, where the products are actually made.

💬 And none of the huge beauty corporations have discovered safou yet? Let’s keep it our little secret… 

No, not yet. Maybe they’ll come. Back home they’re literally like apple trees. Everybody knows safou fruits, it’s just normally used in cuisine. To turn it into oil is a highly manual cold-press process and takes time. I actually went to Congo in 2025 and filmed a short documentary about the process. To get one liter of oil, just to press it, takes a day. It’s a labor of love. But we’re thinking about how we can make the process a little bit less manual, in order to scale as a company.

💬 The foot cream is your anchor product. What else are you cooking up?

The foot cream drives more than 50% of KOBA’s revenue. We extended the product range to other areas of the body, like your hands, lips and overall body. The whole idea of KOBA is designed to provide long-lasting hydration for all skin types.

💬 What are some core insights you’ve learned about the beauty industry from a founder perspective, as opposed to when you were at L’Oréal?

It’s a really, really tough industry. Highly saturated. You’re competing against brands with massive budgets who have raised millions and are able to spend a fortune on advertising. It’s hard to be visible if you don’t have the financial support, if you’re not an expert yourself, or if you’re not a celebrity or a content creator. Having a great idea or a great product isn’t enough in this industry to survive. 

But having said that, over time if you’re consistent and stay focused and continue to tell your story over and over again in an authentic way, and if you show all the hard work and love that you put into your brand – and, of course, if you have great products – then it’s going to pay off. Just not in an overnight success way. 

Sustainable growth is possible. When all the other brands that blew their cash in two years are gone, you can still be there in ten years.

💬 Amen.

This is the path I’m following. I used to put a lot of pressure on myself at the start; like, maybe I should raise money. But KOBA is bootstrapped, which I’m quite proud of. It gives me the freedom to stay true to myself and develop the products I want to develop – not because someone tells me to. It also gives me the flexibility to pivot the way I want. I’m just trying to stay true to myself. I’m not rushing anything. 

💬 Do you have any frameworks for making decisions? Entrepreneurship often feels like a ‘choose your own adventure’ journey.

My goal this year is reaching break-even, then profitability next year. Whatever decisions, financial or otherwise, that I need to make, they’re framed as, “Is this going to help me get to that point? Yes or no?”

💬 Makes sense. What are some mistakes you’ve made?

Comparing ourselves to others. For instance, events are great because they get your brand in front of the community which is very important. But often brands do tons of events because that’s what everybody else is doing – and you can also do too many and burn through money, energy and resources, and ultimately lose focus on building the actual company. I’m responsible for preserving our cash, energy, and time.

Social media is the same. As a founder, people are always telling me, “You need to show your face more! You need to be more vocal on social!” And I’d love to do that… but I’m also running a business. There’s only four of us on the team, and we’re all stretched. We just don’t have the time to constantly be making social videos. I do it when I can, but my day-to-day isn’t filming myself. I’m trying to fix problems!

💬 What, you don’t wanna be a full-time content creator?!

Exactly. The day-to-day of running a business just isn’t very glamorous. There are lots of things that need to be done. That’s the reality.

💬 A core skill: knowing when to say no to things.

It’s flattering to be offered opportunities. In the beginning you want to say yes to everything. You see everything as an opportunity to be more visible and build brand awareness. But you need to learn how to be more selective. Think about what will move the needle a little bit further for your brand. It’s not rude to say no. It’s realistic. People understand that. You just have to explain it.

💬 One last one: your dream partnership. Shoot your shot.

The first person that comes to mind is Grace Beverley, founder of TALA, just because I admire her as an entrepreneur. She started so young, learned on the go, and launched multiple businesses successfully. I’d love to work with her or be connected. I have millions of questions. ☼

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You should do it broke → 💡 “Do people know that they’re going to die one day?”

Cardistry 🃏 → The subculture turning playing cards into collectible art.

Witchcraft retreats 🧙 → Welcome to Green Veil, a sold-out witchcraft retreat where women learn how to conduct spellcraft sessions, make candles, and confront ancestral trauma.

Repair kits for grown-ups 🔨 → “The first in a planned series of new adult-focused products from Team Repair, an education company that usually makes kits for 8 to 14 year olds.”

A new way of labelling wine 🍷 → A new wine shop in Melbourne has three sections: Weekday ($), Party ($$), and Fancy ($$$).

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Tone Knob — A monthly newsletter that takes “a nerd’s-eye view” of brands doing interesting things with their language and tone of voice.

15 studios creatives are excited about right now — A list from the Creative Boom community.

Sourcerie — Product testing, consumer research, and activation with your own community.

Cloud hoarders. Liberties

The sports bar shake-up. Taste

In an Athenian arbour, a wooden house becomes a fairytale home. Observer

What it means to build a legacy brand. Sprezza

On the difference between rest and idleness. The Idle Gazette

This California bar was closed for 46 years. Now it’s an SF tourist hotspot. SFGate

A shipping container village is opening in Manchester with 250 studios for local business. The Manc

$205 → The amount that Gen Z spend on a date in 2026. Millennials: $252. Related: average menu prices rose 31% between February 2020 and April 2025. (Which is why Gen Z are increasingly ‘rejecting’ dating and are now ‘solomaxxing.’)

Comparisons as predictable as the sunrise.

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It’s time again for the Tiny Awards, which celebrates ‘the best of the small, poetic, creative, handmade web.’ You’ve got another week or two before nominations close.

A cool one I spotted this week: Hatch Enterprise, an org that supports underrepresented entrepreneurs, has got a free sales and marketing program coming up for UK biz owners aged 30 and under. It’s 3 online sessions, 1 per month from July to Sept, with mentoring and peer support included. Apply before June 26th.

And also check out Brooklyn Pitch Competition, where $450,000 is going to local businesses.

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