Hey, starter! Read on for…

In gorgeous Cornwall is the UK’s only factory specializing in boomerangs. The starter behind it, Will Pearson, is in fact one of the only commercial makers of strip-laminated wooden boomerangs in the world. So how’d it all come about? The pandemic hammered the screen-printing biz he’d run for 30 years. Then he had a eureka moment: “I went down the beach, I was in a blind panic. I took my boomerang with me, and then I had an idea about manufacturing them.” Sometimes it’s really that simple. Will opened his bricks-and-mortar shop just a few months ago – read this profile in The Falmouth Packet and daydream about what other playful products YOU can bring into existence… 🪃

“What if I could build a profitable, sustainable business based on something as small and insignificant as chopsticks?” German engineer Felix Böck had that thought years ago, and with his company ChopValue he’s since taken nearly 300 million discarded chopsticks from local restaurants and turned them – via local ‘microfactories’ – into an incredibly strong material, used for furniture and offices. 🥢

Speaking of transformation, have you seen this brand that turns your sketches and doodles into actual jewelry? Genius. 💍

And at the height of New York summer, Samantha Rees opened a beautiful little bakery in Bed-Stuy, called Saison. She gives a little peek behind the scenes in this piece for Vogue: “After six years of baking out of my apartment, it feels like the most beautiful fever dream.” 🥐

Elsewhere in NYC, Jacob Komarow – aka Roy Donk – is stomping down sidewalks selling baklava. It’s not the first time Roy’s been in these pages, but I continue to be so happy at the rise of his biz, Good Baklava. Check out this great short film where CNBC follows him around NYC as he slings ‘bak’ in parks and events, then gets serious and talks about his Turkish supply chain. The real deal. 💰

And a lovely update from Cambodia-based For Starters subscriber Shunsuke “Take” Miyatake. Take left his job at the UN Development Programme in June, and after “months of thinking, writing, rewriting, designing, and changing our minds,” he and his creative partner Tinzi Fonteyne have launched itonami, a cultural studio in Phnom Penh. The name is a Japanese word (営み) that “describes the everyday acts that make up human life: living, working, caring, creating, and continuing something together.” Every project begins with a question, Take tells us, then lots of listening, observing… and walking. What comes out the other end? Stories, communities, brands, exhibitions, workshops, public events, “and other small alternatives to what society takes for granted.” 👏

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“For artists, the struggle is no longer sexy.” That’s what janera solomon has been hearing from artists in Austin, New Orleans, LA and just about everywhere else she’s traveled this year.

She would know – janera’s an artist herself. And along the way she got obsessed with one big idea: artists are entrepreneurs, whether or not they’d ever use the word. They’re also increasingly looking for ways to create a sustainable business around their creativity.

So she built ARTPOWER to bring artists real financial power, and then tortoise, a financial platform designed by artists for artists. Why artists? Because, as janera tells us, “it’s hard to fake being an artist” – and harder still to be someone artists trust with their money.

→ Below, janera makes the case that every artist is a starter… 🎨🎨🎨

💬 Hey janera! Why’d you start ARTPOWER?

I’m an artist. I’ve been in the arts my entire working life – I’ve never done anything else – and there’s an age-old problem: that people who care about making art often don’t have enough money to sustain themselves. That really hit home during Covid – there were critically-acclaimed, respected artists that everyone recognized as successful, yet they didn’t have money. So many of them were doing GoFundMe campaigns, asking for support. 

I led a research project for the Mellon Foundation focused on how artists and organizations were faring coming out of Covid, and there was a lot of talk about how tech might be used to avoid the pitfalls we were experiencing. ARTPOWER was a response: what could we do from a tech point of view to put artists in a more powerful position next time?

💬 And then it evolved to where you decided to launch a financial platform, tortoise. To play devil’s advocate, there are a trillion apps out there, so why another one?

Artists are using apps for all kinds of things – art-making, staying in touch with people – but not always for money management. There’s a lot of distrust about tech and finances, and there was an opportunity to make something that spoke to artists differently. We understand what the artist experience is really like – what it’s like to have lots of money at one moment and then not enough at another moment, to have your income vary in wide swings, to negotiate for yourself what your art is worth. So there was an opportunity to make something that artists might actually trust enough to add to their toolkit.

💬 Whereas the opposite approach is “big scary financial corp trying to target the artist demographic” – yet they might not understand artists.

That’s exactly right. It’s hard to fake being an artist. And being someone that artists can trust is also hard.

💬 Do artists think of themselves as business owners? Or is ‘entrepreneur’ a dirty word?

Compared to when I started in the arts way back in the late 1990s, early 2000s, there’s definitely more open conversation about how being an artist is being a small enterprise. That, as an artist, it’s okay to talk about money and your audience. It’s not only art for art’s sake. Yes, artists still care about the work, whether it’s resonant or powerful. But they’re also now saying, “I’d like to afford my life: afford to take care of my family and afford to sustain this career.” Folks might not want to have a day job and do their art on the side.

💬 There’s also a rise in these ‘multihyphen’ careers. Gen Z in particular want to (or have to) piece together a career with different income sources. It’s like Me Inc., right?

Right. We’re doing away with the conflict between day jobs, hobbies and passion projects. Now everybody wants to do all the projects, all the things, which I think is okay! More and more folks will want to, or have to, be creative and agile. The idea of doing many things and wearing many hats will become the norm.

The good news for artists is that we already live that life. Instead of being ashamed of it and saying I need to focus on just one thing, they’re saying, “This is great, now I can do many things: I’m DJing, producing, writing music, teaching.” That’s a rich life.

💬 Though more income streams might also complicate your personal financial picture. You’ve gotta hustle more to piece together your income, rather than get a W-2 gig and say job done.

Oh, absolutely. It’s a hustle – but there are also more opportunities. We’ve been traveling all over the country meeting artists in Austin, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Portland, LA, everywhere, and there’s less talk about ‘struggle.’ The struggle is no longer sexy. Fewer people are positioning themselves as ‘the struggling artist.’ They want their artistic life to instead feel more seamless, more abundant. And that’s what ARTPOWER and this new app are about: helping you connect the dots of whatever it is you’re doing, and making it all feel a little bit more in tune, less in conflict.

💬 It’s also going to lead to a boom in businesses that become the connective tissue between a starter’s various income streams. Where are all the businesses that fill in the cracks, powering and connecting all these creative projects and side hustles? There are so many opportunities!

Yup. The good news for artists is you can do so many different things that you’re interested in. You can build the life you want to build. The bad news is that there’s more complexity: more to manage, more to keep track of. So any business or platform that builds infrastructure for artists to live and work and sustain a life in the arts is a good thing. ☼

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The “Shmoogle” scenario 👀 → The greatest threat to a successful company may be a competitor that doesn’t exist (yet).

Bistromaxxing 🍷 → How bistros have transformed the dining scene in China’s major cities.

Faux marble 🪨 → Why have humans been obsessed with it for millennia?

The ube boom 💜 → Is it coming to an end? “The Philippines has indefinitely suspended exports of fresh ube, the purple yam central to many Filipino desserts, as international demand strains supplies of planting material.”

Private equity 🤝 small biz → Bagels, tacos, baked goods: the businesses reeling in PE cash and what customers think about it.

Neurodiverse design 🤔 → Much needed, yet sometimes a marketing ploy.

Showa retro 🏣 → “When people think of Japan they picture washitsu, a traditional-looking room featuring paper screens and tatami floors… Showa retro is something else entirely – it has its own visual language that’s genuinely distinctive on a global scale.”

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The Brand Ledger → “The Brand Ledger (from Worse on Purpose) tracks 397 brands, from the tools in your garage to the pans in your kitchen. Who owns them, what they used to be, whether they’re still worth buying.”

60+ new creative growth ideas → Tom Orbach of Marketing Ideas (a must-read) collab’d with Lenny’s Newsletter to share 60+ ways to stand out “when everyone is running the same playbook.” Half paywalled ($) but just might be worth it…

99% of my website traffic is bots. A year of fighting scrapers on my 1.5 million-page website. PatronView

The golden age of Asian American CPG. Taste

Designing media for an overstimulated world. Charlotte Rubesa designed a print magazine as a quiet space for readers to reclaim their attention. Miriam, On Tech

Does every founder have to be an influencer? In Stock

My book came out three months ago. Here are the seven things I learned about publishing, podcasts, and personal stamina. Manoush Minutes

This 23-year-old turned a FB Marketplace find into a creative household product. It exploded on social media and made $150K in 2 weeks. Entrepreneur

How to find meaning in ordinary days. Milk & Cookies

$100 → Patagonia is giving a discount on its products to customers who help others plan to vote in the upcoming midterm elections.

120 → The number of new stores the once-bankrupt Toys ‘R’ Us is opening this holiday season, “as grownup collectors fuel toy sales.”

60,000 → How many unread emails is too many?

ZuckOff (😁), an app from Polish developer Paweł Szydłowski, lets you know when someone near you is wearing smart glasses.

Designer Saran Yen Panya has collab’d with old-school Thai furniture maker Hawaiithai to make these awesome chairs.

When you have a big marketing budget, you can do expensive things like this. (I mean, you can do it without lots of $$; you just might not be able to afford Spike Lee...)

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1. For Starters subscriber Justin Barber, founder of Glenwood – “the feelings company of Palo Alto” – has just launched a new show and print magazine (!) called People of the Future: “a longform conversation series with multicultural entrepreneurs, exploring identity, resilience, and creativity.” → Episode 1 is out now, featuring Lara Adekoya, founder of Fleurs et Sel

2. FS subscriber Alex Dobrenko runs Code for Creatives, and his next cohort – which he describes as “therapy, bootcamp, acid trip, math class” – starts on Monday. Check it out

3. And over in Mérida, Yucatán, FS subscriber Cam Holden-Ayala recently launched a comms agency called Let Me Chat 2 U. She’s not new to the biz game. After 11 years in PR and right after making PRWeek’s 30 Under 30, the British-Mexican starter quit her job, moved to Mexico, and started artisan fashion brand LACASAMAMI (now growing into a concept store in Mérida). She also launched the She’s Lost Control! podcast. Now she’s building LMC2U, “the thing all of that was actually preparing me for”:

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