Hey starter!
Today I’m introducing a new section: Somewhere to start 💫
Here’s why: Being a biz owner doesn’t always mean starting something 100% from scratch. I’ve said it a thousand times: there are so many awesome bookshops in need of a new owner, old-school family-run record stores with no heir, and empty villages on remote islands that need a starter’s vision to be transformed into a boutique hotel – or an art retreat.
Because I’m terminally online (I do it for you), I discover these places all the time. So I’ve made a new home for them each week, featuring:
businesses you can buy and make your own
cool buildings & spaces that could become businesses
the starters already making it happen
Daydream or call your bank for a loan. Either way, enjoy.
—DG
Inside Issue #87:
Inspo ➠ Embroidery dreams
Advice ➠ Planner or YOLO?
Ideas ➠ Scented sachets
Tools ➠ …for freelancers
For sale ➠ New section! 🚨
Shoutouts ➠ A cycling store
🤝 This issue is in partnership with Faire. Support For Starters by supporting our partners.
➠ Get inspired
☼ Businesses, people & stories we’re loving
"The Arizona Ranch, embroidered onto cotton" | Credit: @studiolubin
01. Look at the gorgeous work of Hannah Lubin, who hand-embroiders beautiful scenes onto shirts, bags, aprons, ties, napkins and other willing blank cotton canvases. I stumbled upon her London-based biz Studio Lubin – and asked her to tell us all about it…
💬 Hey Hannah, was embroidery your hobby before it was a biz?
Yes! Last September I quit my job in New York where I was working at the time. I had two months until my visa expired and I’d have to return to London. I gave myself those two months to explore different things, new and old, and saw it as an opportunity to reconnect with my creative self, which I’d felt I’d partially lost while working in my previous role.
I was doing a lot of drawing around the city and had seen some textile artists doing interesting work online, so I wanted to explore how I could combine embroidery with my interest in capturing everyday urban life. I was posting my work on TikTok from the beginning and pretty quickly started receiving requests for commissions, which gave me the confidence to start taking custom orders and selling pieces.
💬 What was the first piece someone paid you for? And what’s the most personal commission you’ve taken on?
The first commission was a Central Park scene on a shirt for a girl who found me on TikTok. She’d given me a lot of creative freedom with the design, so I had a lot of fun drawing inspiration from photos I’d taken and drawings I’d made in the park.
Some of the most personal commissions I’ve worked on have involved incorporating specific cultural traditions, which I love bringing to life through embroidery. I recently embroidered Indian Garba dancers around the cuffs of a denim jacket as well as a tie for a wedding in Trabzon, Türkiye, that strung together different cultural motifs, like men dancing the horon and a Trabzonspor football player.
💬 The hardest and best parts about being a biz owner?
The hardest has been not having a team to bounce ideas off of or to discuss future directions. I’d always worked in teams and taking responsibility for everything can feel daunting. I’m still learning how to feel confident in making decisions independently and working out what the best way forward is. The best part: seeing the joy that my work can bring to people is truly amazing.
💬 What would you tell a starter who’s good at a creative craft but nervous to charge for it?
It’s really difficult to decide whether to start selling your work, let alone knowing what to charge. A great way to start is to just test the waters. Post your work on social media and see how people respond. You could try out craft markets and fairs, which I did a few of at the start of this year. It’s a great way to understand what people find most valuable about your work. I quickly realised that the ability to personalise the embroidery was something customers particularly valued. Now I’m hoping to move more towards creating ready-to-buy pieces.
It’s also important to recognise that introducing a financial element inevitably changes your relationship with your craft. You have to keep reminding yourself of the core of your project, why you’re doing it, and why you love it, rather than getting pulled too far in the direction of what customers want to see. Striking the balance between what you want to make vs. what others want you to make for them can be tough.
💬 Finally, what do you wish you knew on day 1 of your journey?
I feel like I’m still learning so much, so it’s hard to choose. One thing I’ve learnt is the importance of being clear about pricing and expectations from the very beginning. When I first started receiving commission enquiries, I’d often get really caught up in discussing ideas and working out the specifics of a design with a potential customer, only for them to disappear once I eventually shared the price. So, to manage expectations and protect my own time, it’s important to be clear upfront.
—Thanks Hannah!
02. Have you heard about Arion Press? The San Francisco-based publisher creates books the way Johannes Gutenberg did ~600 years ago. They also publish only 3 titles a year, handmade in limited edition batches of 275 copies, and send them to you via an annual $3,500 subscription. (The WSJ profiled them here.) While I won’t be trading my rent for a book, however gorgeous, I adore that something like this exists in our sci-fi age.
03. Speaking of… let’s help fund this south London bookshop, run by 15 indie publishers themselves: “One shared shop in Peckham. Opening 6 November, if we can build it in time.”
04. Union Boulangerie in Paris has a fun website. You can practically smell the bread through the screen.
05. And a year and a half ago, I spotlighted Sean Yarborough. The Kentucky-born starter spent years in San Francisco (including a period of homelessness and on food stamps) and is now, somehow and gloriously, serving the most hyped tacos in Auckland, under the name Broke Boy Taco. He just announced he’s turning it into a franchise biz: “My dream is to have a Broke Boy Taco in every city in New Zealand.”
In partnership with Faire
Let’s stock a For Starters general store!
If we opened a dream shop, what shape would it take? What brands would we stock? How could we make the process as stress-free as possible? Last week you voted on that 1st question. The winner is… a general store! But a bookshop with good coffee was close, so we’re gonna do both. (Very For Starters coded, tbh)
Here’s the plan for stocking our FS general store with Faire, the wholesale marketplace where 700K+ indie shops buy from 100K+ vetted brands:
Picture our regulars → Who’ll be walking through the door? Ask our friends & neighbors what they wish they could buy nearby. 🧐
Scope out the competition → Pop into nearby shops & visit local online forums to spot the juicy gaps we can fill. 👀
Work out how much we need → Inventory can eat up half (!) of a new shop’s opening costs, so we’ll start with a few of each brand’s bestsellers. 📐
Order small → Nearly 40K brands on Faire have minimums of $100 or less, so we can try lots of brands without blowing the budget. 🛍️
Reorder the winners & send back the rest to Faire → Returns are free on the first order with each brand. 📦
The best bit: pay later → Through Faire, eligible new shops can get up to $20K in 60-day payment terms, interest-free. 🙏
Next week, the fun part: we’ll go brand-hunting for our shelves…
Free returns apply to your first order with each brand, within 60 days. Faire covers return shipping and processes returns, so brands keep their payout. 60-day payment terms are subject to eligibility.
➠ Starter wisdom
☼ Real-world advice on growing a business
Are you a chronic planner or do you say YOLO 5x a day? 🤔
Planners love market research, customer interviews, competitive analysis, polls and panels and surveys… all of which can be extremely useful while building a biz. I’m a planner (usually).
But there’s a limit to all this stuff. And you’ll hit it quickly and repeatedly.
Sometimes you just gotta go with your gut.
Says the guy who just sent you a reader survey. I contain multitudes. | Credit: @skullhousedesigns
➠ Good ideas
☼ Trends, concepts, market gaps & more
Human-made 👍 → Why seeing a spelling mistake in an email is now a good thing: “I felt a deep sense of connection – and even joy – because it meant there was a human being somewhere behind those words.”
Cereal box toys 🧸 → They’re making a comeback.
Scented sachets 🌺 → “Once tied to festivals, packets or pouches filled with aromatics are becoming everyday accessories spanning fragrance, fashion, wellness and cultural consumption.”
Loud working 😱 → First everyone was quiet quitting, now they’re loud working. Stop the corporate performing and just start a biz, people.
The nonfiction book market 📚 → It’s collapsing. How do we fix that?
➠ Toolbox
☼ Resources, reads & fun finds for starters
🛠 Resources
118 things to do instead of doomscrolling → I just wish ‘start a business’ was on there…
The Freelancers’ Handbook (PDF) → A practical guide for cultural freelancers and the organizations they work with. (There’s an online directory too.)
Want to open a shop? → Eligible new shops can get up to $20K in 60-day payment terms, interest-free, to buy their opening inventory. Applying takes less than 10 minutes. See how it works. *In partnership with Faire.
📚 Reads
Kelly Clarkson vs. the $15,000 animatronic bird. Brooklyn Mag
Propping up pop-ups: how one company built the infrastructure behind the scenes. Caper
You don’t need a ‘personal brand’. Good Practice (by FS subscriber Lola Hoad)
Need a suit? Ask Carter Young. The London-based brand, started by two Americans, has become the most talked-about thing in menswear. Highsnobiety (by FS subscriber John Sunyer)
How my family restaurant is facing up to AI. Fireplace
The idea of home shapes Base Design’s identity for Ray’s Waterfront. The Brand Identity
Aliveness and where to find it. Ben by Fax
🧠 Findings
7.9% → The drop in volume of almond milk sales in the US over the past year, as people switch back to normal dairy. Or, as the Economist puts it: “Alternatives to milk are losing moomentum.” 🐮
🙃 Fun
I’ve been having too much fun scrolling The Surfer’s Journal archives.
➠ Somewhere to start
☼ Businesses you can buy (and the starters who have done it)
All this can be yours
01. Buy this cafe. Vancouver cafe cowdog, which went viral for its no-tip model, building-in-public approach, and good matcha, is selling its 1st location (opened in 2024) for CA$120K. In this vid they explain how they’ve outgrown the 400 sq ft spot. → Contact them: [email protected]
02. Read all about it. This 25-year-old from rural Monticello, Georgia, just bought his local newspaper, where he was previously an intern, and has since grown print/digital subscriptions by 30%. Hell yeah.
I discover and post these for free. Want to list or buy a biz? Get in touch
➠ Town Hall
☼ Shoutouts, wins & opportunities from FS subscribers
Shoutout to FS subscriber Miranda Stolfo, co-founder of SALA, a cool cycling shop launched in Nuremberg 2 years ago.
Still a passion project run alongside the founders’ other jobs, they’ve led group rides out of the store almost every day since opening. Miranda says:
“The name SALA comes from the word for living room in Spanish (two of us are Mexican) and it’s been an honor to see people interacting as if they were in a shared home. Friendships have been forged, couples have met, and new customers quickly start to feel like family. Sometimes, at the end of the day, it’s hard to say whether we do the community-building to support the business or the other way around."
See you next Friday 👋
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