Hey starter!

Here’s what’s inside Issue #90…

Hook, line and sinker. In Issue 9 of For Starters, I wrote: “I would like a teleportation device that goes between my flat in central London and Riley’s Fish Shack, a five hour drive north of here on the coast.”

Well, readers, it’s Issue 90, and in a not-at-all-planned twist of fate, I just got back from Riley’s. Dreams come true. You just gotta buy a train ticket.

A pair of magical shipping containers, directly on the windswept beach in Tynemouth, on England’s northeast coast, Riley’s is, the critic Jay Rayner once wrote, “the sort of place that people mumble irritatingly about to each other, in a way that makes it sound like some tiresome gastronomic Shangri-La.”

Excuse me while I add to the irritable mumbling: The place is pure magic.

Adam Riley once worked as a theatre set designer. He was also a trained chef – and he wondered why a big slice of the 1,500 tons of seafood coming into the nearby port every year was exported instead of served locally. So he and his wife, Lucy, did what good starters do: they began small, with a fish stall on a bicycle at the first Tynemouth food festival in 2012. Their now-famous shack followed in 2015.

Specials change with the catch (I inhaled a red mullet bouillabaisse) next to regulars like monkfish, turbot, squid, lobster and langoustines, chargrilled or roasted over wood.

And like all worthwhile things, when it’s gone, it’s gone. 🎣

In partnership with Shopify

It’s already November (😰) and, if you run a business, you’ve probably been thinking about Black Friday. To discount or not? How much? What’s the best way to approach one of the biggest shopping days of the year?

Some businesses go huge on discounts. Others offer a free gift when you spend over a certain amount. Some sit it out entirely. (As a funny aside, posting “We’re not doing Black Friday!” can also lead to lots of orders…)

There’s basically no one right way to approach this stuff. Which is why, all this month, I’m asking real starters to walk us through their unique Black Friday plans. You’ll meet 1 brand every Friday till the big day. All three are For Starters subscribers who also run their shops on Shopify.

Here’s our starter panel:

All through this month (and all the time), check out Shopify’s excellent Substack, In Stock. It’s packed with starter interviews, selling insights & brand-building tactics – backed up by their trillions of ecomm data points.

Read and subscribe to In Stock for free →

The factory was full of leftover marble with nowhere to go. It was waste, sure, but gorgeous waste. And the For Starters subscriber had a hunch it could be transformed into something desirable – maybe even profitable.

Today Antonella’s the brains behind 8 e Mezzo – a homeware brand named after a Fellini film and a very particular measurement.

Let’s see how she’s getting on…

💬 Hey Antonella, tell us how you got into the marble biz.

My dad and granddad and all his brothers have been working in the stone and marble business forever. For ages, decades. It’s the family business. Wind back to November 2020. I was living in London and had just lost my job in architecture. So I moved back to my hometown: Trani, in southern Italy. And a friend of mine said, “Can you make a piece for me?” He wanted it in Carrara…

💬 The world’s most famous marble.

At least in Italy, yeah! So we started to cut these pieces. Funnily enough, he didn’t tell me any measurements, but we thought the perfect measurement to give a uniqueness to this particular product was eight and a half centimeters. And for us Italian cinema lovers, it was such a good name.

💬 Because of the famous Fellini movie!

Exactly, 8½. It reminded us of craftsmanship, of the masters. 

💬 So what was your eureka moment? Your family had been in this biz forever, and now you had a fresh perspective?

My family was focused on using stone to make traditional architectural interiors, but there were all these pieces just left there, forgotten. They were beautiful. We have so much waste in this industry. It wasn’t because I wanted to ‘get in’ on the ‘trend’ of sustainability, per se, but I saw that we could give a second life to this stuff.

💬 And what would happen to the leftover marble normally? Chucked in the bin?

Sometimes, but my dad likes to keep everything to a not-understandable level! It’s a bit too much. He’s 86 and still very active…

💬 So did you spin out a brand new company?

I’ve developed a new brand, 8 e Mezzo, under the existing company, Marmi Azzollini – which is my dad, my brother who’s four years older than me, and myself. We’re not a huge company. My family wasn’t focused on home accessories, so I kicked off the 8 e Mezzo line with beautiful, small, marble cutlery rests. Now we produce marble trays and other objects, too.

💬 It must be such a nice change to work with your hands after having a laptop job for so long.

Absolutely. I was very lucky to have a good job in London, but I became a bit bored – even if the salary was much higher than the one I have now! I don’t get bored now. It’s quite enjoyable. Sometimes I cut pieces that are so random and I keep them for myself…

Also, everything we make is created by hand, using less energy, not with high-tech machinery. We try to minimize the impact and be sustainable in the best way we can. We’re always dusty. People are charmed when they come to see us. We’re very basic in the way that we do things. My brother says we’re like the Flintstones, because we create stuff out of nothing!

💬 What are the challenges of running a marble brand?

All sorts of stuff. We’re a small company, so we don’t spend a ton of money on marketing, for instance. But the big challenge is the material itself. Marble isn’t an easy one because it can crack and break.

💬 I can only imagine. Hey, are you stocked anywhere right now?

Not in London, no. It would be super nice to have a piece of our marble in a shop window on Regent Street in London. We’re not stocked even in Italy, actually. I always wanted to host workshops in our factory, but it’s incredibly messy at the moment, so I can’t invite groups of people yet…

💬 If you hosted workshops where people could learn about marble and walk away with some small creations, they’d love it.

Yeah, totally. From a health and safety perspective, I can’t do it at the moment. But… one day! ☼

Uber for storytellers 📹 → A new Welsh startup lets you book freelance videographers and photographers at the last minute.

Attention 👈️ → It’s all you have.

Aesthetic education 👩‍🎨 → “Through encounters with art, people cultivate moral judgment and self-improvement.”

Holes in the wall 🕳 → “From hatches to back gardens, some of London’s best food is coming out of the smallest spaces.”

Insights on the year’s biggest shopping season → A starter running a one-woman skincare brand is gearing up for her second Black Friday. During her first, she sent a sale email without a subject line (whoops!). Borrow her sales playbook for round two. In partnership with Shopify

The Society of Shopkeepers → Yesterday, retail consultant and broadcaster Mary Portas launched a newsletter all about IRL retail.

Details → The details behind the world’s best websites, a project by FS subscriber Kevin Kopp.

How LEGO engineered the perfect plaything. MIT Press Reader

From wax seals to postal stamps, Aplomb perfume’s packaging has the intimacy of a handwritten letter. It’s Nice That

Alice Yuan Zhang, founder of LA bookshop Plot, on building things into being. Arena

Now entering: the era of bleh. Noema

28% → Workers in the US who have one or more side hustles.

The people holding up the internet.

01. Starter fortress. If I hadn’t made you aware of this enormous castle for sale, overlooking the Ionian Sea in Calabria (Italy), with a history related to the Knights Templar and which once, maybe, housed the Shroud of Turin (before it was in Turin), then you’d never forgive me. → Make it yours

02. Back to the nest. When she was a kid, Kate Jones loved the Weatherbird, a gourmet grocer, cafe and clothing shop in Damariscotta, Maine. It opened in 1983, changed hands a few times, then closed last year. So this summer, Kate, now a jewelry designer, took on the lease and opened The Weathered Bird (ha), a general store, in the same spot. Her ‘new/old’ store looks great. → Read the NYT piece and check out their IG

01. Two years ago, New Zealand-based For Starters subscriber Kimberley Torrie launched Stretchy Social Yoga Club with a mission to “bring more movement, connection and joy to the lives of Aucklanders.” Stretchy is “like a run club, but for yoga,” she tells us: a yoga class, then drinks and chats with new friends. Her latest biz move is a clever one: she’s relaunched it with what she’s calling a “people-powered pricing model.”

What’s that mean? The more people who book a session, the cheaper it gets for everyone. Kimberley, who also runs a creative growth studio called Studio Dawn, wanted to launch with this model from day 1, but the tech was too expensive to build. This time she built it on her own (“well, with the help of a friend called Claude”). Pretty cool.

Next up, she wants to white-label the tech for events, run clubs, book clubs, charities and studios. She’d also love to meet people in tech, community building and wellness, plus potential licensing partners “who see the opportunity in doing things a little differently.” → Have a peek at the tech

02. I had the pleasure of meeting up for coffee the other day with FS subscriber Riya Pabari, who has spent years rethinking the way we learn as adults, particularly during periods of transition. (She was previously at Founders Forum, where she spearheaded their Founders Academy, an alternative MBA for startup founders.) Now she’s turning her attention to another big life transition: parenthood. She’s building a company called Modern Parenthood and starting with a weekly newsletter for couples, “designed to save your child years of therapy and you thousands of pounds in divorce fees.” → Check it out and subscribe

03. And FS subscriber Isabel Sachs, founder of I LIKE NETWORKING, just opened up their 1:1 speed mentoring round. Mentees pick up to two mentors and get “one-hour 1:1 sessions with creative professionals who've worked with Google, BBC, Samsung and Nike.” Applications close on November 8th. → Have a look

Subscribe for free / For Starters is a weekly newsletter for starting the business of your dreams. It’s written by Danny Giacopelli, formerly of Monocle, Courier, and Mailchimp → Subscribe today

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