Hola starter! 👋

This week’s For Starters is coming to you from Mexico City, where I’m presently eating everything that’s not nailed down. What a glorious place. A small biz on every street, a starter around every corner…

I hope you’re having a fantastic week and your dream biz is 1% (5%?) closer to where you want it to be. Hit reply and tell me what you’re working on and what you need help with. Let’s see if we can figure it out together. —DG

Here’s what’s in Issue #91…

The sheer delight of these creative birdfeeders! They’re handmade by Massachusetts-based architect Nima Yadollahpour and his daughter Mina. The biz, called Chirp, started with a robin’s nest in their backyard:

Nima then had a eureka idea: “What if a birdhouse could be approached with the same thought, creativity, and attention given to architecture?” Their subsequent creations have been inspired by famous architects like Frank Lloyd Wright & artists like Yayoi Kusama and Alexander Calder (above). And if you’re wondering whether they’re all form over function…

In partnership with Shopify

First up: Joe Welstead, co-founder of Oshun, which bottles minerals from Utah’s Great Salt Lake into a concentrate you pump into any drink. The brand is projected to soon hit £5m in sales. Here’s how they tackle the biggest discount week of the year…

💬 Joe, hello! How are you approaching Black Friday this year?

Carefully. For context: I love the season. People are in the mindset of spending more money, which is a nice place to be as a brand. But ad costs are going to go up during this period, because more advertisers are flooding the market with discounts and attractive deals to click on. So if you don’t have a compelling offer when everybody else does, it’s going to become more expensive to get clicks.

But I say carefully because, almost two years ago, we committed to a subscription model. That’s our north star. And typically what brands do around Black Friday is bulk discount on volume, which flies completely in the face of a subscription model.

💬 How so?

Commercially, it goes against what we’re trying to achieve. Also, if current subscribers suddenly see we’re offering 60% off, they’ll say, “Why did I ever pay full price?” We spend a lot of time building the brand, and you can erode brand value very quickly. I treat our customers with as much respect as possible – I don’t take them for a ride.

💬 So how will you keep existing subscribers happy?

We’ll have options and deals. For instance, a lot of them are on a monthly refill pouch. So, they might be able to upgrade to quarterly and get three packs every three months instead, and get a discount on that.

💬 And for new customers?

We’re building our strategy around commitment on subscription. So, if you’re a new customer and subscribe during the Black Friday period, instead of having an intro discount on only your first order, you might get a discount on three, six, or twelve orders. In that way, you’re getting a good deal, but it’s a commitment to the long term rather than all up front.

Since we spoke, Oshun has tweaked its plan: new subscribers now get 40% off their first month, and its 3, 6 and 12-month bundles, at up to 30% off for life, are aimed at existing customers who want to upgrade or start a subscription. → See the offers

💬 You’re playing the long game!

Yup, we want 10-year customers. We want you to discover our product, love it, have it on your counter, and keep using it for as long as you see an impact on your health. We could do a big upfront discount and maybe we’ll get £150 AOV [average order value], which looks great, but ultimately we want you to buy Oshun because you really like the product. We’re not trying to trick you into a quick purchase with gimmicks.

💬 What about email? Will you send more in November?

Email plays a big part. We’re comfortable with sending more. Some brands care about open rate, click rate, and revenue per email. I used to be like that. But email is a touchpoint. Even if it hasn’t been opened, someone sees a notification that says Drink Oshun, and that touchpoint will be beneficial in the funnel, even if it’s not attributed to that email. I think about the whole customer journey, not just how a specific ad or email performs. If, at the end of the month, our revenue has grown, then the touchpoints worked!

Read Shopify’s Substack In Stock for more stories like these →

SLOWE Living started as a personal project. Oliver was working in branding and art direction, and he wanted a quality sofa bed he’d actually be happy to live with for the long-haul. When he couldn’t find one, he designed his own.

A few friends bought one, then strangers, and soon enough Oliver figured there was something real in it. Worth another year, anyway! And he’s been telling himself the same thing ever since.

→ For Starters met Oliver at his studio, where we talked about side hustles, commitment, and things built to last…

💬 Morning, Oliver! You launched SLOWE Living because you were scratching a personal itch. Tell us more… 

It’s true, I didn’t try to find any gap in the market or anything like that. It was purely based out of a need.

I’d always enjoyed collecting classic design pieces, and during Covid I was looking for a sofa bed. No one was making one that, in my opinion, felt like one of those classic design pieces I’d spend real money on and have for a very long time. Something functional, comfortable, that looks good. So, in the middle of lockdown, I just sketched it out on Illustrator myself.

💬 Love it. Did you have any furniture design skills back then?

I studied industrial design, but I was by no means a furniture maker or a particularly good industrial designer. I’d lived in Japan and Copenhagen, so there’s definitely an influence from those styles. I just used the skills I had and worked with what I understood.

I first looked for plywood to make a prototype. I visited plywood manufacturers to find the best stuff. Now our material is the same that the likes of Vitra and Artek use – it’s excellent quality. I also found a fantastic upholsterer on Facebook Marketplace – now she’s our production manager and does a bit of our design development. She really understands the product, brand and customers.

💬 And suddenly… boom! You’ve got yourself a furniture brand.

Exactly. At the time, I worked in branding and art direction, but I wasn’t really getting the briefs I wanted. So I thought, well… SLOWE is my dream brief. So I’ll make a furniture brand. With my partner, we designed the visual identity. Then I put the website up, set a product, made six colourways, and started getting attention on Instagram. Friends in Sweden and NYC bought them. I had to figure out shipping. I was suddenly like, Shit, how does this business actually operate?

💬 How long did you consider SLOWE your side hustle?

The first year was part-time. I was developing the product, finding better suppliers, checking the numbers, running test ads, and improving the site. At the end of that year, I determined it was worth doing it for another year. Basically every year since then I’ve been giving it another year! Hopefully I’m still saying that in 10 years’ time...

💬 Recent years have seen Covid, wars, a cost of living crisis – turbulent macroeconomic stuff for a biz with a supply chain.

And the housing market is slow, which is quite tied to our business in the sense that most of our customers tend to own their own property, and invest in pieces that they see as investment pieces and long-term pieces. So we’re definitely linked to that whether we like it or not. Shipping is also hard. We’ve seen increases in prices and yet I haven’t changed my retail price yet.

💬 How much do you do to educate customers about the value and why it costs what it costs? It’s not an impulse buy. If you’re spending three grand, you’re going to think about it for a while.

Luckily most of our customers understand the value, but like any product, whether it’s a shoe or a meal at a restaurant, better communication can help people understand the value. And then they come around to it. We’ll sometimes have customers go, “Oh, it’s a bit too expensive” or “I’m going to look elsewhere.” Then they’ll go away for three or four months and assess the market and come back. There are sofas that are worse made than ours that are twice the price. Ours also comes with aftercare. It’s repairable – if anything goes wrong, you call us directly and we’ll fix it.

💬 Any huge mistakes? Gone down any terribly wrong paths?

No giant mistakes, except I probably should have started sooner. I waited way too long to put it out there, to commit to it. I thought of it as a side project for too long. I could have believed in it more. I might have been further along if I’d started earlier. Then again, there’s no one right or wrong place to be at any time, do you know what I mean?

💬 Lots of people are anxious about putting their stuff out there. I also waited too long to start. How do you navigate the critics and comments and just put your creativity out there?

You can’t please everybody. Some aren’t going to like your product and they’ll rip it to pieces in the comments. But I’m not making it for them. I’m making it for the person that’s prepared to spend money on it. And I know I’ll give that person a really great experience. There are enough people out there that dig what you’re doing and see the value in it. I was actually shocked by how many people were searching for ‘sofa beds’ at any one time. If you capture a small percentage, you’ve got a nice, healthy business.

💬 How do you measure success?

First of all, happy customers – seeing it in people’s homes, smiles on their faces, bums on cushions, so to speak! I’d of course love to also see growth year-on-year, improving the quality of the products, reaching more people, maybe getting distributors in different countries. But ultimately, success is just waking up every day and still wanting to do it.

💬 Shoot your shot, Oliver. Who do you want to be connected with? Dream collabs?

Okay…

Copycats gone wild 🙅‍♀ → The blatant cloning of brands with the help of AI is concerning, but the experience of yoghurt brand Sourmilk is particularly egregious.

Creators = small businesses ✅ → The US SBA issued the first small biz classification guidance for content creators, meaning: “Creators now have easier access to SBA loans, which include micro loans of $50,000 or less and the 7(a) loan program which has a maximum amount of $5 million.”

Cancer capital 💸 → Anil Dash: “There’s a huge disconnect between what most people think of VC, where an investor has a big fund and cuts checks to help a founder build a company, and the current reality, where a handful of billionaire extremists use the cover of ‘VC’ to advance an outrageous agenda where they’re accountable to no one.”

Learn how & when to say no → Katie Spies, founder of fresh dog food brand Maev, believes that saying “no” might be the best thing you do for your business. Read why on In Stock, Shopify’s newsletter on the messy realities of building a successful biz. In partnership with Shopify

Neesh → Check out this index of 300+ indie magazines.

In the AI era, good taste is a problem. Kyle Chayka

The physics of getting fired. Aeon

What’s it really like running Singapore’s tiniest bookstore? Time Out Singapore

The battle for the soul of lockpicking. Huck

37% → Secondhand gifts are going mainstream! Online thrift store ThredUp historically sees a drop in sales during the holiday season, as gifters buy new items instead of secondhand. That’s now flipping:

Draw a horse.

01. Island time. Ever wanted to run a hotel in the Hebrides? The MacDonald Arms sits right on the waterfront in Tobermory, the brightly painted harbour town on the Isle of Mull. It’s just been refurbished and comes with a bar and a restaurant looking over the bay. → Make it yours

02. From customer to owner. Back in January, San Francisco’s Bottom of the Hill said it would close at the end of the year, after 35 years hosting bands from Oasis to Green Day. Then Michele Bronson got in touch. A biotech veteran who’s been a regular since the early 90s and sees about 60 shows a year, she’s just bought the club. The name of her new biz? “I Saw Them When.” → Read the story

And finally, calling all makers and soft goods people. For Starters reader Brad Ewin is prototyping a soft sunglasses case and is on the hunt for a UK-based person/studio that does small-batch cut-and-sew sampling. → Know someone (or someone who knows someone)? Drop him a line!

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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