From giant prawn pyramids to mountains of marshmallows, playing with your food has become an industry unto itself. How did we get here? Plus, the person ending gatekeeping in manufacturing.
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01. Food has become art – and surprisingly big business. With her giant mountains of marshmallows and egg chandeliers (yep), Laila Gohar sits at the top of the pyramid 🥚. Recently, hundreds more people have been jumping into this space. ‘I'm a chef but I'd also say I'm on my way to becoming an artist,’ Anastasia Finders tells us in an in-depth feature for our latest print issue. ‘I always try to curate spaces in an emotional way, and food is one of my main tools.’
02. Gregg Boyd and Maddi Simpson are looking to bridge the Scotland-England divide once and for all – by raising funds to open the first Scottish deli in London 🏴. ‘I just couldn't understand why our national dish – haggis – wasn't the number-one-consumed ingredient across the world,’ says Gregg.
03. Also keep an eye on Gertrude's, a Jewish bistro spot opening soon in NYC from the hospitality industry's number-one meme-maker, Eli Sussman.
04. Most people following Will Lasry aren't looking to manufacture something themselves – they want to check out the highly secret details about how and where cool brands make their clothes. The Montreal-based product designer and manufacturing specialist has a motto – ‘no more gatekeeping’ – and sticks to it in his short videos (which he makes money from via Patreon). He takes people behind the scenes and off the beaten track at trade shows across China, South Korea and Egypt to reveal the suppliers behind big brands like Arc'teryx, Acne Studios, Levi's and tons more…
05. Staying with manufacturing… With regular drops, Arches in Portugal is a good example of how more and more factories are becoming their own brands – or factory-first brands, as we've written about before.
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TRY IT.
Your supply chain can help you stand out these days. Here's a guide to getting it right.
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06. There's big business in slime. It's cheap and easy to produce – and it has an ASMR appeal that kills on TikTok, making it easy to get your product in front of a lot of people. OG Slimes drops something new every Friday (current flavors include Side of Bacon and Spa Towel) and makes around $100,000 in revenue each month. Elsewhere, Snoopslimes is run by 18-year-old Jungmin Kang, who started her business when she was 13 with $200 saved from her allowance.
07. Daniel Barousse is a furniture designer who makes home goods from recycled skateboards. He got a big boost from sharing his process on TikTok 🛹
08. Jazz-influenced collabs are a thing. Check out Book Works, a New York City-based clothing line. Its founders met as neighbors, bonded over their love of music and wanted to make graphics that illustrated the genre. It just released a collection with NYC clothing brand Adsum.
09. This camping rental business didn't end so successfully – still, it's a fun idea ⛺️.
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10. Hype bouldering brands are everywhere. Add KARMA8A to the list.
11. Something we've never seen before: tennis performance eyewear 🕶️. Alongside design brand HUMAN Research Studio, Copenhagen-based tennis brand Palmes just released some new sunglasses. ‘You need eyewear that shields your vision from the sun a bit – many times I've fumbled a serve because of the sunlight blinding me from the ball – while sitting firmly on your head,’ says founder Nikolaj Hansson. It helps that they look good, too.
12. Elsewhere in the active world, new golf brands are proliferating. Some examples…
- Local Rule is a golf and ready-to-wear lifestyle brand from Sweden.
- Bisque Golf has a retail shop/clubhouse/event space in Amsterdam.
- Quiet Golf focuses on a minimalist golf aesthetic.
13. 🇳🇬 The latest from Lagos from our contributor Nelson CJ.
- ‘ALÁRA is an incredible concept store in Lagos that collects and sells fashion and interior pieces from around the world. It's also a huge champion of Nigerian designers.’ ALÁRA is also opening a shop at the Brooklyn Museum, as part of an exhibit on African fashion starting this week and running through to October.
- ‘Another growing trend is the rise of international brands setting up shop here in Lagos, despite [Nigeria's] unstable economy. Adidas opened a [flagship] store in Lagos a few months back and, before that, PUMA [opened a store] too, partnering with renowned Nigerian artist Davido for a limited-edition collab. To the best of my knowledge, this is all due to the country's young population – around 70% of Nigerians are under 30.’
- ‘Check out Street Souk, Nigeria's biggest streetwear convention. It was founded by Iretidayo “Ireti” Zaccheaus in 2018 – now over 100 brands set up shop and the day typically ends with a music festival. The energy is always high.’
14. Restaurant Ca na Toneta is run by sisters in a small village in Mallorca. It's all about seasonal dishes done well. The sisters have converted the house next door to the restaurant into a store that sells various objects from local artists 🏡.
15. Meanwhile, the design of this financial software startup's website is causing some hot debate about whether flashy landing pages actually convert customers. (It seems to be working out OK.)
16. Spreadsheet tech may not be the sexiest thing in the world. But Berlin-based Rows came on our radar when it released an online tool that runs analysis and summarizes takeaways from big datasets. Probably useful if you're not an Excel whiz but need quick insights from, say, a marketing campaign.
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SELL YOURSELF.
If you aren't a natural salesperson – and most people aren't – consider the soft sell. Here's our deep dive into non-coercive marketing.
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17. The next stage in the right-to-repair movement: brands launching reuse-first products. These modular children's headphones from Kibu are simple enough to be assembled by kids, made from replaceable and recyclable components and can be returned to the company when they're no longer needed.
18. 🇸🇬 Our contributor Joseph Koh messaged us some of the things that are catching his eye in Singapore.
- ‘The Lo & Behold Group, a Singapore hospitality company, will turn a former school into a creative and lifestyle enclave. Founder Teng Wen Wee says: “With this new creative cluster, we hope to bring together a new breed of local talents and businesses in lifestyle, wellness and design, to allow people to really get under the skin of [the] city and experience the best that Singapore has to offer.”’
- ‘Beyond The Vines is a retail brand that continues to make waves. It recently collaborated with Pokémon [on] some of the most well-designed pop-culture-related apparel I've seen in a while – coming from someone who's worked at The Walt Disney Company! One of its newest products, the Poofy Bag, has been a huge hit. It capitalizes on this puffy-bag trend that's taken south-east Asia by storm.’
- ‘Cycling and climbing have taken off in Singapore and new homegrown brands have emerged as a result. Tokubetsu Na Mono was founded in 2015 with the idea of making quality cycling gear guided by kaizen (改善), the Japanese belief in continual progress. Co-founder Alex Kwan used to study graphic and fashion design before delving into photography. It's functional gear that looks great. Casual, meanwhile, started as a passion project in 2021 to solve a pain point: climbing shorts for women weren't functional, comfortable and fashionable. You can now see the shorts in bouldering gyms all over the island.’
19. Our Bangkok contributor Pam Vivatsurakit tells us that Pet Shop Bar is the place to go for locals who are obsessed with pets and coffee. It sells neat, practical stuff for cats and dogs and the bar serves local coffee.
20. For those who like wine, we hope you're heading somewhere as nice as Such and Such this weekend – it's a new wine bar in Canberra 🍷.
21. And, if you love pickles and beer, may we suggest pickle beer?
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Elsewhere in Courier:
🙋 IRL: We're speaking at magCulture Live in New York. Come?
🤳 On TikTok: Why this French running brand opened a store in Kenya.
📰 In print: Meet the world's most in-demand custom-speaker builder.
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