This week we focus on a company that sells human bones, micro dosing drinks, sci-fi-inspired fashion and a bunch of other equally niche businesses. Plus, the Asian grocery store capitalizing on TikTok's obsession with restocking videos.
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01. Jon Pichaya Ferry isn't your regular 23-year-old. He sells skeletons and bones through his brand JonsBones, including an ‘incredibly rare’ $9,500 skull. While it's pretty creepy, it's perfectly legal – and definitely niche.
02. Continuing the theme – how about a made-to-order vase hand-painted with profanities? Nick Dynan was a graphic designer for 10 years before he launched Me Old China, combining his love of typography with ceramics.
03. Ray Suzuki is behind a creative platform called Chowa, which mixes old-school Japanese crafts with modern culture and experiences. The product itself is a monthly drop of special art editions inside beautiful wooden boxes.
04. Another new take on a traditional craft: Casual Readers Club focuses on ‘words from black, brown and traditionally under-represented authors’. What's more – and notable for a book club – ‘it's a judgment-free zone,’ says book editor and founder India Chambers. The club hosts community walks, dinners and public reading sessions across New York and London. ‘We meet people where they are. You don't have to come with well-thought-out literary points. There's no expectation of our members to have even read the book.’
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DIG DEEPER.
Thanks to #BookTok, the book industry has been going through some big changes. Here's a deep dive into what it means for content creators, authors and publishers.
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05. Sam Trotman spots trends for an impressive variety of brands. In particular, he always has his eye on who's up-and-coming in the fashion world.
- POST ARCHIVE FACTION (PAF). ‘There's a new wave of young designers in South Korea getting more into lifestyle. It's like gorpcore but the designs speak to a younger consumer, who typically lives in an inner-city environment, while still being aimed at a fashion audience.’
- FFFPOSTALSERVICE. ‘The founder is from California but moved his production to Seoul. I met him at Paris Fashion Week last year – he based his collection [on] sci-fi films like [Ridley Scott's 1979 classic] Alien. His brand is based on function, not just aesthetic – which is something I'm always behind, because there's so much waste in the fashion industry.’
- Asspizza. ‘The brand bucks the trend for fashion designers in that it'll tour around the US in a van, stopping off in random small cities that designers never usually visit. Asspizza never gets collabs with big brands. The brand does everything for itself and supports a small organic community of people that are into fashion.’
06. ‘Gen Z is all about supporting each other,’ Sam continues. ‘You see [it] in the way Nigerian-born artist [Olaolu] Slawn, multidisciplinary Nigerian skate crew Motherlan and Corteiz founder Clint all support each other. They all have their own expertise and their own brands, but they're still willing to post about each other. They're all willing to rise up together – it's amazing.’
07. Food for thought: producing a professionally directed film is a highly unusual move for a small food business, but that's what HOKO has done for the opening of its first Hong Kong-style cafe-restaurant in London 🎥. Director Nicolee Tsin heard about the opening through a friend of a friend and approached the co-founders about making a one-minute video, called Home Again. ‘We figured art and food is always the best medium to connect people, to tell the story of a culture without trying to be educational,’ says co-founder Nicole Ma. Thanks to such outside-of-the-box thinking, news of HOKO's opening reached audiences far and wide beyond foodie circles.
08. Elsewhere in the world of high production values: Lynn Yamada ‘Lynja’ Davis, a 74-year-old Japanese-American, makes hilariously well-produced food videos (or someone on her team does) and has hit 16 million TikTok followers and counting.
09. This Asian-grocery-store owner is capitalizing on TikTok's obsession with restocking videos – she's built a massive audience by sharing delivery days and breaking down stock costs – and now she's expanding to a bigger space next door.
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TRY IT.
Should you bare all to your customers about your business? We've got the dos and don'ts of building a business in public.
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10. Luke Boase founded alcohol-free beer brand Lucky Saint and now he has a pub with the same name in London's Marylebone – it's the latest non-alcoholic brand to open its own drinking establishment (also see: LOAH and Asahi) 🍺. The idea of the pub is to make no/low drinking less of a novelty. ‘We want it to feel like a great pub, not a branded experience,’ Luke tells us. ‘As a result, we've seen lots of people coming back and remembering it.’
11. File this under industry to watch – micro dosing as an alcohol alternative. It's hitting the beverage world in a big way – with examples like BRĒZ, which combines THC, CBD and lion's mane mushrooms.
12. But hangovers are still very real for millions of people. No surprise, then, that we've been seeing more supplements promising to reduce the discomfort of drinking and its effects. Valet is a brand of vegan capsules sold at Pop Up Grocer that enhance the metabolism of alcohol, while Singapore-based DrinkAid just launched an oxygen-rich recovery water to help rehydration.
13. ICYMI, young people are eating cottage cheese again – #cottagecheese has more than 400 million views on TikTok and annual sales in the US were up more than 15% in 2021. While it's a category still dominated by established corporations, there's definitely space to make curdled milk cool again.
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TRY IT.
A good rebrand can give a much-needed makeover to a boring category. Here's how a Swedish cleaning supplies company stood out through a witchy brand refresh.
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14. A retail strategy that's proving successful with one UK-based founder: festivals. OH MY SHROOMS, an adaptogenic mushroom-chocolate company, previously sold through pop-ups but, as founder Ayelen Martinez tells us: ‘Festivals are a place where the majority of people are our target customers, because they share the same values and beliefs as the brand, which translates to sales – this increases brand awareness beyond the festival. It's also the best place to work because everyone's on a certain vibe.’ 🍄
15. Skincare snacks are taking the place of traditional vitamins, as people search for options easier than a 10-step serum routine. We expect more to pop up soon, but here are four ingestible beauty products that caught our eye.
- Ayla's lychee-flavored collagen jelly is designed to be eaten before bed for overnight results.
- Skincare influencer Ava Lee just launched byAVA – antioxidant drink sachets inspired by the superfoods she grew up eating in South Korea and China.
- Sourse, a vitamin-infused chocolate brand, offers collagen chocolates that hydrate skin.
- Herbar's Skin Pearls are made with fungi and botanical extracts that restore the skin barrier.
16. Meanwhile, this wellness patch brand wants you to get your vitamins through your skin.
17. Mud roads and no electricity? No problem. When Elona Bejo, founder of eco-lodge Ferma Albanik, decided to leave her job as an architect to start something in the Albanian countryside, she was working with very little. Here's what kept her going: ‘I had this feeling that this was a good idea and a good investment. I was feeling good about it and that's what's important.’
18. There's no shortage of new outdoors brands, but there are fewer indie gear shops that specialize in the latest gorp-y goods. That's changing, with new outfitters popping up in outdoorsy towns. See: The Living Mountain in Abergavenny, Wales, Tourist in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and active community Usal's shop and meeting space in LA 🧗.
19. Plus, lots of outdoors categories are getting a refresh. Take camp foods: Field Blends and Camp Spice make packable spice blends, while Toodaloo makes an adaptogen trail mix.
20. If your version of the great outdoors is a long walk to get coffee, we hope it's somewhere like this small art-focused cafe in Berlin.
21. Or take a real break and stay somewhere like this design hotel that recently opened in Athens 🇬🇷.
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Elsewhere in Courier:
🙋 In person: Time's running out to get your tickets to see us in NYC 👀.
🤳 On TikTok: This couple renovated an eighties motel in Byron Bay. Dreamy.
📰 In print: From Accra, The Slum Studio schools us in sustainable fashion.
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