01: Welcome to Small Fry
The biweekly newsletter influencing you to shop small.
Hello and welcome to Small Fry, a biweekly* newsletter dedicated to influencing you to shop small.
The term small fry refers to people or things that are not considered important compared with somebody or something else (but more importantly, it can also refer to tiny, juvenile fish). While I realize this term could be taken as an insult, I chose it because I personally find it very endearing. Who gets to decide who or what is important anyways? (Hint: it’s me because this is my newsletter).
You may already know me from my paper goods brand, YEAHYELHSA, but if you don’t, here’s my work, a bit about my brand, and myself.
A few things led to me to create Small Fry:
Experiencing burn-out from running my own small business
Etsy’s string of disappointing decisions in the last few years
Enjoying creating my holiday gift guides (and realizing I could do it year-round)
The hell that is using Instagram, TikTok, etc. as a small business owner
Many discussions with friends & customers about the state of online shopping and discovering new (small) brands
An argument could certainly be made that the last thing anyone needs is another bulleted list of things to buy, however, I find that there are very few spaces online dedicated to sharing things exclusively from “real” small businesses (more on this later).
All of my posts on Small Fry will be free for now, but if/when I decide to change that, I will not paywall any of my recommendations or gift guides. *I’m starting out on a biweekly schedule, but I plan to eventually post weekly. In addition to my general Small Fry posts, I will also feature small business owners (Small Talk) as well as just share what’s on my mind (Small World). I’m an avid Substack app user, but you can also subscribe via email to get Small Fry directly in your inbox.
I’m not a writer by any means, but I do love sharing my findings on the internet and I hope you’ll enjoy reading about them.
Thanks for joining me 🎣