A Handwritten Love Letter to Small Business

Why I believe authenticity will outlast scale

This Christmas, Santa brought me a record player.

Not another headphone. Not a subscription. A record player.

Santa got it exactly right this time.

Up until high school, every break I had was spent at my grandparents’ place. The list of available technologies there was short and final: a tube TV, a local radio permanently tuned to the news, and my grandfather’s turntable. It held a sizable collection of children’s stories and songs — records I knew by heart long before I understood how fragile and precious those memories would later become.

Along with the unexpected gift, I discovered an unfamiliar new impulse: to become a collector. Naturally, I went to eBay in search of old records, without expecting anything beyond the usual platform resellers.

Then one of the records arrived with a handwritten letter from the owner of a small store.

Not a printed card. Not a QR code. A real letter.

He wrote about his collection and invited people to stop by… and I called him.

Joe, in his fifties, went digging through his treasures and wrote to tell me he had records I might like—Chuck Berry from 1968, and Cabaret with Liza Minnelli from 1976. Not reissues, he emphasized. He also allowed himself a modest brag: through his personal network, he said, he could find almost anything…

Sentiment Is Not a Strategy

This is where I have to stop myself. It’s easy to romanticise moments like this—especially knowing that small businesses are under immense pressure. The background chorus is familiar by now: AI-driven automation, mass overproduction, collapsing costs, and growing unemployment. In those projections, there is very little room left for Joe’s store.

Here are the uncomfortable numbers.

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