RetailSoloOne person

A design student’s stationery shop, started between lectures

Zoya sells hand-lettered planners and sticker sheets to other students. It began with a pre-order form and grew into a proper little shop.

Illustrative story: a composite of how an organisation like this can run on Intersink. Names and places are fictional.

Organisation: Tiny Margins
Where: A college hostel in Mehrauli Nagar
Set-up: 1 business, 1 channel, 2 apps
Monthly bill: £0 + VAT

1Before

Orders in DMs, payments in a bank app, labels by hand.

2Setting up

A free User ID, one channel, and a pre-order form with payments.

3A Tuesday afterwards

A small shop, a posting calendar and a weekend of packing without the guesswork.

A person working in a bright home office

Photos are illustrative and do not show the people in this story.

01The people and their world

Meet the people behind Tiny Margins

Zoya KhanFounder, second-year design student
Aisha KhanHer younger sister, packing on weekends

Zoya studies communication design and letters everything, including her friends’ exam timetables. When she posted a planner she had drawn for herself, twenty people asked where they could buy one.

She prints in small batches at a shop near college and packs orders in her hostel room. At weekends her sister helps with stickers and envelopes.

Tiny Margins is not meant to be a big company. It is meant to pay her rent and teach her how a business works.

02The problem, in human terms

What was going wrong

Orders came as Instagram messages. Zoya wrote them into her notes app, asked for payment by UPI and checked her bank app to see who had paid. Addresses were copied from chats and posted with handwritten labels.

She did not want a big monthly bill for something that might stay small, and she did not want to hand a large share of every sale to a marketplace.

“I wanted to pay for a shop when I had a shop, not before.”

Zoya KhanA fictional person in an illustrative story

03What they tried before

The workarounds that got them this far

Instagram messages and a notes app
Fine for five orders, not for fifty.
A marketplace listing
Easy to start, but it took a big share and she never learnt who her customers were.

04How they would set up

Tiny Margins on Intersink

Zoya creates her free User ID, adds Tiny Margins as a business and opens one channel. She starts with the Forms app to take pre-orders with payment, and the Social app to plan posts. When the range outgrows a form she installs the Online Store and removes Forms. She applies for student credits with her college ID and college email.

Free User IDZoya Khan

BusinessTiny Margins

ChannelTiny MarginsThe shop, once the range grew

Online StoreFree SocialFree

The apps in this story

Online Store

Sell products online with catalog, orders, payments and hyperlocal delivery.

Free

Social

Plan, schedule and measure posts on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X and YouTube.

Free

05A day in their life afterwards

A day in their life, some months in

8:00
Before her first lecture, Zoya checks overnight orders on her phone. All paid, all with addresses.
13:00
In a free period she schedules the week’s posts: a new planner cover on Wednesday, a sticker sheet on Saturday.
17:00
She adds a festive sticker set to the shop with a launch coupon.
Saturday
Aisha packs orders from a printed list. Nothing is copied from a chat.
Month end
Zoya looks at what sold and decides what to print next time.

06What changes

What is different now

In plain words, because this is an illustrative story and there are no real measurements behind it.

Every order is paid and addressed

No more matching bank alerts to messages.

She owns her customer list

Buyers come back to her shop, not to a marketplace.

The bill matches the business

She paid for a form while the shop was small, and for a store once it needed one.

Time for her degree

Posting and orders fit around lectures instead of taking over the evening.

07The apps and the monthly cost

What it would cost each month

A laptop showing charts on a desk — Photos are illustrative and do not show the people in this story.

Monthly bill, at full set-up

Monthly cost per channel for Tiny Margins
Channel and apps	Per month
Tiny MarginsOnline Store Free + Social Free	£0
Subtotal, before VAT	£0
UK VAT at 20%	£0
Total per month	£0

08Lessons

What others could take from this

Start with the smallest tool that works
A pre-order form was enough for the first months.
Swap apps as you grow
Apps can be removed as easily as they are added.
Ask for student credits
Students enrolled at a college or university can apply; credits are used before the card is charged.

09Your turn

Starting something on the side?

A User ID is free. Add a business and one app when you are ready.

Create your free User ID See it for individuals