Leslie Edelman has run Tiny Doll House, a miniature figurine shop in New York’s Upper East Side neighborhood, for 35 years. Eighteen months ago, new clientele started routinely coming to the store, he says.
In addition to Edelman’s regulars — parents, grandparents and collectors — groups of 20-somethings now flock to the store on Saturday afternoons. They giggle among themselves, text furiously and buy tiny Labubu keychains, Pez dispensers and mock Eames chairs. Some tell Edelman, “I’ve seen you on TikTok,” he says.
“There’s a hell of a lot of picture-taking,” says Edelman, a 75-year-old lifelong New Yorker.
Business owners like Edelman say they’ve noticed a shift in consumer behavior: Gen Zers increasingly seeking out and spending money on old-school hobbies and habits in an effort to get more offline. For small businesses that sell tactile, nostalgic products and services — like rotary phones, needlepoint kits or embroidery services — average shopper age is down and revenue is up, from extant and new customers alike, some owners say.
Craft-based activities and retro-style in-person experiences have steadily gained in popularity since the Covid-19 pandemic, says Marni Shapiro, a co-founder and managing partner of research and consulting firm The Retail Tracker. Specifically, physical products related to offline hobbies have hit a new sales peak this winter as the phrase “going analog” achieved social media virality, she says.
Nearly three quarters of adults participated in a crafting project in 2025, up from 62% in 2019, according to Mintel research. The art and craft materials industry was valued at $23.56 billion in 2025, led by supply companies like Crayola and Faber-Castell, according to a Fortune Business Insights report.
“If we are going more and more digital and using more AI, the counter-trend is going to be very tactile,” Shapiro says. “Nostalgia, to me, is the single biggest [retail] trend out there. It’s not dying. It’s getting stronger.”
Hobbies to keep idle hands busy
Louise Carmen, a Paris-based company, sells accessorized leather journals at two storefronts and online for up to €198.55 — or approximately $232.84 — before customizations. The brand reached a new American audience over the course of 2023, says founder Nathalie Valmary, after her daughter started filming bird’s-eye view TikTok videos of employees’ hands as they personalized leather notebooks with engravings, colorful cords and charms.
The lifecycle of nostalgia trends
Gen Z consumers are now between the ages of 14 and 29, meaning many are at an age where they want to explore their identity and have a little money to do so, says Peter Fader, a marketing professor who focuses on consumer behavior at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
In one sense, the generation’s affinity for analog products — or modernized versions of them — represents many Gen Zers’ oft-cited desire to resist the mainstream, Fader says. In other sense, they’re doing exactly the same thing as generations before them: “Going analog” isn’t all that different than millennials’ obsession with polaroid cameras and record players in the 2010s, says Fader.
Plenty of Gen Zers still post about their analog experiences online, which Fader says is evidence of modern technology’s convenience and deep roots in many people’s lives. But even going analog for a little while may help people discover new and rewarding hobbies that make their lives better, he says.