• Small businesses on TikTok are telling their customers about their worst business struggles.
• "My small business is failing" and other messages have become common hooks.
• It's a good way to build authenticity, marketing experts say — as long as it's done smartly.

In the last couple of years, small businesses have littered TikTok with confessionals.

"My small business is failing," is how they often begin.

"If you've been following me for the last couple of months, you may think that it's not," craftsperson Laura Craine said in a post last year. "But in reality, I haven't received an order in weeks."

Another TikToker said: "On the outside, it might look like everything is going well and I'm making lots of orders, but I'm just not."

Ranging from straight-up claims of failure through to warts-and-all insight into the toughest days, each post aims to grab a precious few seconds of your attention, and maybe a portion of your cash.

They resonate well with users "who want to see more than the polished, curated success stories that once dominated social media and Instagram," Inigo Rivero, cofounder of UK-based TikTok marketing agency House of Marketers, told BI.

It also comes "as more small business owners are embracing radical transparency" on TikTok, Rivero added.

And in many cases, it seems to be working.

I remember thinking: 'I can't do this.'

Emma Molloy has long known the power of lifting the veil on her vegan-friendly doughnut business through TikTok, and being transparent about the ups and downs of making her four-year-old business work.

But the hardest moment for her company, Cat Burglar Dough Co., came in August. She had just given birth and was exhausted. Sales had been poor, and she had just learned that her maternity cover had fallen through.

"I was in a real corner and I remember just sitting there thinking, 'I can't do this,'" Molloy, 30, told BI.

She posted about her worries on TikTok, saying: "This month I've come closer than I ever have before to quitting," but added that she was determined to carry on.

A couple of days later, she was sitting on the floor with her baby when her phone suddenly started buzzing nonstop.

Notifications were flooding in. "Order, order, order, order," she said.

Over on Facebook, an influencer named Lisa Dollan — more familiar to her hundreds of thousands of fans as Yorkshire Peach — had just posted a glowing review.

"We had about £3,000 [about $3,800] worth of orders in a week," Molloy said, adding that the business turned a corner after that.

Business Insider wasn't able to independently confirm the amount.

Dollan didn't respond to BI's request for comment. It's unclear whether Molloy's emotional post prompted her reaction.

But some business owners told BI that posting some variant of "my small business is failing" has brought them unusual engagement, new customers, as well as encouragement at a time when they sorely needed it.

The pull of schadenfreude

Creative duo Caitlin Derer and Joseph Lattimer hopped on the trend in August, with a video that has been watched more than 1 million times.

"For us that's huge," they said.

They used the format as a vehicle to talk about how hard they were working and what they needed to turn the business into a success.

Their business, Collectable Cities, makes art toys for the high-end souvenir market, but the pair had reached the "soul-destroying" part of the business where practical issues turned the spark into a slog, Derer said.

"Then you see someone else make a video, where you can feel their pain through the screen and it's like, 'I should be also sharing some of this,'" she said.

The response to their video spanned thousands of comments, giving them exposure to new customers, as well as a wealth of feedback and suggestions.

Alice Bull, founder of Gratified, a TikTok-focused strategy and content agency, says she finds these kinds of posts compelling and has even ordered from businesses after seeing them. She characterizes it as a "storytelling hook," one of five tried-and-tested approaches that she says tend to produce results on the platform.

Bull regularly encourages her clients to not just showcase their products, but to pull back the curtain on their own stories.

"Telling stories, especially on TikTok right now, is one of the most powerful things you can do, particularly with a small business," she told BI.

"Anything you can do to connect with the audience that will potentially become your customers is absolutely vital," she added. "And one of the quickest ways you can do that is by being slightly dramatic."

She said that research shows that emotionally positive content gets the best engagement, but negative content has its own pull.

Indeed, one 2023 study that tracked the eye movement of TikTok and Twitter users suggested that viewers spend more time on negative rather than positive content.

It works because people immediately want to know what happened, Bull said. "You want to either experience that emotion with that person or understand what they went through" in order to save yourself from the same fate, she said.

It can also be a smart way of adding context to unpopular decisions like price hikes, Bull said.

Staying authentic

Done right, the hook can tap into the authenticism that has underpinned other TikTok trends in recent years, like deinfluencing and the "social media isn't real" hook.

But there's an obvious business risk to telling the world you're failing.

People who adopt this strategy need to weigh up the risk of harm to their long-term reputation with the benefits of appealing to people through honesty, Bull said.

There's also a potential ethical problem that comes with virality — if declaring your troubles is such an effective cash lever, there'll always be the temptation for successful businesses to exaggerate or even lie about their struggles.

Indeed, so many iterations have proliferated on the platform that it's been boiled down to something like a script, with audio from particularly successful versions borrowed by others, who simply paste it over their own visuals.

Rivero said that quality also matters.

"I'm not just going to buy a product just because I like the story," he said. "It needs to come hand-in-hand with a good quality product."

He added that a dropshipper who makes the same complaint as a one-person craft business is unlikely to get much sympathy.

Building trust

Laura Craine said that the massive response to her "small business is failing" post was part of what rallied her to carry on with her craft business when she was almost ready to close shop.

"At the time, my videos weren't doing great," she said. But this one took off, bringing her hundreds of new followers and a wealth of supportive feedback.

Craine's business, With Love And Dreams, preserves personal items like wedding blooms or human remains in resin to create memorial keepsakes.

The fact that she handles sensitive and irreplaceable items means her business depends on maintaining a deep wellspring of trust. Being completely authentic with her audience just made sense.

"I want people to see that I'm a real person," she said.

Cybersecurity has been a major subject of discussion in recent years, with purported Chinese spy balloons floating overhead, a major Appalachian oil pipeline hacked with ransomware and questions about mysterious drones over New Jersey skies. 

But one overlooked area of focus in this regard is agriculture, several prominent figures have said — especially with America’s ag states primed to lend their top political leaders to Washington in the new year.

Dakota State University President Jose-Marie Griffiths told Fox News Digital how important the heartland has become geopolitically, with several Dakotans gaining leadership or cabinet roles in the new year — including Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., chairing the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Cybersecurity.

"I said quite a lot in the past and in [congressional] testimony about my concerns about agriculture and food production’s critical infrastructure, which came rather late to the cybersecurity critical infrastructure table," Griffiths said.

INFLATION, SUSTAINABILITY AND GLOBALISM ARE POTENTIAL DEATH SENTENCE TO US AG: FARMERS

"People [will] start to realize the agricultural vehicles they're using increasingly are autonomous and connecting to broadband [via] satellite — and other ways that these become vulnerable. And for people who wish to do us harm, they're exploiting vulnerabilities as much as they can."

Residents across the heartland pay much more attention to the threats China and other rivals pose to the U.S. agriculture sector, she said. 

With advancements in technology, hackers can now find their way into harvesters, granaries and the nation’s freight-train network, Griffiths and Rounds said separately.

Whether the cash crop is Pennsylvania potatoes, Florida oranges or Dakotan wheat, all are crucial to the U.S. economy and supply chain, and all can be subject to cyberthreats, Griffiths suggested.

Rounds told Fox News Digital he has studied for some time the potential vulnerabilities of the American agriculture sector when it comes to foreign actors and cybersecurity.

"It’s more than just the vehicles and so forth," he said.

"A lot of it has to do with the infrastructure that we rely on. A good example is your water systems; your electrical systems... All of those right now are connected and they all have cyber-points-of-entry. 

"And so, we have been, for an extended period of time, looking at threats that could come from overseas by adversaries that would like to infiltrate not only the water supplies, but also the electrical systems… and in some cases, sewer systems."

Rounds said he and other lawmakers have been focused on where malign actors can proverbially "shoot the arrows at us," and figure out who they are and how to stop them.

GREEN GOVERNANCE IS THE NEW GUISE FOR MERCANTILISM, WILL LEAD TO GLOBAL INSTABILITY: KEVIN ROBERTS

He said the Chinese firm Huawei had been selling cheap hardware to rural telecom entities and could be able to infiltrate communications systems.

"Once we found out that that was in there… that they could be putting in latent materials that could be activated at a later date, we've gotten most of them pulled out. But that's just one example of the ways in which rural areas can be a way into the rest of our communication systems," he said.

Rounds said drones are becoming increasingly used in agriculture, and they, too, have the danger of being hacked.

Vehicles like harvesters and tractors have also greatly advanced technologically in the near term and face similar challenges.

"A lot of that right now is done with GPS. You get into your tractor, you plug it in and basically it'll drive it for you. We leave people in those tractors, but at some stage of the game, some of those might very well become autonomous as well — and they're subject to cyber-intervention…" he said.

Grain elevators also can be interfered with, which stymies marketing and transportation, and endangers the greater supply chain and the ability for a farmer to sell on the open market, Rounds said.

Asked if he preferred today’s agriculture sector to the era before automation, Rounds said it’s not about what he thinks, but what is going to happen in the future.

"We will have more and more autonomous vehicles being used in farming. And the reason is we don't have the manpower — and we replace it with machinery. The machinery is going to get bigger. It's going to become more sophisticated, and we're going to be expected to do more things with fewer people actually operating them.," he said.

"The supply chain is so critical. We rely on autonomy in many cases for a lot of the delivery of our resources, both to the farmer, but also back out from the farmer in terms of a commodity that he wants to market."

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If that new technologically-advanced system malfunctions or is hacked, it will greatly disrupt the ability to provide the raw materials to the people and companies "actually making the bread" and such.

Amit Yoran, CEO of exposure management firm Tenable, recently testified before the House Homeland Security Committee and spoke at length about cyber threats to critical U.S. infrastructure.

Asked about cybersecurity in the agriculture realm, Yoran told Fox News Digital recently that there is "no singular defense paradigm that could effectively be applied across all sectors."

"Some critical infrastructure providers have a high degree of cybersecurity preparedness, strong risk understanding and risk management practices, and very strong security programs. Others are woefully ill-prepared," said Yoran, whose company is based in Howard County, Maryland.

• Party City's CEO told employees the specialty retailer is "winding down" operations, CNN reports.
• The company was impacted severely by the COVID-19 pandemic and never fully recovered.
• The company spent much of the past two years in bankruptcy proceedings and has closed 80 locations.

Party City's balloon is out of air.

CEO Barry Litwin, who took the job in August, told Party City's corporate employees on Friday that operations were "winding down" immediately, CNN reported.

The news follows reports last week that the company was contemplating a second bankruptcy in two years as debt continued to weigh on profitability.

A spokesperson for Party City did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Litwin told employees the company had done what it could to avoid shutting down but that, "unfortunately, it's necessary to commence a wind-down process immediately," CNN reported.

Party City navigated a pre-pandemic shortage of helium for balloons, securing a new supply source.

It was impacted severely by the COVID-19 pandemic, when lockdowns and social distancing ended many celebratory gatherings, and other mass retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Target stepped up their party supply offerings.

The company spent much of 2023 in bankruptcy proceedings and reportedly closed 80 locations, or roughly a tenth of its store fleet.

It exited bankruptcy in September 2023, after a judge canceled $1 billion of its debt. Litwin was appointed CEO a year later.

On Friday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) sued four financial companies involved with Zelle. The CFPB’s lawsuit (via CNBC) accuses Zelle’s operator (Early Warning Services) and three of the service’s partner banks — JPMorgan Chase, Bank Of America and Wells Fargo — of failing to protect consumers from widespread fraud on the peer-to-peer payment system.

The CFPB says customers of those three banks have lost over $870 million during Zelle’s seven years as a payment service. The suit claims hundreds of thousands of customers who filed fraud complaints were denied meaningful assistance, with some being told to “contact the fraudsters directly to recover their money.” (Pro tip: Don’t do that.)

“The nation’s largest banks felt threatened by competing payment apps, so they rushed to put out Zelle,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra wrote in a statement. “By their failing to put in place proper safeguards, Zelle became a gold mine for fraudsters, while often leaving victims to fend for themselves.”

The CFPB says one of the system’s loopholes is that its “tokens” (linked US phone numbers or email addresses) can be used and reassigned across different banks. The agency claims fraudsters can exploit this by connecting a victim’s number or email to the perpetrator’s deposit account, causing payments meant for the consumer to go to the scammer’s account instead.

The suit accuses Zelle and the banks of allowing repeat offenders to bounce between financial institutions with impunity. “Banks did not share information about known fraudulent transactions with other banks on the network,” the CFPB wrote. “As a result, bad actors could carry out repeated fraud schemes across multiple institutions before being detected, if they were detected at all.”

The CFPB also claims the defendant banks didn’t heed red flags to prevent further fraud, report incidents consistently or on time, properly investigate customer complaints or take appropriate action.

On Friday, Zelle framed the government’s lawsuit as a political hit that would help criminals and force them to charge fees. “The CFPB’s attacks on Zelle are legally and factually flawed, and the timing of this lawsuit appears to be driven by political factors unrelated to Zelle,” Jane Khodos, Zelle spokesperson, wrote in a statement. “Zelle leads the fight against scams and fraud and has industry-leading reimbursement policies that go above and beyond the law. The CFPB’s misguided attacks will embolden criminals, cost consumers more in fees, stifle small businesses and make it harder for thousands of community banks and credit unions to compete.”

In September, JPMorgan Chase wrote in a quarterly filing (via CNBC) that it would consider counter-litigation if the CFPB took action against the bank for its role with Zelle.

Last month, The Washington Post reported that President-elect Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans plan to limit the CFPB’s funding and powers, aligning with the agendas of large financial institutions. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, his “government efficiency” advisors, have said they want to eliminate the agency, which was established in 2011 in response to the 2007-08 financial crisis and resulting recession.

Killing the agency would require a congressional vote that wouldn’t likely pass, given Republicans’ thin majorities. But they could do what Trump did in his first term: appoint a new director to slow or stop regulatory actions, effectively kneecapping the agency as long as they’re in charge.

• Big Lots said Thursday it does not expect to close the deal to sell itself to a private equity firm.
• The company will hold going-out-of-business sales at remaining stores as it looks for a new buyer.
• Hundreds of Big Lots stores are slated to close across the US.

The fate of Big Lots is getting down to the wire.

The discount retailer said Thursday that it will hold going-out-of-business sales at its remaining stores as it does not expect to close its sale to private equity firm Nexus Capital Management.

However, it is not officially going out of business.

"While we remain hopeful that we can close an alternative going concern transaction, in order to protect the value of the Big Lots estate, we have made the difficult decision to begin the GOB process," CEO Bruce Thorn said in a statement.

The company did not specify why the deal — which was worth roughly $750 million and had received court approval in November — fell through.

Big Lots said it does not expect the going-out-of-business sales will preclude it from negotiating a new deal, which it hopes to achieve by early January.

In addition to its announcement, Big Lots added hundreds of new locations to its list of more than 200 closing stores, which has been growing since it filed for bankruptcy protection in September. The fleet previously counted nearly 1,400 stores across the US.

Business Insider visited one location before it was included on this latest list and found empty shelves, an unusual assortment of merchandise, and few actual bargain prices.

Big Lots positions itself as a store to find great deals, which it offers by sourcing products at low costs from suppliers and other retailers.

But declining sales, a growing mountain of debt, financial losses, and a high percentage of underperforming stores have put the company's future in doubt.

If you are a Big Lots worker who wants to share your perspective, please contact Dominick via email or text/call/Signal at 646.768.4750. Responses will be kept confidential, and Business Insider strongly recommends using a personal email and a non-work device when reaching out

• As a graduate student at Stanford, Alex Yin, 32, had to decide between two internship opportunities
• He chose an internship in Bhutan, even though it was less relevant to his career.
• During his monthlong stint as an IT consultant, he learned how to grow from discomfort.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Alex Yin, 32, an options trader from New Jersey. He graduated from Stanford Graduate School of Business in June. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

As a Stanford Graduate School of Business student, deciding where to intern was tough.

I had two offers under the school's international program, the Global Management Immersion Experience. In order to graduate, fulfilling this program is required — either through the work abroad program or by taking a course on international business.

My first option was to work for a family office in Madrid, analyzing various investments. I had studied finance and statistics undergrad at New York University and had spent seven years in Chicago trading options at a large firm. It seemed like a natural fit and could be useful for anything I wanted to do in the future.

But I also had a second offer — a monthlong internship as an IT consultant at a hazelnut farm in Bhutan.

I had wanted to go to Bhutan ever since I went on vacation to Tibet when I was 17. It was such a magical place, and I wanted to return to a similar environment. I also knew it was a difficult country for visitors to visit as the government limits tourism.

It was a battle between my heart and my head. My heart was screaming, "Go to Bhutan! It doesn't matter what the job or company is. It's a cool opportunity."

Usually, I trust my head, but for this, I just listened to my heart.

I took the second offer

In August 2023, I flew 14 hours from New York to New Delhi and another five hours to Bhutan.

On the night I arrived, I met the CEO of Mountain Hazelnuts — an eccentric and friendly British man. The next morning, he took me to Tiger's Nest, an iconic monastery in Bhutan. It was an intense two-hour hike with steep and muddy trails.

Before the trip, I told myself I wouldn't care how uncomfortable it was and that I could spend a month without complaining. But it was day two, and I was like, "Wow, this is not easy. It's hot. I'm sweaty. There's a lot of poop around me. I'm about to fall." Still, I pushed through, and it was a magical experience at the top.

Later, we took a 16-hour car ride to Lingmethang, a small town in the eastern part of Bhutan, where I would work. I stayed in a three-bedroom home above the corporate office.

My week was divided between days in the office and field visits. As an IT consultant, my job responsibility was to manage a very limited IT budget and improve the security of their backup systems.

There was a point when I realized I'd actually never done any of this stuff before. "Am I qualified for the role?" I wondered to myself.

However, I learned that you can achieve a lot if you spend your time fully focused on solving a problem, even if you haven't had that direct experience before.

After work, I'd go to the village, drink a beer, and eat some momos, a type of dumpling, with my colleagues. They were locals between the ages of 25 and 45, and could all speak English well. I had to adjust to the simplicity, but I really appreciated it after a year at Stanford, where social events were nonstop.

Growing from discomfort

My biggest takeaway was that transitioning from a comfortable to an uncomfortable state isn't easy. But once you're in that uncomfortable state, it's pretty easy to maintain it.

In the village, I didn't have a lot of creature comforts. I had a pretty spartan life. But I was just as happy there, without the technology and distractions I had in Palo Alto. It's such a beautiful place that I didn't feel bored.

At night, I'd fend off mosquitoes, as locals don't kill them. I ran out of mosquito repellent in the first week, which was hard. The food also took a bit of getting used to, as it was mostly vegetarian.

Now, I live in New Jersey and am back in options trading. Although the internship was not entirely relevant to my career, it helped me gain confidence that if I try my best to solve a problem, I can still accomplish something.

I also appreciated how cohesive the company in Bhutan was. Although it wasn't doing well, everyone wanted to contribute their best. They held company barbecues where people would bring their families, dance, and sing into the night. I never heard anyone complaining during my time there.

I have found that this cohesiveness is hard to find in the US, where firms incentivize loyalty with money. I'd like to apply that to my future work places.

I will never regret choosing Bhutan, and I plan to return for a visit at some point.

Waymo’s fleet of driverless vehicles are operating in more cities and a study indicates that may reduce crashes on roadways. The study, a non-paid partnership between Waymo itself and reinsurer Swiss Re, indicated Waymo’s cars result in fewer insurance claims than those operated by people.

Swiss Re analyzed liability claims from collisions covering 25.3 million miles driven by Waymo’s autonomous cars. The study also compared Waymo’s liability claims to human driver baselines based on data from over 500,000 claims and over 200 billion driving miles. The results found that Waymo Driver “demonstrated better safety performance when compared to human-driver vehicles.”.

The study found cars operated by Alphabet’s Waymo Driver resulted in 88 percent fewer property damage claims and 92 percent fewer bodily injury claims.

Swiss Re also invented a new metric to compare Waymo Driver against only newer vehicles with advanced safety tech, like driver assistance, automated emergency braking and blind spot warning systems, instead of against the whole corpus of those 200 billion driving miles. In this comparison, Waymo still came out ahead with an 86 percent reduction in property damage claims and a 90 percent reduction on bodily damage claims.

Of course, there are two glaring issues. First is that Waymo currently only operates in cities, which, yes, account for the bulk of crashes in the US, but rural areas account for a much higher number of crashes (especially fatal ones) proportional to their population. (The study, incidentally, states that having exurban data included in the baseline metrics actually cuts against Waymo's true safety numbers.) Second: Waymo simply hasn't been around that long. It's very hard to get an accurate measure of the system when its real-world testing period has been so relatively short.

The numbers may look good for Waymo Driver in studies but they aren’t perfect by any stretch. Waymo issued its second recall over the summer when one of its robotaxis hit a street level telephone pole at 8 mph in Phoenix. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched an investigation into Waymo and found 24 incidents that involved crashes or traffic violations.

• Alex Teo, 36, left his corporate job to take over his family's joss paper business.
• The journey has not been easy in modern Singapore, where religious affiliations are declining.
• Teo's career goal is to reinvent the traditional business for the younger generation.

The latest smartphone, a three-story villa, and a private jet. Alex Teo has sold it all — for the dead.

Teo, 36, is the third-generation owner of Ban Kah Hiang Trading, one of Singapore's oldest joss paper businesses. They sell incense sticks, joss papers, and paper effigies — or paper replicas of real-life objects — which are designed to be burned as part of Chinese ancestral worship outside homes and in temples.

His grandfather opened the shop in the 1950s before his father took over in the early 1990s.

But it's an increasingly tough business to run in Singapore, where religious affiliations are waning. Many joss paper business owners of his father's generation have closed down because their kids did not want to take over, he said.

So, at 28, he stepped up. "I thought it would be a pity if I were not to continue it," he told Business Insider.

Now, he's on a mission to reinvent the traditional business for the new generation.

He had no interest at first

During traditional Chinese festivals, believers in Chinese folk religion burn joss paper — also known as "hell money" — as an offering to deities or ancestors.

Some also burn paper effigies of the latest products, such as cars and cameras, for their ancestors.

"The belief is that by burning these items, they will become 'real' in the afterlife and can also be used by their loved ones there," Terence Heng, a sociologist from the University of Liverpool, told BI.

Although Teo grew up helping at the shop, he was never very religious and had no interest in taking over. After graduating from college with a degree in business management, he worked for the public service and then an insurance company, assessing medical claims.

But things changed in 2016 when his dad got sick. His parents, then in their late 50s, asked him whether he could take over.

"I thought, 'Should I give up my corporate job? But I would have to give up some social life,'" he recalled, explaining that most people in the industry are significantly older, unlike the colleagues he had formed friendships with in his previous jobs.

Teo, who now has four kids, said his wife supported the career switch. "She thought that if I were to do my own business, I would have more time for her," he said.

He was also enticed by the thought of being his own boss.

"If I work hard in the corporate world, I can only wait for my bonus. But here, I'm the boss. If I work hard, I earn more money," he said.

The business of religion in modern society

Still, his journey has not been easy. Since taking over the business, Teo says he has seen retail sales fall as the younger generation drifts away from religious beliefs.

In Singapore, between 2010 and 2020, there was an increased proportion of residents with no religious affiliations across all age groups, data from the Singapore Department of Statistics showed. The same data showed that the percentage of Taoists and Buddhists — religious groups that use joss paper products — fell by 2.1% and 2.2%, respectively.

The decline in religious beliefs is part of a wider trend across the world. In the US, around 28% of adults described themselves as atheists, agnostics, or "nothing in particular" when asked about their religion — up from 16% in 2007, a 2024 Pew Research Center survey found.

Meanwhile, complaints about the environmental impact of burning joss paper have been simmering in Singapore.

In February, the Singapore government ran a second campaign to improve burning etiquette by encouraging people to pray in temples instead of outside their homes and to clean up after prayers, per a press release from the Alliance for Action.

Teo said that in the past, business at his family's retail shop would pick up during festive periods like Lunar New Year and the Hungry Ghost Festival but lull during other times of the year.

Running the retail shop also affected his parents, who worked over 10 hours daily and wanted to retire.

So, in May last year, Teo sold the retail shop to focus on wholesale distribution to companies and temples from their warehouse.

Teo saw it as an opportunity to invest more time in innovating their products to meet the needs of a changing consumer base.

"We had to think about how we can prolong tradition and culture to fit into the current modern mindset," he said. "If we were to continue to sell the traditional way like my dad did, I don't think we can be sustainable."

Keeping up with the times

In 2023, Teo partnered with his close friend, Chris Huang, who works in FinTech, to establish Base Genesis, a modern joss paper startup.

The pair invested a mid-five-figure amount to set up the business. While Teo focuses on operations, Huang oversees finances. They've since hired seven employees who work on branding, marketing, and livestream sales.

Their new business aims to innovate traditional joss paper products to appeal to younger generations — from packaging to sustainability.

Early this year, they were approached by MullenLowe, an advertising agency, to develop an eco-friendly hell note. The "Eco Hell Note" has a denomination with 48 zeroes — the largest possible denomination of money in the Chinese language. Instead of burning a stack of notes, burning one piece would suffice. Teo added that their note is ashless and smokeless, unlike traditional notes that create smog when burned.

"Burning joss paper is deep-rooted in our Chinese culture," he said, adding that a ban on the practice is unlikely to happen despite frequent complaints. "So we have to come out with a compromise to control the pollution and not become obsolete," he said.

Teo, who sources the paper from China, said the team had to experiment with different types of paper to determine which material is the most eco-friendly.

Developing such products doesn't come cheap. Although they have not decided on a price for their Eco Hell Note, their eco-friendly products are slightly more expensive. A pack of 500 "Eco-friendly Gentle Smoke Joss Sticks" costs 11.50 Singapore dollars, or $8.50. In comparison, a pack of 500 traditional sandalwood joss sticks costs SG$10.

"Everything takes time and money. You need to do a lot of research and development," said Huang. Each phase will come with additional costs, and it will take time for the company to grow, he added.

Their Eco Hell Note is not yet available for purchase, but the pair hopes that it will take off among younger Singaporeans once they launch it in time for Tomb Sweeping Day, a tradition for honoring ancestors in April next year.

Heng, who researches Chinese religions, said their eco-friendly products would be better received by the younger generation, who are more eco-conscious. While they are not as religious, they may keep up the practice out of filial piety.

"It does still align with the demands of ritualistic burning, where a physical object is transformed into a spiritual one. It's a really good first step in finding solutions to burning joss paper," he said.

Beyond innovation, Teo hopes to expand the business to the Western market, specifically to those who engage in these religious practices.

"We will maybe tweak the design to cater to their taste. For example, come out with a hell note in US dollars," he said.

These are more experimental ideas, Teo said. "But we are still keeping in mind the tradition and culture. That's what we are trying to preserve."