Gen Z’s desire to get offline is a boon for businesses

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.

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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.”

The videos racked up views, some surpassing 1 million, and roughly 60% of Louise Carmen’s online sales now ship to the U.S., says Valmary. Some Americans have even posted online about booking trans-Atlantic flights to buy the notebooks in Paris.

Political and economic uncertainty — like a turbulent job market, declining home ownership and the rising cost of living in the U.S. — tends to send people clamoring back toward the products, styles and experiences of their, or their parents’, childhoods, says Shapiro. Plus, the more time you spend scrolling on your phone, the more likely you are to engage with media about that uncertainty, so hobbies that keep idle hands busy are in increasingly high demand.

Journaling helps Valmary collect and reflect on her thoughts and be creative, she says. She suspects younger generations benefit even more from the practice. Gen Zers’ lives and experiences have been “exposed on social media, [posted] from them or their friends or their families, since they were very young,” she says. When handwriting in journals, “they don’t have to perform, they can just be honest.”

Part of “going analog” involves aesthetics, too: Nostalgic-looking products can be a fashion statement, says Camp Snap president Trevor George. His Redondo Beach, California-based company sells screen-free digital cameras that automatically apply film-mimicking filter effects to photos, ranging from $70 to $200 apiece. Since launching in late 2023, the brand has sold over 1 million cameras, George says.

The company’s sales were up by 350% at the end of last year compared to the same period in 2024, he says, and celebrities like Taylor Swift and Idris Elba have been spotted with Camp Snap products. “The smartphones a bit tired,” he says. “To be out with your friends or in a community and pull out this what looks like an old school camera, but really has digital features, it’s kind of like a personal statement.”

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.

“This analog thing, I’m not going to say it’s a passing fad, because there will continue to be a fad with each generation … [but] I would not be betting big on a giant analog rebirth,” says Fader.

The popularity of any kind of nostalgia is bound to ebb and flow, Shapiro says. Edelman suspects his shop has survived for decades because people want physical items that can elicit strong memories, he says.

“People can create the living room they’ll never have,” Edelman says. He still remembers the first doll house he built for his niece decades ago, a pink Victorian-style mansion with white trim and tiny dark brown shingles. “I feel like there’s a warmth and a comfort in looking at these things, holding them.”

Conversions from euros to USD were done using the OANDA conversion rate of 1 euro to $1.18 USD on March 3, 2026.

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