The place I work does actually store personal data for a variety of reasons, and we also work for a bunch of other companies that do, and the path to GDPR compliance hasn't been painful. The biggest issue is, as you say, research, but if the sum of your data storage is an email address, a name, and a physical address, then you're hardly falling into any of the nuanced cases.

I'm not faulting the person, I'm just saying the response doesn't seem founded in firm reasoning, but in (self-admitted, by the link!) "I need to look into this but I haven't, so we're shutting down". This isn't a newsworthy event or "proof the GDPR ruins businesses".