Just to prove that you don’t have to be all sweetness, light and positive in your approach to make money, despair.com is re-inventing the motivation niche.
It started as a parody on all those motivational posters that litter workplaces (and yes as HR Manager I was guilty of buying them also). It then progressed into t-shirts, coffee mugs and videos.
So what sort of thing can you find on despair.com?
Tradition – Just because you’ve always done it doesn’t mean it’s not incredibly stupid. Mistakes - It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.
Meetings - None of us is as dumb as all of us.
Challenges - I expected times like this – but I never thought they’d be so bad, so long, and so frequent.
Me … I prefer the positive approach, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a market for cynicism. Are you ignoring potential markets?
In business, forming an alliance with another company that has a similar client base to yourself can be highly profitable. The latest alliance to hit the news is Weight Watchers and Myer.
Weight Watchers is opening two concession stores in Myer Roselands and Knox City, that if profitable will expand across Australia. It will be interesting to watch the development of this alliance to observe how it is approached, what marketing is put in place and the results.Small business can learn a lot from the “big end of town” with these types of trials.
Have a think about what types of businesses work with the same sort of customer base as you do. What can you do to form an alliance with those sort of businesses?
Here is a brilliant concept for freelancers and self employed people. The trend overseas is to share office space and facilities such as meeting rooms, faxes, printing and filing on a low fee basis. Nothing too new so far.
What Cubes and Crayons do is add in a childcare centre, where the freelancer or self employed person can book their kids in full-time, part-time or casually while they use the shared office space. People pay a membership fee to join and then pay for child care as needed.
Unfortunately Cubes and Crayons are only in the California, but what a great concept! It is looking at the trend of home based businesses and adding value to that niche through fulfilling services that can’t be easily found from home. Some enterprising person needs to trial the idea in Australia.
On 14 May this year Bill Gates unveiled the future of whiteboards. Most people who have been to my office know I can’t function without a whiteboard as I love the interactivity and immediacy of a whiteboard. It is one of the best tools we can use to help sort out precise word flow for someone looking for a tag line or vision statement – as people can get intimately involved in the process.
This advance is quite an exciting step forward. It reflects the trend of blending technology with the human touch factor – making technology easier to use. You don’t need to push buttons or use special tools – just use your fingers.
It is still at prototype phase and a few years off production – but Bill, my order is waiting for when it is released on the market!
For your products – how can you increase the human touch factor? How can you build ways for people to physically interact with your product rather than just observe?
exuberantly yours
Ingrid Heart Harmony
We put your business into words
We have all heard of the stats about the growing obesity problem with our kids. On the weekend I bought a Wii Fit for the kids. I admit I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but was willing to give it a go.
I am now a raving fan – my kids spent an hour each day playing games including downhill skiiing, hula hoops, yoga, moving bubbles down a river through their balance and taking part in step classes. Even the jogging turned out to be quite fun for them (and yes they worked up a sweat and enjoyed it). Given my kids are not sporty and will find any excuse to avoid physical activity this was a huge win.
My only criticism (and it is a very tiny one at that) is that the activities are definitely designed more to the female market rather than male, so if you have teenage boys you are not likely to get them onto Wii Fit for any extended period of time (only the soccer game seemed targeted to the boys).
This is a very clever business idea from Wii – taking an issue (weight), combining it with a trend (the increase in people interested in getting fit) and mashing it with a computer game. I suspect this will sell like hotcakes and the other major games companies will need to move to embrace the trend of fitness based interactive gaming.
Weall know the trend is towards more ecologically sustainable living – which is why I love this product. Solar panels in handbags!
Noon solar is just one of a number of handbag manufacturers that include a light flexible solar panel on the side of their bags. Just pop your handbag by a window during the day and you get enough power to recharge your ipod or mobile phone. No more flat batteries. How cool is that!
These designers have taken a traditional concept (handbags) and turned it on its head! To think I was excited a few months ago to find a handbag that had an external pocket for my mobile, one for my PDA and an easy access compartment for my business cards for networking.
Where can you turn a design idea around in your business?
Do you hate having your picture taken at a photographer’s studio – always feeling the look is forced?
One enterprising photographer in the US (MethodIzaz.com) has taken the good bits of paparazzi and put them into their business.
Subjects provide him with their schedule for the day, and the photographer does his best paparazzi impersonation, quietly taking candid shots as you go through your day. You don’t know when or where you will be photographed, and in many cases you don’t even know you are being photographed.
The results are natural, real and quite interesting. Wonder if any photographers in Australia will pick up the idea?
Party Plans are a proven way to generate sales – they were the precursor to all of the Web 2.0 high tech strategies of forming networks and communities, taking recommendations from friends and just having fun.
I am always fascinated when someone takes a proven concept and applies it to something totally left field. In the USA, a group has taken the Tupperware party concept and applied it to Tasers.
For those of you who don’t know Tasers (or stun guns) are a weapon that shoots electro-shocks to subdue a person. They are generally used by police and the military, but in the USA you can obtain a Taser for about $300 with minimal checks.
Some enterprising business people now hold Taser parties – where women meet to discuss self-defence, swap recipes for the latest dips and shoot Tasers at dummies. Tasers now come in a range of women friendly colours and prints specifically for this market. … and business is booming!
Whatever you think of Tasers and their use – the idea of taking something that generally has not been seen in a party plan situation and trialling its sale is a great one. There are loads of opportunities for enterprising businesses – from mobility equipment, through to electric drills.
Are there any products in your business that you could trial using the party plan concept?
“Considering the wonderful range of native flowering plants here in Australia it is a wonder that we don’t have a thriving perfume business”
Now this got me thinking. We have bush flower essences, tea-tree oil is well known – but what about all of our other brilliant native flowering plants? Why aren’t we using them not only in our perfumes, but also our other products.
Sounds like a market looking to be filled by more than just the boutique perfumeries …
A few years ago who would have thought that doing it yourself could mean high profits? One of the niches that really has grown in popularity in the past 5 years or so are handmade cards. They have gone from the full of heart but poor of design memories of our childhood through to magnificent works of art.
When I was reading Jenni’s Papercraft Design blog I found out there have been over 150 US & UK books published on how to make handmade cards. Now that’s a definite niche!
As Jenni said – there are now three markets for cards:
handmade and premium
mass manufactured
e-cards
How can you capitalise on this trend? Can your products be separated into handmade & premium (with appropriate pricepoints) as well as cheaper offerings?
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Earnings Disclosure: I will receive financial compensation for sales of these products ... enough for a few cups of good coffee
