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Another week, another selection of interesting new business ideas from around the world: stock picking for the Youtube generation, a magazine for eco-friendly weddings, customized daily vitamin packs, and more. Our next edition is due on 8 March 2007. In the meantime, check out our daily postings on www.springwise.com, send us your tips, and please don't forget to tell your friends and colleagues about us. Much appreciated! |
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Flying with infants brings an end to travelling light, as a baby's essentials quickly add up to excess baggage. tinytotsaway.com aims to ease the strain, by letting parents order all of their child's necessities online and have them delivered to their holiday destination. The British company not only helps with the extra baggage issue, but also saves the hassle of shopping after arrival. Having baby supplies sent over to their hotel means that parents don't have to worry about locating a supermarket and deciphering foreign packaging to find the right kind of diapers, and food that their baby or toddler will eat. Besides favourite brands of food and nappies, customers can also have items like baby powder and sunscreen delivered. tinytotsaway.com uses UPS and can deliver to most countries. Pricing starts from GBP 70 for a 12 kg parcel for holidays to Europe. Items are then charged in 12 kg increments depending on a customer's destination. One to set up in other countries? Build a good website, partner with tour operators and travel agencies, and grateful parents should make for good repeat customers. Website: www.tinytotsaway.com Spotted by: Allan Silverlock |
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Back in 2002, we reported on a Thai government initiative to launch a chain of over 3,000 Thai restaurants across the world, promoting both the country and its cuisine. That plan fizzled out after elections brought on a new government with different priorities. A recent spotting from Japan proves the idea can work, if on a slightly smaller scale. Sponsored by Tourism New Zealand and Air New Zealand, the New Zealand Travel Café opened in Tokyo's Roppongi district three months ago. The café serves New Zealand burgers, beer and wine in an upmarket setting. Kiwi music plays in the background, a small shop sells NZ products and visitors can browse travel guides and brochures. Travel Café, which operates 20 themed cafés across Japan, also runs a branch in cooperation with the Philippine tourist board. The Philippine Travel Café serves 'images of Philippine leisure resorts and tasty Filipino cuisine'. Maybe the Thai government can breathe new life into its old plan, working with the Travel Café this time. In other countries, we could see the Costa Rican tourism board working with Starbucks, or the Italians teaming up with Café Nero. If you've spotted similar examples of country branding in your hometown, please let us know! Just leave a comment below. Website: www.travelcafe.co.jp Spotted by: Lance Sy |
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Covering yet another niche in magazine publishing, Portovert is the first and only magazine for eco-savvy brides and grooms. Founded by Meghan Meyers, a former editor for Family Circle and sustainable travel writer, the magazine offers advice for making sustainable wedding choices. Currently available online only, the publication's first issue just came out last month and offers a wide array of tips, from natural ways to calm wedding nerves to using vintage props for decoration. Portovert has also teamed up with Native Energy to create a 'wedding carbon calculator' that calculates carbon emissions produced by the principal wedding-related CO2 sources: guest travel, lodging and venue power and heat. Since the wedding industry is estimated at USD 58.5 billion in the United States alone (source: Wedding Brand), and everything eco continues to gain ground, we wouldn't be surprised to see a magazine like Portovert make the move from online to print. One to start up in other countries? Another recent spotting: ethicalweddings.com, a searchable database of ethical wedding services and products. Based in the UK, the service describes itself as follows: “We want to bring together all those little companies that perhaps don’t come up on the first two pages of your Google search. As couples often go back home to their parents’ town or village to get married, they may have lost touch with the local companies which could serve them well on such an occasion – our aim is for them all to be here at ethicalweddings.com, ready and waiting for your call.” Website: www.portovert.com / www.ethicalweddings.com |
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Austrian Herold, which publishes the country’s white and yellow pages, claims to offer a worldwide first. Customers can purchase Austria’s entire phone directory and plug it into their cellphone. At first glance, this may seem somewhat outmoded. Why use an offline solution when almost every modern phone has internet access? Well, looking up phone numbers through a smartphone’s browser has two major drawbacks: it can be very slow and very expensive, since telecom providers in many countries still charge outlandish fees for data transfer. And Herold’s mobile phone book has a very useful feature: if a user receives a call from someone who isn’t in their personal contact list, Herold will automatically find and display the caller’s name. (So-called ‘calling name delivery’ is offered by telecom providers in some countries, but often doesn’t work if a call takes place between different providers.) Herold Mobile is currently only available for smartphones that run on Symbian or Windows Mobile. The digital phone book costs EUR 29.90, including monthly updates, and the directory currently lists over 4 million residential and business phone numbers. Admittedly, this particular concept is easiest to accomplish in countries with small populations—Austria has just 8.2 million inhabitants. Placed in a wider context: while satisfying consumers' infolust is usually equated with being online, sometimes it makes sense to take the information offline. Website: www.herold.at Spotted by: Martina Meng |
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Here's a spotting that couldn't help but catch our eye: Rock and Royal creates chandeliers with attitude, made to order. The company veers sharply away from the standard ring and crown shapes that adorn swank homes and hotels across the world. Fusing posh and punk, Rock and Royal's chandeliers can take any shape—from champagne bottle to skull & bones. Based in The Netherlands, Rock and Royal was established in 2005 and works with artist Hans van Bentem to create unique light fixtures that are sold to wealthy patrons across the world. Their crystal chandeliers are priced from EUR 12,000 and take approximately two months to design and manufacture. It's a fun example of taking a very traditional product and turning it into something fresh and newly desirable. Something to be inspired by, even if you don't work in interior design? For more examples of ultra-exclusive goods and services, check out trendwatching.com's briefing on UBER-PREMIUM. Website: www.rockandroyal.com |
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From easyJobs to easyPizza, easyJet’s founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou isn’t afraid to branch out into new industries. His newest foray piqued our interest, since it’s a concept we wrote about three times last year—flexible working spaces. easyOffice aims to bring flexible and affordable, serviced office space, allowing entrepreneurs to ‘match the space they rent with the demands of their business’. easyOffice’s first location will open in Kensington, London in May or June 2007, with rooms for rent long and short term. Gulf News reports that Stelios is also eyeing Dubai: “There are so many start up businesses in Dubai and people are constantly moving in and out. With the things that are happening here and the dynamism of the economy I think a flexible office space solution might work here.” It might work, indeed. With office space vacancy as low as 1%, rents in Dubai are high. For more examples of spaces that offer business professionals everything they need to stay productive outside a traditional office, check out our previous coverage of start-ups in Canada, the UK, Australia and South Africa. Website: www.easyoffice.co.uk |
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Sometimes it's all about the (re)packaging. Miami-based Vuru sells nutritional supplements in personalized daily packs. Customers choose from over 2,000 name brand supplements and vitamins, select how many weeks worth they want to purchase and then have their personalized packs shipped to them. Vuru sticks each daily dose into a slick little pack that fits 2-15 pills. (For power users, larger packs are in the works.) Which means customers are spared the hassle of shaking pills from several bulky bottles, or organizing daily dosages into pill boxes or plastic bags. Vuru packs can be tossed into a handbag or pocket, and are perfect for travel. Besides creating their own unique blends, customers can pick one of Vuru's pre-selected mixes, varying from 'Woman's Yoga Pack' to 'The UrbanDaddy Pack'. To make sense of it all, each order comes with an information sheet, which has a picture of each pill, the supplement facts label, directions, warnings and any other information pertinent to that supplement or vitamin. Several elements make this concept quite appealing. First of all, customers will love the ability to pick and mix their own, ultra-personalized blend from a wide variety of supplements. Secondly, there's the convenience angle: time-saving and life-hacking, Vuru is what our sister-site trendwatching.com would call a daily lubricant. One of those products that make people's lives just a little bit easier. Last but not least, the packaging is simple, shiny and chic. Which all combines to create a luxury 'health hack' that many consumers are willing to pay a premium for. The same concept could no doubt be applied to other industries. How about skin care products? Just be sure to think green and keep packaging to a minimum. Meanwhile, if you're in the health care business, note that Vuru operates an affiliate program that lets nutritionists, doctors and other health care professionals create supplement programs for clients and patients, netting them 10% commission for every dollar a client spends. Whether or not that presents ethical dilemmas is a discussion we’ll leave to other blogs ;-) Website: www.vuru.com Spotted by: Thei Zervaki |
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Described as "Rocketboom for Wall Street" and "Squawk Box meets Saturday Night Live", Wallstrip offers stock advice in a format that's second nature to viewers who watch YouTube instead of CNBC. Wallstrip's daily videos are taped in New York, hosted by actress Lindsay Campbell, and feature one public company in every 3-minute online show. Wallstrip was founded in October 2006, aiming to be both sassy and serious while teaching a new generation of investors to pick their own stocks. The show was created by Howard Lindzon, who runs an investment firm and hedge fund in Arizona and a venture capital fund in Toronto. Following Lindzon's personal investment philosophy, the focus is on stocks at all-time highs, like Apple, Google and Toyota, analysing why they're strong and whether they'll continue to increase in value. Man on the street interviews add to Wallstrip's informal vibe. The show has been voted one of the top podcasts on iTunes, and is also distributed via social video sites like Revver and YouTube. With enough VC backing to wait and see how its own value will develop, Wallstrip is in no hurry to chase advertising revenues, focusing instead on building a dedicated following of valuable eyeballs. Light, entertaining and very digestible, Wallstrip's pop-culture approach to the stock market should spawn siblings in every major financial market. Stock-savvy entrepreneurs in London, Tokyo, Frankfurt, Hong Kong—what are you waiting for?! Website: www.wallstrip.com |
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No worries. We've got you covered. All of last week's articles are listed below. And don't forget—you can access everything we've published in our idea database, which is conveniently organized by industry. Enjoy! Key storage and delivery service For a modest annual fee, NewYourKey keeps copies of keys in a
secure storage facility and can deliver them right away if customers
find themselves locked out. Halal baby food
Aimed at Muslim parents who want the convenience of prepared baby
food without compromising their religious beliefs, halal baby foods are
filling a gap in the market. Self-publishing by email With Life Trackers, turning life experiences into a published book is as
simple as sending an email. Food and tech meet for dinner A waiterless restaurant, uWink combines modern comfort food with
high-tech entertainment at every table. Cabs for and by women | Update The women-only taxi concept is taking root, as witnessed by recent
spottings of similar ventures in Moscow, Dubai and Teheran. Pod life: stackable homes Designed and manufactured in Perth, Perrinepods are self-contained,
prefab housing units that can be placed within a month of ordering,
and stacked up to 30 stories high. A dentist for treehuggers Transcendentist is the first eco-friendly dentist office in the United
States, founded with the aim of creating a calm and healing experience
for clients while doing minimal damage to the environment.
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