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Another week, another septet of interesting new business ideas from around the world: a soft drink for the undecided from Singapore, customized vintage watches from New York, biodegradable milk bottles from Suffolk, and more. Our next edition is due on 7 June 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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Designed and manufactured in Britain, Greenbottle is a biodegradable milk bottle that uses a smart two-part system to aid recycling. The bottles are composed of a cardboard outer manufactured from pulped, recycled cardboard, which is lined with an inner sleeve of biodegradable plastic made from corn starch. The plastic keeps the cardboard from becoming soggy, and the cardboard makes for easy transport, storage and pouring. Once the bottle is empty, the inner sleeve can be pulled out and will decompose in a landfill within six weeks. The cardboard outer can be put out for recycling with other paper or thrown in with kitchen and garden waste for home composting. Greenbottle just went through a week-long test run at an Asda supermarket, where the new milk jugs sold out quickly. The bottles currently cost up to 30% more than their plastic counterparts, but costs will go down once production steps up. Three million tons of plastic are thrown away in the UK annually. As manufacturers, retailers and consumers increasingly work to reduce their environmental footprint, now's the time to snap up distribution rights for Greenbottle's innovative (patent-pending) product. One to contact if you work in food and beverage or packaging! Website: www.greenbottle.com Spotted by: Emma Howarth
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A few weeks ago, we featured a British bicycle company that disassembles old bikes and rebuilds them into unique, customized rides. Yesterday, we spotted a US company that's applying the same concept to high-end watches, turning vintage Rolexes, Kelberts and Rados into one-of-a-kind timepieces. Watch faces, backs and bands are replaced or modified and etched with intricate designs. Everything is done by hand. Bellum Concepts, which describes itself as a creative think tank, selected twenty watches from the 1940s through 1980s for their first series — The Love Collection. The pieces are priced from USD 800-10,000 and sold via www.bellumconcepts.net and at the Aaron Faber Gallery in New York. Each piece is housed in its own custom-made box and comes with a custom-designed t-shirt from Bellum Classics. Bellum Concepts, named for the Latin word for war, is waging a battle for creative freedom, according to its owners: “The lack of originality and individualism in the market place today gave birth to Bellum.” Springwise agrees that there is plenty of room for small manufacturers and modifiers who create goods that lend their buyers the subtle status and pleasure of exclusivity. Which is enhanced by working with vintage pieces, that are inherently scarce and add another appealing layer to a product's story and value. Bellum currently only modifies watches, but will tackle other luxury goods in the future, including cars and motorcycles. Website: www.bellumconcepts.net Spotted by: notcot.org
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Meeting Tomorrow offers business customers easy access to audio visual equipment. Hotels often charge extortionate prices for renting a projector or display screen, and other meeting venues don't always have the equipment needed for a presentation. On Meeting Tomorrow, you choose the equipment you need, order it online or by phone, and the equipment is delivered to your home, office, hotel or meeting location on time. Advance orders are delivered the day before the meeting, and same day orders are welcome. (Meeting Tomorrow offers same day delivery to 95% of the US, and next day service to the rest of the country.) The beauty of the concept is how simple it is for customers, who can rely on the equipment arriving on time and don’t have to go out of their way to pick up or return a projector. For returns, Meeting Tomorrow takes a cue from Netflix: pre-paid adhesive FedEx return labels are included with projectors and laptops. After using the equipment, customers slap on the label and drop the cases in any Fed Ex drop box. Bulkier equipment, such as screens or sound systems, are picked up after the event. Pricing is straight-forward, too: no matter where the equipment is needed, customers pay the same rental prices and a flat delivery fee. As pointed out by Seth Godin, the easy-return rental approach could be applied to any number of products that customers only need from time to time. For more inspiration on profiting from a burgeoning rental economy, check out: Marketplace for P2P rental and One-stop shop for transumers. Website: www.meetingtomorrow.com Spotted by: Seth Godin
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Taking the surprise economy to another level, Singapore beverage company Out of the Box caters to consumers who respond to "What would you like to drink?" with a non-committal "anything" or "whatever". Two weeks ago, the company launched two complementary brands: Anything and Whatever. Anything is fizzy and comes in six flavours (Cola with Lemon, Apple, Fizz Up, Cloudy Lemon and Root Beer) and Whatever is non-carbonated (Ice Lemon Tea, Peach Tea, Jasmine Green Tea, White Grape Tea, Apple Tea, Chrysanthemum Tea). The surprise part? Consumers don't know which flavour they're getting until they take a sip. Cans are simply labelled Anything and Whatever, and the list of ingredients is limited to generic wording: carbonated water, sugar, permitted flavouring, permitted colouring, preservative, tea extract, fruit juice concentrate. Judging from the buzz on Singapore forums, teens immediately got the concept and are loving it. Novel product to launch elsewhere, as the drink for people who don't know what they want? The key, of course, is to produce products that are good enough to guarantee repeat sales. We think established food and beverage brands could have fun with this one, too, and would have the benefit of working from a brand consumers already trust. How about Snapple or Stonyfield Yoghurt marketing surprise six-packs filled with random flavours? Could be a good way to get customers to try new varieties of any FMCG. Website: www.anything.com.sg Spotted by: Brenton Wong
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With growing concerns of childhood obesity, keeping kids fit is on the minds of many parents. Keeping it on the minds of kids may be more of a challenge. Fitness franchise NexGym seems to be on the right track with Exergaming—a hot new exercise concept that combines video game technology with calorie-burning workouts. Billed as “The Next Generation in Fitness for Kids,” NexGym's virtual reality-inspired workouts are geared with the interests of children ages 6 to 14 in mind. Video games are wired to fitness equipment, making the experience both mentally and physically interactive. Kids can race bikes through lunar landscapes, sharpen hand-eye coordination with intergalactic hand-to-hand combat or participate in virtual pro sporting events. More than 20 games are available. Additionally, NexGym offers interactive classes in sports, dance, karate, hip hop, yoga and more, some of which are available for kids as young as age 3. There's also a morning drop-off just for preschoolers—a definite hit with busy moms and dads—and parent-child music classes suitable for infants on up. NexGym's staff of certified personal trainers can even customize programs to help children polish their fitness skills. They also offer an innovative program for children with special needs. And, like any good kids' franchise, of course they do birthday parties! With the continued success of niche gyms, further expansion into the children's market is a worthy and potentially lucrative enterprise. NexGym franchises are currently only available in the US, but the concept could be reproduced just about anywhere, using widely available video game systems such as Nintendo’s Wii and Konami’s Dance Dance Revolution. (Related: Being space for little monkeys.) Website: www.nexgym.com Spotted by: Carol Margolis
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Last week, we wrote about uShip, where customers post shipments online and shipping companies bid for their business. A similar approach is being taken by another venture we recently spotted. This time, it's all about design. SitePoint, an Australian media company that targets web professionals, lets companies hold design contests and gain access to the creative talents of the global design community. How it works? A business owner looking for a new design, be it a logo, website or stationery, describes exactly what she's looking for: what the desired colour scheme and file format are, what the design is for, and which elements to incorporate (for example: “We would like to have the initials PCM and 'Panama City Models' below the initials with a smaller font. But might consider a different approach”). After a prize amount and an end-date have been set, designers start submitting their work for all to see. Once the contest holder sees a design she likes, she can award the prize to buy the design. Alternatively, she can first suggest minor tweaks or request changes. Designers retain all rights to their submitted work until they’ve been awarded the prize on offer and have been paid in full. On receipt of payment, all rights to the winning design transfer from the designer to the contest holder. To protect themselves, designers are advised to check the contest holder's previous posts to determine their standing in the community, and to ask the contest holder questions about the terms of payment, etc. While many established designers protest that this type of 'spec' work is devaluing their profession, crowdsourcing is a valid and cost-effective option for small businesses or organisations who can't (yet) afford to hire a traditional branding agency or graphic design firm. Gaining access to thousands of aspiring designers means that a small town pub or a summer computer camp can buy a logo or t-shirt design for USD 100-200. Meanwhile, designers from across the world can tap into a much larger market for their services, while building their portfolio, honing their skills and presenting to real clients. Both clients and designers seem to like the concept: SitePoint's design contests boast over 2,000 designers who submit on average 420 designs a day, and over USD 80,000 is offered as prize money each month. Businesses pay SitePoint a USD 20 listing fee and set their own prizes, which must be higher than the minimum dollar amount specified by SitePoint for each design category. Since graphic design and briefings are often tied to language and culture, this is definitely one to start in your own neck of the woods. Alternatively, study SitePoint, Threadless, iStockPhoto and other creative crowdsourcing communities, and carve your own niche. Website: www.sitepoint.com/contests Spotted by: Shayne Tilley
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Tom Szaky is passionate about worm poop. So passionate that he dropped out of Princeton to start Terracycle, a company that sells worm poop. Vermicomposting is the process by which earthworms eat, digest and excrete castings (aka worm poop). Water is mixed with the worm castings to produce a nitrogen rich ‘tea’ prized by gardeners who believe the mixture makes plants grow faster and healthier than chemical fertilizers. Szaky discovered the magic of worm castings when he was at Princeton. He and fellow student Jon Beyer developed a system to mass produce castings using millions of worms and organic waste from the university's student dining halls, which they developed into liquid fertilizer. The New Jersey based company’s products are sold at The Home Depot, Wal-Mart and Target. Initial growth was slow but the four-year-old, 12 employee company projects USD 6 million in sales for 2007. At the root of Terracycle’s success is the use of free raw materials—organic waste—to manufacture their product. The green edge doesn’t stop there. Terracycle packages their liquid fertilizer in recycled soda bottles purchased for five cents each from a network of 3,400 elementary schools and non-profits holding fundraisers: the Bottle Brigade. The money is donated to a charity of their choice. Terracycle sells a dozen products, from potting soil packaged in recycled gallon milk jugs to seed starter produced in trays made from recycled paper. Terracycle call themselves eco-capitalists. Springwise loves how they’re turning garbage into gold, keeping waste out of landfills and producing an organic alternative to chemical fertilizers, while building a healthy business. We have no doubt the concept—and story—would work equally well in other countries. Time to contact them and propose setting up factories outside the US? After all, even green products lose their eco-friendly aura if they're shipped long distance. Alternatively, get creative and start figuring out what else can be created from waste. For more waste-to-wealth inspiration, check out Ecoist & Ragbag and Ecoforms. Website: www.terracycle.net Spotted by: Daniel Cooper
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