Great Ideas for your Small Business: Find a Need and Fill It When nellie may sutton was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1985, her son Joseph began searching for a place where she could live safely and comfortably. After checking out nursing homes and elder care services, Sutton decided to rent a ranch-style house and … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Have Your Product Mandated for Use by an Official Group In 1988, miami radio salesman eduardo Barea read about a mandatory uniform policy about to be implemented in local public schools. That day a great idea took hold: He would get into the school uniform business. This father of … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Do a Deal with a Big Company For a small business owner, doing a deal with a giant corporation is thrilling, intimidating, and scary. But the opportunities are out there. Big companies of all kinds are hungry for the nimble thinking and new products created by entrepreneurs. The first … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Build a Working Model You may have the most brilliant concept in the world, but raising money to manufacture and market your baby is almost impossible without a working model. The problem is that too many entrepreneurs fall prey to invention scam artists who promise to introduce them to … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Be a Location Contrarian Most young, cocky restauranteurs would rather die than open their cool restaurant in a suburban shopping mall. But Gary Leff, founder of Stir Crazy Enterprises, took a different spin. He headed for the suburbs, and it paid off. “The first inclination is to open up … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Become an Exclusive Importer Sometimes being the first to introduce a product to the United States is the best way to establish a successful small business. This was the case for Mara Seibert and Lenore Rice, two former high-powered Wall Street players who traded in their briefcases for a … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Borrow Funds from Your Family Like most good parents, gene and sandee Nabat did everything they could to give their three kids a comfortable upbringing. They lived in West Bloomfield, a suburb of Detroit, and sent the children to good schools. But the Nabats never planned to invest $500,000 … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Turn Your Hobby into a Successful Business Turning your passion into profits is easy when you figure out a way to transform your interests into a business venture. The secret of success is finding others who share your pastime and parlaying their need for supplies into a money-making concept. … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Import Something New and Different A new industry was spawned forty years ago by a homely fruit then known as the Chinese gooseberry. The palm-sized brown fuzzballs, now called “kiwis,” were the basis for Frieda Caplan’s wildly successful exotic-produce business. Before Frieda Caplan began importing fruit and vegetables from … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Create a Fad People used to stand in front of dave kapell’s refrigerator for hours, even when they weren’t hungry. They were mesmerized by his collection of hand- made magnetized words—-an idea that evolved into a major 1990s fad: the Magnetic Poetry kit. Kapell, a songwriter and cab driver, … Read more
