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: Launch New Products with a Media Blitz Avi sivan, a former israeli commando and stuntman, gives new meaning to the expression “media blitz.” Through an aggressive and expensive combination of magazine advertising, infomercials, and direct mail, Sivan has created a marketing machine for his personal care products sold under … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Serve the Market’s High and Low Ends One of the most successful and creative entrepreneurs I know built an incredibly lucrative frozen-pizza manufacturing business by serving all ends of the pizza market with specific products. A former potato saleswoman, Kathy Taggares cashed-in her condo, jewelry, and insurance policies in … 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: 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
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Get Certified as a Minority Supplier Marguerite thompson browne, director of special projects for San Francisco–based Washington Sportswear Inc., was among the 4,000 people attending the National Minority Supplier Development Council’s (NMSDC) twenty-fifth annual conference in New York City. “This conference gives you access,” said Thompson Browne, whose sportswear … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Think BIG – It Doesn’t Cost Any More than Thinking Small I learned an important lesson from all the entrepreneurs I profiled for my “Succeeding in Small Business” column before starting my own multimedia communications business: It doesn’t cost any more to think big than it does to think … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Send Pizza to Potential Clients Everybody loves pizza. it’s not just hot, gooey, and delicious—it’s also a business opportunity. You probably never thought of pizza as a powerful business tool, but it is. Scott Jackson, founder of the Jackson Design Group in Orlando, Florida, has used pizza as an … Read more
