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: 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
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: Consider Multilevel Marketing Fran lyles-harper was a physicist working on the Space Shuttle’s main engines when she attended an in-home art party. “The art really touched my soul,” said Lyles-Harper. “It wasn’t only beautiful, but it was quality art at affordable prices.” Lyles-Harper didn’t buy anything that night, but … Read more
