Great Ideas for your Small Business: Set Up a Cart in a Mall Veteran silversmith kent mCcustion used to travel to about fifty craft shows a year, often driving hundreds of miles to shows around Illinois. In 1997 he cut back to six or seven shows because of the Colorado Silversmith’s kiosk he opened in … Read more
Great Ideas for your Small Business: Turn Your Anger into Energy Carmen muñoz knows how tough it is to make it in a man’s world. She’s been in the automotive parts business for more than thirty-five years, starting out as the sole saleswoman for a small firm in the Detroit area. In 1984, when the … 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: 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: 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
