One of the things I was hoping to contemplate on this blog is ideas for new businesses. Two of the areas that I find very interesting are web based business models and mobility oriented services. To explain: we all know what a website is and there is no shortage of web based businesses. My hope is to come up with something better than what is out there. Something that takes an existing an idea like Mass Customization / Personalization or an Auction based web business and does it better.
Here are two ideas I have been kicking around in this area:
Personalized Clothing. Lands End already has this and does a very good job with it. If you want to see what they do visit their site: http://www.landsend.com/. Click on Men’s or Women’s clothing and look for the links that say customize. This is one of the fastest growing areas of their business. It seems to me that there are big opportunities to do more in this area. I’m interested in your thoughts on this.
Auction Site. We all know about eBay and Priceline. The auction based business model is now established as a working solution on the web. My thoughts on eBay are that it addresses too much. It is now full of lots of brick and mortar businesses and individuals selling everything from engagement rings to nuclear subs. I think there are opportunities to specialize auction sites. Bring together one type of buyer such as an art site or estate sales or something else that is specialized and build the site around the needs of that particular group of buyers and sellers. One idea I had was to get small time vendors in places from around the world to put their goods on an auction site. Limit the vendors to art & crafts: hand made jewelry, rugs, pots, carvings etc. Make the site a specialized place and market it to consumers as the place to shop for authentic hand made crafts from around the world. Thoughts?
We all saw on the design tour how mobile services are the next big thing. There are many opportunities here for design applications or services for mobile services. One idea I had in this area is to provide a service oriented around nightlife. With every mobile being a potential live streaming video/ audio/ picture generating sensor out in the world why not build a business around clubbing / nightlife. For 20 and 30 something people in cities all over the world people know most of the bars and clubs available to them but no one every really knows things like how crowded a place is, who’s really there, how long the line is. What if you could jump in a cab, browse a site on you r mobile and get live or recently uploaded pics (say 3-4 mins old) or live video of a bar or club? Maybe you could get other info too? You could make a decision on where to go in real time w/o actually having to go someplace that is dead or too crowded. Just one idea. What do you all think? What kind of info do you want when all you have is your phone? Traffic? Weather? You can get this from the radio. Think of what you really want to know that you can’t really get unless you’re in front of a PC. I am interested in hearing what you think on this as well.
1 comment:
Dan - I think your ideas provide good food for thought. I wanted to share a web site with you that I learned about at the Ignite Philly event: http://www.etsy.com/. It's a web site devoted solely to selling things people make themselves. I don't think they use an auction model, but I thought you might be interested in checking it out.
I love the idea of the real-time updates about nighttime hotspots. I would seriously use that feature if it were available!
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