If you love your pet and would like to find other businesses or extra money to compensate your hobby, this is what you should consider doing:
Pooper-Scooper Service
Believe it or not, you can make a very comfortable living by starting and operating a dog pooper-scooper service in your community. This is an easy business to start; it requires little investment, no special skills, and minimal equipment to operate. Basically, if you can handle a shovel and plastic bags, and can put up with less than aromatic smells, you're qualified to run a pooper-scooper service. If not, you can still cash in on this booming growth business by marketing and managing the service while hiring others to do the dirty work. Spread the word about your pooper-scooper service by advertising in local newspapers, pinning fliers to bulletin boards, and through dog-related businesses and clubs in the community. Most services charge a flat monthly rate of between $30 and $60 to stop by customers' homes or businesses weekly to clean up their yards, which takes no more than 10 minutes per visit. You'll need reliable transportation, a cell phone, garbage buckets, plastic bags, shovels, gloves and a good pair of rubber boots.
Dog Clothing and Accessories
Americans spend more than $30 billion annually on their pets, and big bucks can be earned by designing, making and selling designer duds for dogs. Sweaters and rain jackets are sure bets to become top sellers, but dog lovers around the globe are also buying designer doggie hats, goggles, shirts, booties, scarves and even Halloween costumes for their beloved furry friends. The criteria for getting started are minimal--design skills, sewing skills and equipment, patterns, and a bit of gumption to get out and pitch your fabulous designer fashions for mutts and pedigrees alike to pet shop retailers, especially if your ambitions are to establish wholesale accounts with chain and independent pet shop retailers. If not, there are still many ways to sell direct to dog owners. These include exhibiting and selling at pet fairs, online sales via dog-related websites, mail order sales supported by newspaper, catalog, online and magazine advertising, and establishing a doggie clothing boutique at home or in a retail storefront location. As dog owners know, word travels fast amongst dog owners, and when a great product for a pet is found, he or she is quick to spread the word to other dog owners.
Dog Day Care
Day-care facilities for dogs are becoming increasingly popular, especially as more and more caring dog owners are realizing the benefits of leaving their beloved dogs at day care with other dogs instead of at home alone while they are at work. Dogs, like people, are social creatures and need contact with people and other dogs to become well-behaved and confident. However, a dog day care should not be confused with a kennel, which boards animals for short- and long-term time spans. A doggie day care is strictly a drop off in the morning and pick up in the evening or anytime during the day type of operation. If space allows and your neighbors don't mind the barking, you can open at home. A better alternative is to rent commercial warehouse space and covert it into a dog day care spa, complete with water features, fenced outdoor space, and indoor couches to ensure your clients have all the creature comforts they're used to at home. One innovative day care center in my community recently installed web cams throughout their facility so people at work could log onto their website and see live footage of their dogs playing with other dogs. Current rates are in the range of $15 to $25 per day, with discounts for weekly service.
Dog Walking Service
A dog walking service is perfectly suited fro the person who has the time, patience and a love for dogs. Best of all, this business can be started for less than $100. There are various styles of multi-lead dog walking collars and leashes available that will allow three or more dogs to be walked at the same time without becoming tangled in the leash. Acquiring this equipment will be important to your new business, as it will reduce frustration and enable you to walk multiple dogs at the same time, thus increasing revenues and profits. To secure clients for the service, simply design a promotional flier that explains your dog walking service and qualifications. Distribute the fliers to businesses that are frequented by dog owners, such as groomers, kennels, pet stores, community animal shelters, and veterinarians. Once word is out about your dog walking service, it shouldn't take long to establish a base of 20 or 30 regular clients.
Gourmet Pet Treats
The fastest growing segment of the pet foods industry is gourmet dog treats. There's a lot of money to be made in this business because the profit margin is very high and people are willing to pay for the best dog treats money can buy. As people become more health conscious of their own diets, they begin to scrutinize their pet's diets as well, and many are turning to naturally made food and biscuits for their dogs, even though all-natural handmade biscuits cost as much as ten times more than commercially produced biscuits.
Making dog biscuits at home is easy; all you need to get started are dog biscuit recipes, healthy ingredients, biscuit molds (those shaped like bones and cats are favorites), a catchy name, and packaging materials. Baking and selling specialty dog treats is a fantastic opportunity for pet-loving entrepreneurs who want to work from home and have lot of fun. Selling options are plentiful. Sell to independent and chain pet retailers on a wholesale basis or to consumers via online pet products marketplaces, at pet fairs, and from your home supported by word-of-mouth advertising. The advertising is very easy to get, providing dogs love your treats.
[Via Entrepreneur]
e mërkurë, 20 qershor 2007
e martë, 19 qershor 2007
In the start-up money hunt, seven tips
USA Today:
One of the questions would-be entrepreneurs ask me over and over is how they can round up money to start a business. I've even had a few hit me up for money out of my own pocket. (Sorry; no can do!)
Fortune Small Business has a dandy new article outlining seven ways to find start-up money. I've listed several in stories I've written on finance, here and here. Here's a summary of Fortune's tips:
* Bootstrapping. "Bootstrapping means using whatever resources you have on hand to help you get your business to the next level," Tom Ehrenfeld, author of The Startup Garden: How Growing a Business Grows You, told Fortune.
* Friends and family. Entrepreneurs also raise money from relatives, colleagues and other people they know well.
* Banks. A long shot because banks typically will only consider companies that have been in business for two years.
* Grants. Tech businesses and start-ups launched by women and minorities may qualify for special government grant programs.
* Angels. These are typically wealthy people who invest directly in start-ups to turn a profit. Unlike friends, family or neighbors, angels tend to be professionals in how they pick their business investments.
* Venture capital. Nearly impossible to get; fewer than one in 10,000 start-ups qualify for venture money. Most are tech-oriented with tremendous prospects for growth. (The next Google? yes; a small crafts retailer? no.)
* Customers and suppliers. Customers might invest in return for special deals. Suppliers sometimes offer to finance machinery and other capital goods or inventory at favorable rates.
One of the questions would-be entrepreneurs ask me over and over is how they can round up money to start a business. I've even had a few hit me up for money out of my own pocket. (Sorry; no can do!)
Fortune Small Business has a dandy new article outlining seven ways to find start-up money. I've listed several in stories I've written on finance, here and here. Here's a summary of Fortune's tips:
* Bootstrapping. "Bootstrapping means using whatever resources you have on hand to help you get your business to the next level," Tom Ehrenfeld, author of The Startup Garden: How Growing a Business Grows You, told Fortune.
* Friends and family. Entrepreneurs also raise money from relatives, colleagues and other people they know well.
* Banks. A long shot because banks typically will only consider companies that have been in business for two years.
* Grants. Tech businesses and start-ups launched by women and minorities may qualify for special government grant programs.
* Angels. These are typically wealthy people who invest directly in start-ups to turn a profit. Unlike friends, family or neighbors, angels tend to be professionals in how they pick their business investments.
* Venture capital. Nearly impossible to get; fewer than one in 10,000 start-ups qualify for venture money. Most are tech-oriented with tremendous prospects for growth. (The next Google? yes; a small crafts retailer? no.)
* Customers and suppliers. Customers might invest in return for special deals. Suppliers sometimes offer to finance machinery and other capital goods or inventory at favorable rates.
Restaurant Reservation Go Online
Town Hall, one of the busiest restaurants in this food-crazed city, seems the very model of old-fashioned dining. Patrons who arrive to claim their reserved seats are greeted by a hostess who consults a piece of paper with the day’s reservations and leads her guests to the appointed table.
But upstairs, in the restaurant’s office, a different scene is playing out. In a veritable mission-control setting, a reservationist answers eight phone lines while seated in front of two computers that log reservations and hold an archive of past and future electronic bookings.
The software also reveals the idiosyncrasies of thousands of guests. The restaurant staff knows in advance, for instance, that a regular always insists on a table under a particular piece of artwork. They know about another person’s request for kosher food — but only when dining in certain company. And there is the guest so reliably late that staff members know to add 45 minutes to the reservation time.
After decades of relying on telephones to book tables, and piles of index cards — or a maitre d’hotel’s memory — to collect information about diners and their quirks, the restaurant business has finally gone unabashedly high-tech.
Technology may not make it any easier for diners to get a reservation at the most sought-after spots, like the French Laundry in Yountville, Calif., or Babbo in New York City. But the perseverance of a San Francisco-based company called OpenTable, which has come to dominate the business of online restaurant reservations, is making it much easier for restaurants to manage reservations and improve customer service.
The change is subtle, but sweeping. Some 7,000 high-end restaurants around the world now use OpenTable, with the highest concentration in New York and San Francisco. Hundreds more are signing on every month.
“All restaurants have to do it, whether you like it or not,” said Charles Phan, the owner and executive chef of the Slanted Door, currently ranked as the most popular restaurant in San Francisco on OpenTable.com. “There’s no way around it. At this point, there’s no other technology or easy solution for making Web reservations.”
Making a reservation through OpenTable costs the diner nothing. And it reduces the inconvenience. Say you want a table on short notice at a busy Manhattan restaurant — Danny Meyer’s Union Square Cafe. Placing a phone call there usually requires calling during business hours, enduring loud jazz for hold music, and talking with a reservationist for a while before finding an acceptable time. OpenTable might give you the same results, but it will do the work in 10 seconds.
Andrew Shapiro, a business strategist who lives in Manhattan, said OpenTable was the first place he turned to for reservations. His loyalty was recently cemented when he used OpenTable to snag a reservation at a popular sushi restaurant around the corner within 15 minutes of his desired mealtime.
[Via New York Times]
Restroom Finder
Now when nature calls you won’t have to leave it hanging. MizPee finds the closest, publicly accessible toilets in the city and rates them by cleanliness for your emergency duck-ins and dashes.Simply access your cell phone’s web browser, navigate to mizpee.com or send a text to (415) 350-2290 to receive an SMS link. Then type in your street address or intersection and a list of pleasant potties near you will pop up. Each toilet is rated by cleanliness, so that those who have time to spare can find the most sparkling of the toilets.
Other useful add-ons: MizPee informs parents of bathrooms with diaper-changing stations.
The service also checks business hours to make sure the locations are open at the time of your inquiry. A number of businesses are offering promotions through MizPee for when users in the locality have fulfilled bodily demands.
[Via Entrepreneur]
e hënë, 11 qershor 2007
The Power of Social Shopping Networks
Looking for ways to get people talking about your products? The new social shopping trend can help you build buzz.
With the vast majority of Americans researching products on the internet before they purchase them in stores or on the web, it’s no surprise that a whole new form of shopping is emerging. “Social shopping” is the intriguing offspring of social networking and online shopping, and it can offer your growing business just the marketing leg up it needs.
Unlike the many retail sites that display products for sale, many increasingly popular social shopping sites (some still in beta testing stages) consist of product listings from site users who recommend their favorites, often with a strong emphasis on what’s hot, new and exciting. And insiders know that listing their own products on the right social shopping sites can build buzz that leads to sales.
This accessible form of word-of-mouth marketing offers a wealth of opportunities for entrepreneurs with limited budgets. To help you navigate these new waters, let’s take a look at why and how social shopping works.
1. Online research leads to sales. Almost 90 percent of respondents to a BIGresearch “Consumer Intentions and Actions” survey conducted in June 2006 said they occasionally or regularly research products online before buying them in a store. When it comes to online purchasing, a study released by Yahoo! and OMD found that nearly three-quarters of the people surveyed use trusted, familiar websites when purchasing online, and the majority (54 percent) say the internet is their most trusted shopping information source. So no matter whether you sell exclusively online, through a brick-and-mortar store or both, influencing online shoppers can have a profound effect on sales.
2. Peer-to-peer recommendations deliver credibility. Social shopping websites allow for word-of-mouth marketing at its best. The internet empowers consumers and accelerates the flow of information. Product recommendations that come from peers may be more trusted, so site visitors may return more often and be more likely to spread the good word and purchase the products they learn about on the sites. Social shopping sites reflect users’ personal tastes and allow for online conversation. Visitors can learn what’s popular, get shopping ideas and follow links to products they wouldn’t necessarily find on their own.
3. Sites have distinct personalities. Here’s a sampling of the hottest social shopping sites.
ThisNext.com: Users can browse recommended products, add them to their wish lists, recommend or find out where to buy them, and create themed lists of their own.
Crowdstorm.com: This site measures the buzz around products based on user recommendations. Popular items go to the top of the list.
Kaboodle.com: Users create wish lists with photos and links to products for sale online. It’s easy to post a summary of anything found on the internet.
Stylehive.com: This is the hot site for women’s fashions and interests.
Wists.com: Users tend to focus on interesting new products and share links to the ones they want to buy.
4. Social shopping sites are An open door for entrepreneurs. Right now, any business owner can use them to build positive word-of-mouth that leads to sales. But you’d better move quickly. Some sites are testing free-use models as they build traffic and will likely adopt paid structures as they reach critical mass, perhaps through revenue generated by marketing agreements with vendors and retailers or by selling the trend information generated by users.
As with any marketing campaign, your first step is to get to know the media. Bookmark your favorite social shopping sites and learn how they work. Test the waters by posting one or two products with their URLs, taking special care to send your click-throughs to specialized landing pages so you can measure your results. Then have fun and stay active--and keep your postings interesting by sharing products others will want to buzz about.
[Via Entrepreneur.com]
With the vast majority of Americans researching products on the internet before they purchase them in stores or on the web, it’s no surprise that a whole new form of shopping is emerging. “Social shopping” is the intriguing offspring of social networking and online shopping, and it can offer your growing business just the marketing leg up it needs.
Unlike the many retail sites that display products for sale, many increasingly popular social shopping sites (some still in beta testing stages) consist of product listings from site users who recommend their favorites, often with a strong emphasis on what’s hot, new and exciting. And insiders know that listing their own products on the right social shopping sites can build buzz that leads to sales.
This accessible form of word-of-mouth marketing offers a wealth of opportunities for entrepreneurs with limited budgets. To help you navigate these new waters, let’s take a look at why and how social shopping works.
1. Online research leads to sales. Almost 90 percent of respondents to a BIGresearch “Consumer Intentions and Actions” survey conducted in June 2006 said they occasionally or regularly research products online before buying them in a store. When it comes to online purchasing, a study released by Yahoo! and OMD found that nearly three-quarters of the people surveyed use trusted, familiar websites when purchasing online, and the majority (54 percent) say the internet is their most trusted shopping information source. So no matter whether you sell exclusively online, through a brick-and-mortar store or both, influencing online shoppers can have a profound effect on sales.
2. Peer-to-peer recommendations deliver credibility. Social shopping websites allow for word-of-mouth marketing at its best. The internet empowers consumers and accelerates the flow of information. Product recommendations that come from peers may be more trusted, so site visitors may return more often and be more likely to spread the good word and purchase the products they learn about on the sites. Social shopping sites reflect users’ personal tastes and allow for online conversation. Visitors can learn what’s popular, get shopping ideas and follow links to products they wouldn’t necessarily find on their own.
3. Sites have distinct personalities. Here’s a sampling of the hottest social shopping sites.
ThisNext.com: Users can browse recommended products, add them to their wish lists, recommend or find out where to buy them, and create themed lists of their own.
Crowdstorm.com: This site measures the buzz around products based on user recommendations. Popular items go to the top of the list.
Kaboodle.com: Users create wish lists with photos and links to products for sale online. It’s easy to post a summary of anything found on the internet.
Stylehive.com: This is the hot site for women’s fashions and interests.
Wists.com: Users tend to focus on interesting new products and share links to the ones they want to buy.
4. Social shopping sites are An open door for entrepreneurs. Right now, any business owner can use them to build positive word-of-mouth that leads to sales. But you’d better move quickly. Some sites are testing free-use models as they build traffic and will likely adopt paid structures as they reach critical mass, perhaps through revenue generated by marketing agreements with vendors and retailers or by selling the trend information generated by users.
As with any marketing campaign, your first step is to get to know the media. Bookmark your favorite social shopping sites and learn how they work. Test the waters by posting one or two products with their URLs, taking special care to send your click-throughs to specialized landing pages so you can measure your results. Then have fun and stay active--and keep your postings interesting by sharing products others will want to buzz about.
[Via Entrepreneur.com]
Bravo Entrepreneur Finds Niche In Market
Entrepreneur Dao Tran-Boyd is hoping never to be strapped for cash again after finding the holy grail of business: a niche product.
Bra straps sound like the kind of idea that could get laughed out of the Dragon's Den but as Mrs Tran-Boyd, founder of Glamorous Bra Straps said: "The simple things in life are the best".
That maxim holds true in business and 18 months after its launch the company has been shortlisted by the Gift Association for its Best Gift of the Year Award.
Mrs Tran-Boyd, from New Malden, said: "We are absolutely delighted to be shortlisted, especially as we have been trading for just less than a year, but have already achieved a retail and wholesale customer base across the UK, Ireland, Channel Island, Europe and even as far as Egypt and Nigeria.
"Until now bra straps have been a fashion nightmare, but not any more."
She started making the items at home selling them at school fairs. When interest grew, she took the plunge and invested money to approach a wholesaler in China.
The company is now taking enquires from agents in the USA and Canada and has over 150 hand-made straps in its collection.
Having a keen interest in community and charities, Mrs Tran-Boyd is happy the straps have been a hit with breast cancer sufferers and she now hopes to use the product to further good causes.
"Its simple, but it makes women feel sexy and glamorous," she said.
The winner of the award will be announced at a gala evening on June 19 at Grosvenor House Hotel in London.
For more information visit glamorousbrastraps.co.uk.
Bravo Entrepreneur Finds Niche In Market (from Your Local Guardian)
Bra straps sound like the kind of idea that could get laughed out of the Dragon's Den but as Mrs Tran-Boyd, founder of Glamorous Bra Straps said: "The simple things in life are the best".
That maxim holds true in business and 18 months after its launch the company has been shortlisted by the Gift Association for its Best Gift of the Year Award.
Mrs Tran-Boyd, from New Malden, said: "We are absolutely delighted to be shortlisted, especially as we have been trading for just less than a year, but have already achieved a retail and wholesale customer base across the UK, Ireland, Channel Island, Europe and even as far as Egypt and Nigeria.
"Until now bra straps have been a fashion nightmare, but not any more."
She started making the items at home selling them at school fairs. When interest grew, she took the plunge and invested money to approach a wholesaler in China.
The company is now taking enquires from agents in the USA and Canada and has over 150 hand-made straps in its collection.
Having a keen interest in community and charities, Mrs Tran-Boyd is happy the straps have been a hit with breast cancer sufferers and she now hopes to use the product to further good causes.
"Its simple, but it makes women feel sexy and glamorous," she said.
The winner of the award will be announced at a gala evening on June 19 at Grosvenor House Hotel in London.
For more information visit glamorousbrastraps.co.uk.
Bravo Entrepreneur Finds Niche In Market (from Your Local Guardian)
e enjte, 7 qershor 2007
Congratulations to Pak Lah's wedding on this Saturday
The Prime Minister's Office announced on Wednesday the marriage which would take place at the prime minister's official residence "Seri Perdana" and to be attended by close relatives.
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