If you don't mind me being a bit of a contrarian, I notice that apart from the green boxes and the biofuel ones, none of these companies seem to be "saving customers money". And many are selling straight novelty items (puzzles, racing car school... glowing icecubes?) Am I missing anything here?
20 Million-Dollar Businesses You've Never Heard Of
61–70 of 72 posts
Re: 20 Million-Dollar Businesses You've Never Heard Of
#62I love the green boxes. Last time I moved my roommate spent almost $50 on cardboard boxes. After unpacking we immediately threw them away (with the additional hassel of disassembling them). This is a far better solution. I hope they become available in my state next time I have to move.
I think the idea is great also. http://frogbox.com/ is a company started here in Vancouver who does the same thing. they also have started franchising it.
I have never used them but had a friend looked into using them and said it was too expensive compared to regular boxes. It looks like it cost about $110 for boxes for a two bedroom rental. Guess the convenience and green benefits are the selling factors.
Re: 20 Million-Dollar Businesses You've Never Heard Of
#63I feel I must apologize for not pointing out the UI issues on the page right after I posted the piece - I should know better. I almost didn't submit it, but couldn't find an alternative on any blogs. Thanks to DevX101 for taking the time to post the "meat-n-potatoes" of the story! Thanks to everyone for chiming in w/ your opinions.
Thought it was pretty good rep management for the Forbes dev to stop by and leave an address for feedback - props to taylorbuley for that!
Re: 20 Million-Dollar Businesses You've Never Heard Of
#64What is with the ridiculous use of "In Pictures" features now days? If they want the page views, put each company on a seperate page, but don't pretend that the pictures count for more than 1% of the interesting aspect of this feature, and don't use a terrible slideshow system that makes it actually annoying to read the text.
It allows graphic designers to become content providers! Also probably has to do w/ the popularity of infographics, photo sharing, etc. The worst part IMO is, most people just 'create' their images in a graphics program w/o giving further thought to sharing, embedding, tracking, usability, etc. And, then post it to their site w/o alt tags or a descriptive URL path.
Re: 20 Million-Dollar Businesses You've Never Heard Of
#65Sock subscriptions - what an awesome idea!
There is another startup like that in Boston called "ManPacks". A subscription service for socks, tshirts, etc. I thought it was a kind of dumb idea, but if that sock revenue number is real they are onto something big! http://www.manpacks.com/
Subscription services for regular, physical goods are a blessing. They may seem gimmicky and lazy at first, but once you realize the benefit of delegating and automating a part of your life, you'll jump right on it.
Of course, it takes the customers to realize that they do in fact tend to run out of boxers, socks and other supplies regularly, but people in their twenties should already have had that epiphany.
In my country, there's currently an online (e-)grocer where I can buy a week's worth of groceries (with no risk of buying snacks when I shop with the munchies!) and use that half-to-one-hour time for each trip on something else.
They even accept return deposit bottles so I don't have to go down to the grocer and redeem them.
What's gimmicky laziness to one is optimization, delegation and automation to someone else. :)
Re: 20 Million-Dollar Businesses You've Never Heard Of
#66Sock subscriptions - what an awesome idea!
There is another startup like that in Boston called "ManPacks". A subscription service for socks, tshirts, etc. I thought it was a kind of dumb idea, but if that sock revenue number is real they are onto something big! http://www.manpacks.com/
Agreed. I wonder what percentage of us have promptly thought about the startup costs and practicalities for doing that sort of business ourselves ;-)
Re: 20 Million-Dollar Businesses You've Never Heard Of
#67Another one not listed: Cheeseheads (from old sofa cushions)
http://www.smartbrief.com/news/entrepreneurs/storyDetails.js...
Re: 20 Million-Dollar Businesses You've Never Heard Of
#68A great bunch of ideas but hopeless presentation. Why the heck does Forbes use this slideshow style of presenting ? Loved the rent-a-green box idea and also the socks subscription :). Who could've thought about socks and underwear subscription, really :). Thanks for posting.
The socks idea is interesting, but the blurb says the company estimates it will save the average customer 12 hours a year buying socks. Really? 12 hours per year?
Re: 20 Million-Dollar Businesses You've Never Heard Of
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
We've still got plenty of room for improvement, clearly, but the editorial team just recently introduced a new version of the gallery slides that get us a bit closer to what you're describing: http://blogs.forbes.com/bruceupbin/2010/12/08/spacex-gets-ku... I think the "all one page" idea is a good one, and I'll talk to the right folks about it. My only concern is that such a media-heavy page is going to be pretty rou…
Yes, that's a gallery where the text is not overlaid on the photo, and the Google ads are not quite as tacky, but I think this is missing the point: the content in the OP doesn't belong in a photo gallery format at all. Notice how many points the posts summarizing the article received - NOBODY to whom you actually want to advertise has any desire to sit around clicking through a gallery to read text.
Yes, your single page load speed may be good, but imagine how much slower your total gallery experience is. You can always have a load more content on scroll if it's really a problem.
Re: 20 Million-Dollar Businesses You've Never Heard Of
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
We've still got plenty of room for improvement, clearly, but the editorial team just recently introduced a new version of the gallery slides that get us a bit closer to what you're describing: http://blogs.forbes.com/bruceupbin/2010/12/08/spacex-gets-ku... I think the "all one page" idea is a good one, and I'll talk to the right folks about it. My only concern is that such a media-heavy page is going to be pretty rou…
Yes, that's a gallery where the text is not overlaid on the photo, and the Google ads are not quite as tacky, but I think this is missing the point: the content in the OP doesn't belong in a photo gallery format at all. Notice how many points the posts summarizing the article received - NOBODY to whom you actually want to advertise has any desire to sit around clicking through a gallery to read text.
To add to this, consider how the Big Picture does it, probably "suited" to a gallery but it's all in one big page.