Unusual Business Ideas

As we all know competition on developed markets is getting extremely severe. Unfortunately I know it from my own experience: tourism industry in my country is booming for the last few years and more and more players are coming into this market. Same situation happens everywhere. Probably this is the main reason for people to start searching for new business niches. Ananysts say that unusual businesses will keep appearing more intensively and mainly on market of services.

My country is a former USSR republic and we entered EU only few years ago, so many business ideas that already successfuly work abroad are still very innovative for us. For example some 3-4 years ago our local businessman founded a taxi company named „Women’s taxi” – these are taxis with women-drivers, who work only with women-passengers. Cars are painted in bright colours, lady-drivers are nicely dressed, polite and drive very carefully. I think it’s a great idea which surely will enrich it’s inventor! Just imagine: late at night a young lady is going home from a party. Which taxi will she choose? I’m 99% sure that she’ll call to „Women’s taxi” thus caring about her safety.

Besides, this company has also launched an interesting service – driver-nanny: young lady will meet your children after school, drive them to dancing classes and afterwards back home. I would also advise them to offer another similar service – driver-nany for pets, who could take your dog to groomer and let you save your free time. Many people treat their pets like their children and, following that logic, most services that people want for themselves, they’ll want for their pets.

Free niches can be found in different ways, but the 2 most common ways are: starting to earn money on your hobby or think of the services that you, as a customer, don’t get at all or their quality (or performance) is unsatisfactory.

As an example I can write about a Russian businesswoman Nataly Malceva who offer exclusive service – „paid queue”. Idea itself is very simple – Nataly or one of her colleagues in standing in a queue instead of their client for a small compensation (500 RUB/ per hour or ~ $20). It’s easy to enter this market as first of all there is no competition and it doesn’t need any investments at all!

Nataly says that the idea of such business came to her when she spent several hours queuing to receive some papers in local governmental institution. Such queues can take up to a half of your day and many people will be happy to pay to someone else who’ll do this unpleasant work.

One of the main advantages of unusual business – you don’t need finances for advertising. If your offer is exclusive, then your clients will become your refferals and will advertise your services among friends, colleagues and relatives.
At the same time there are also significant disadvantages – such business will never become mass.

I’m personally very optimistic about unusual businesses and I’m sure that their future lies in market of services. While people are getting more well-to-do they start to hand over all their everyday domestic problems to qualified specialists and are ready to pay for it. Why not to start your own low cost business on this market?