Here’s a great way to share your music taste on the web. Check outmixwit.where you can create your very own mix tapes. It’s easy to use and has a great music library of obscure and popular artists.
Here’s my quick mix that I put together in 5 minutes and includes artists that I thought would be impossible to find - move your mouse over the tape and you gain access to the controls and can fastforward to the next tracks etc:
An inspiring talk from Gever Tulley, founder of the Tinkering School, talking about how kids are overprotected and the 5 dangerous things you should let them do and why:
This freaked me out - look at the mess of words below, they hardly make sense. Now start reading and the text will explain what’s going on:
When you think of shoe polish probably the first brand to come to mind is ‘Kiwi’… ‘Kiwi owns the shoe polish market and to try to compete with them would be a very hard uphill battle.
But who do you turn to when you have to clean your sneakers? Who owns the ’sneaker cleaner’ segment of the shoe cleaning market?
:: Jason Markk :: created a new market for an old problem that affects a relatively new product - sneakers.
A simple way to get to these sorts of ideas is this: Kiwi own the market for cleaning shoes… but are there any shoes out there that Kiwi can’t clean? - ’sneakers’ come to mind.
I wonder what other niches can be filled using this sort of thinking?
Wine That Loves… sources the best wines that go with everyday foods and then creates funky, unpretentious labels that get right to the point. Want a wine that loves chicken?:
I guess at the end of the day do you really want a semillon sauvignon blanc or do you want a wine that goes well with the pizza you just bought?
From a business point of view, doing wine like this, means they’re not competing with the myriad of wine makers in the world… by connecting with people in a unique way they change the rules of the wine game.
The New Zealand company B.E.E have developed a fantastically cool range of cleaning products. Do they clean any better than the rest? I have no idea but I know what I want in my laundry cabinet:
Some cool design work makes a simple product remarkable. Now here are the cool lessons in all of this:
That Amway thing got me thinking… how much easier would it be to motivate and engage people (buyers and sellers) if Amway had created ‘cool’ product labelling? The product would sell practically sell itself and people then wouldn’t cringe when you told them you wanted to show them some Amway stuff.
Amway spends a fortune developing business systems and motivational material… and the carrot at the end of the stick is the MONEY you can make from joining Amway. For me, a bigger motivation would be that I can be part of something FUN… because I’m happy to talk to my friends about FUN stuff.
For ages I’ve toyed with the idea of making an egg-shaped fridge… but I know nothing about refrigeration. But it always niggled at me that someone could make a living making designer fridges… and voila… the folks at Robey’s make really cool fridges:
They have heaps of different designs and no competition. What the…? Surely every fridge out there is a competitor to these guys…I hear you say. But you’d be wrong. Kelvinator might make similar models to fisher paykel and compete… but these guys are in a league of their own and as such have no competition.
I love creative people… how would you use an escalator to advertise your product? Or conversely, what products could you advertise with an escalator? Inventorspot has a great collection of pics that answer these questions, here’s an example:
An innovative Australian company has carved a fantastic niche for themselves by becoming a niche travel agency that specialises in kid-friendly holidays, places to stay, cruises, restaurants etc.
With most travel agencies reduced to competing on price, the ladies who started this company have carved themselves our a lucrative niche that beautifully solves the problems of parents around the world.
Now here’s the thing, specialising in holidays that cater for kids means a heap of research which is more work than the average travel agent would be willing to undertake… and that’s what makes these guys special. They simply did the work and gave parents a one-stop site for them to plan their holiday.
:: Family holiday? pack the kids.. and lets travel
