Business Opportunities Weblog

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• Big Break Contest Voting
• KoiPondFever Helps Keep Ponds Running
• Summer’s Most Important Invention: Air Conditioning
• Everyone Is Getting In On The Party
• Fighting Mosquitoes With Smelly Socks
• Aerial Wedding Photographer Causes Stir
• What Makes A Mormon Entrepreneur?

Big Break Contest Voting Posted: 14 Jul 2011 03:53 PM PDT A couple months ago, American Express OPEN commissioned me to write my startup story, How I Accidentally Became a Professional Blogger in 2001. They did this to promote a contest that they’re running called Big Break for Small Business. As part of the competition, they’re going to give five small businesses $20,000 to help grow, and there are only 6 more days left to vote on the 11 finalists. You can view the finalist and their videos here.

KoiPondFever Helps Keep Ponds Running Posted: 14 Jul 2011 11:32 AM PDT Koi ponds are relaxing for the owner to watch, but the up keep is not nearly as fun. The cost of keeping the pond going can grow quickly if you’re not careful. KoiPondFever.com is dedicated to providing quality products at reasonable prices. Not only do they provide the items you need, but the owner, RC Moore, shares the information every koi owner needs to maintain a happy and healthy koi pond environment. I recently asked RC Moore a few questions about the business, and the inspiration behind it. Tell us a little about KoiPondFever.com. KoiPondFever.com is an online pond supply store specializing in koi pond supplies and koi food. The site also contains comprehensive information about koi pond construction and maintenance. Additional information includes an index of koi varieties. Established in 2006, the company is family owned and centrally located in Independence, MO(a suburb of Kansas City, MO). What inspired it? When I constructed my first koi pond there was a lot of misinformation about keeping koi. Pet stores and internet articles claimed that koi and plants could not be kept together and the koi would destroy any plant in a pond. Through my own experience, I found that koi and plants could be kept together in the right environment. I founded KoiPondFever.com to inform people about the beauty of having a koi water garden, a term that has now become popular in the hobby. In 2008 we started selling pond supply products from construction, to water treatments, and koi food. What are some of the products you offer? We sell pond pumps, skimmers, pond liners, pond filters, waterfall filters, lighting, predator control, UV sterilizers, pond plants, koi food, koi and more. We currently carry over 600 products. Why should someone consider raising Koi or starting a Koi pond? Koi are the most colorful and majestic freshwater fish in the world. Their colors and patterns are unique to each koi like an artist’s brush strokes on a painting. They can become like pets, recognizing your foot steps as you approach to feed them. They will even learn to feed from your hand and can grow to up to 30 inches, living over 50 years. A koi water garden with the water lilies blooming and the sound of the water babbling down a stream or rushing over a waterfall can be a tranquil refuge in today’s hectic world. What separates you from the competition? We not only carry great products at affordable prices, but also provide information about koi, ponds and water gardens. We believe it is essential to sell products that will last, are easy to maintain, and are efficient to run. We sell only food that will promote growth and color as well as benefit the health of the koi. We believe in complete customer service and satisfaction, providing a toll free number in addition to our online service. Our goal is to make it easy for the customer to have a beautiful pond with crystal clear water and colorful healthy koi. Do you have any goals you’d like to accomplish over the next year or so? We are currently building new breeding ponds and plan to expand our plant selection to include water lilies and other pond plants. What are some lessons your business has taught you? The biggest lesson was figuring out how to get the website visible in a very competitive market when you are competing with literally millions of web pages. The essentials are advertising and optimizing the website for the search engines. Is there anything else you’d like to add? We started our business in the worst economy in five generations, but we looked at this as an opportunity to capture business from companies that would fail. This year we are on track to quadruple our sales over last year. Do you have any advice you’d like to offer fellow entrepreneur who are just getting started? You have to be passionate about your business and willing to work hard at it. You also have to be patient and willing to ride out the building process. Success is not going to come overnight and you have to realize that you will have to put everything back into the business for the first few years to make it grow– the competition has already done so. Photo by Eustaquio Santimano

Summer’s Most Important Invention: Air Conditioning Posted: 14 Jul 2011 09:11 AM PDT On July 17, 1902 in the midst of a steamy summer, Dr. Willis H. Carrier developed and later patented the first modern system to provide man-made control over temperature, humidity, ventilation and indoor air. From there, his innovation created an industry dedicated to making the world a cooler place to live, work and play. In celebration of this historic anniversary, here a few facts about Willis Carrier, inventor and entrepreneur: Even though it’s a people-pleaser, Carrier’s original invention was designed for paper — not comfort. A Brooklyn, N.Y. printing plant challenged Carrier to stabilize the temperature and moisture in the air so the dimensions of the paper would remain constant and the different color inks would line up correctly. This innovation gave birth to the air conditioning industry. “Industrial conditioning” was the primary focus of Carrier’s early work, helping many manufacturers out of sticky situations, including chewing gum factories. If the air was too warm and moist, the gum was too sticky to cut; if the air was too cool and dry the gum sheets were brittle and shattered. Carrier first applied air conditioning to a residence in 1914, and later introduced the Carrier Room Weathermaker in 1932. However consumers were slow to embrace the idea. In fact, Fortune magazine recently reprinted an article from its archives with the headline, “Air conditioning remains a prime public disappointment of the 1930s.” What a difference a few decades has made. Today air conditioning is found in more than 85 percent of U.S. homes. Willis Carrier is referred to as the Father of Cool, and with good reason. Over his career, he had a number of industry “firsts,” including applying modern air conditioning to department stores (J.L. Hudson’s, Detroit), movie theaters (Rivoli Theater, New York City), office buildings (T.W. Patterson Building, Fresno, Calif.), ships (S.S. Victoria), railroad cars (Martha Washington dining car), the chambers of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate and even the bus from Bagdad to Damascus just to name a few. Though a genius, Carrier struggled with math as a child — particularly fractions. To help him grasp the concept, his mother had him cut apples into halves, quarters and eighths and then add and subtract the parts. He later went on to develop the “Rationale Psychrometric Formulae” that calculates dew point control. This formula still forms the basis for modern air conditioning.

Everyone Is Getting In On The Party Posted: 14 Jul 2011 09:10 AM PDT House parties touting direct sales products like makeup or Tupperware have been around for a long time. The success of the house party is well-known, and it is quickly growing into a marketing tool for all. With the help of one company, many popular brands are adopting the trend for their own needs. House Party helps companies reach customers by giving out party kits to various people. Mostly at-home moms, they apply for a chance to throw a party in their own home, and sample a new product before it hits the market. According to Chicago Tribune, in the recent roll out of a Velveeta party kit, nearly 5,000 people decided it was time to celebrate Cheesy Skillets. They are not the only company bringing people together to promote their products. You may also recognize Playstation or Norton. They are both brands that are ready to start a party in your home. House Party, founded in 2005, has built a database of more than 1 million would-be hosts, mostly 30-something moms, who eagerly compete to throw parties. The firm estimates it will organize 90 events and some 225,000 parties this year, up from about 85,000 parties two years ago. A typical 8- to 12-week campaign costs about $200,000. The company projects revenues of about $20 million this year and hopes to reach $50 million by 2014. “This is a wonderful way to either augment advertising and marketing that’s already in the field or treat it as its own separate marketing entity where on that singular Saturday, 75,000 people will be advocating, trying and talking about Velveeta,” said Michael Perry, House Party’s CEO. Recent offerings run the gamut from the Pull-Ups Potty Dance to the Redbook Happy Hour, with tens of thousands of applicants vying to host several thousand parties. The payout is simply a chance to sample new products before they are available to those not lucky enough to make the guest list. Screenshot from House Party

Fighting Mosquitoes With Smelly Socks Posted: 14 Jul 2011 08:30 AM PDT What do you use if you want to trap and kill mosquitoes? If you’re Fredros Okumu, all you need is the smell of some old, sweaty socks. An African inventor recently discovered an interesting fact. While humans may find the scent of sweaty socks repulsive, mosquitoes are attracted to the smell. So, he has devised a way to use the scent and create a trap for the disease-carrying pests, reports The Gazette. The trap uses chemicals that mimic human foot odour to draw mosquitoes inside a shuttered box, about the size of a garbage can. Once inside, the mosquitoes are poisoned by a powerful insecticide. "We use a synthetic attractant to mimic a real human being," Okumu told Postmedia News from Tanzania. "Mosquitoes go in thinking it’s a human being, but they don’t find any blood. Instead they get contaminated and die." Okumu’s research found that mosquitoes are drawn to humans by the scent of ammonia, lactic acid, carbon dioxide and other substances released by skin, sweat and breath. The synthetic attractant, Okumu’s research has found, attracts four times more mosquitoes than real humans.The trap kills between 74 and 95 per cent of mosquitoes that enter it. Before developing a synthetic compound to lure mosquitoes, Okumu baited his traps with dirty old socks collected from locals in Isakara, in Southeast Tanzania. Photo by How can I recycle this

Aerial Wedding Photographer Causes Stir Posted: 14 Jul 2011 08:13 AM PDT An Australian man caused quite a stir in Bathurst, New South Wales last week while testing the equipment for his new aerial photography business. The locals thought it might have been a UFO, but it was really just a microdrone helicopter. Microdrones are unmanned arial vehicles (basically remote controlled airplanes and helicopters) similar to what the military uses to find terrorists in the desert, but much less sophisticated and cheaper. Kendall Plummer's new microdrone is small, white, carries various cameras, and has been flying around the Bathurst region for the past four months. Mr Plummer has been testing his microdrone in preparation for launching his new business, Aerial Exposure. "The microdrone is for low-level aerial photography," he said. Kendall plans to use his microdrone for real estate and wedding photography. He currently has his microdrone equipped with a 12 megapixel Pentax and a Go-Pro Video Camera. You can see some of his photos here. Here’s what a microdrone looks like:

What Makes A Mormon Entrepreneur? Posted: 14 Jul 2011 07:30 AM PDT Deseret News: Take two cups of creativity, add a cup of practical thinking and season the mix with market savvy. That’s the recipe for making a Mormon entrepreneur. In recent years, clever Mormon “marketeers” have pitched everything from having your family history printed on a set of brass plates (complete with rings) to action figures of Ammon (complete with a set of severed arms). There have been chess sets where Book of Mormon bad guys like Korihor and Gadianton take on good guys Nephi and Moroni. In short, Mormons have been at this a long time. They sold goods to gold miners heading to California in 1849 and sold hand-held “funeral home fans” to sweltering Saints attending church back in 1949. What ‘ingredients’ make you a successful entrepreneur? Photo by Mike Fisher

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