To-date, there's been a few ideas I've had that might be worth something... but can be rather difficult to implement. Hey, if it's easy, someone would've done it already ;-)
0. scuba reservation -
An idea that me and a buddy kicked around. we wanted to form a boat reservation system for scuba diving similar to Reserve America for camping-sites. We got as far as talking to a few boats, but it's one of those things that's difficult to build momentum due to organizations like Sport Chalet signing long term contracts and boats not want to miss out on locked-in revenue. I'm not giving up on this yet, but at least for now, not actively pursuing it either.
1. boxes -
Last time I moved, we hired a moving company. We ended up with literally 50-75 cardboard boxes. We gave most of the good ones to friends who needed them for moving, gave some to random people who were moving, and tossed plenty of them away. That got me thinking - what if we make a fully re-useable box?
At first, I was thinking about the market... when I went to the container-store, it's pretty obvious that if done right, there'll be sufficient market for these things... A cardboard box that has a fancy hanger attached to the top goes for something like $20... and we ended up using like 10 of those -_-' Lucky for us, the moving estimator underestimated our cost, so we paid a fraction of retail price for the boxes we got
Conceptually, it's rather simple. It has to be FULLY modular, ie each panel has to be identical to reduce production cost. You can have a few sizes for different size items, but ideally, you can say put together 2 smaller squares to make a rectangle. Ultimately, this box needs to be water-proof (but not flood proof), somewhat fire-proof, and can hold say 25lb (easy enough for 1 person to carry).
Instead of moving companies sell these boxes, they can just "rent them" to the people who are moving. When they finished unpacking, they can drop them off at the local uhaul or fedex office, and get their deposit back. For those who self-move, they can rent them from local fedex too.
Initially, cost of renting these boxes can be on par with buying paper ones. At least it'll appeal to the "environmentally conscious" consumers. As production and distribution becomes more mature, cost of production will inevitably go down.
Implementation wise, this is the simplest. Logistically, it is rather difficult. Operational Research, if you are into that kind of thing, must be optimized. Perhaps someday, Walmart will consider it =P
2. coupon
3. shopping-cart return
4. highway meet ATM (to come)
5. shower (to come)
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1. if you truly want to "take action" on this one, we need some material engineers and mechanical engineers on the crew. we need to try out different materials and think of a design that can be "inflated" and "deflated" like the regular paper box. say individual price is $5, and if people refund it they can get $4.50 back for each box. it think this kind of business model is do-able.
ReplyDeleteand also, do you want to throw in your scuba idea in there as well? :)
ReplyDeleteand also the queuing "cart," shopping cart, and gas price monitor :)
ReplyDeletethanks for the reminder ;-) gas price monitor would be nice but requires much more cooperation than the other ideas, which is more prototype-able =P
ReplyDeleteas for the box idea, no need to be that cheap, at least not in the US. if it's modular enough, it can be a rental charge per panel... like say $0.25/panel, with option for insurance if you break it. In terms of material, yeah, there are lots of various types of plastic... carbon fiber would be nice and expensive =P haha...