Change of plans, recession style
September 15, 2009Jon Brooks Comments OffThe Huffington Post asked its readers who have started small businesses after losing their jobs to send in their stories. The site then picked 31 to represent in a slide show it calls “The Recession’s Accidental Entrepeneurs.”
Here is the entry voted the best of the lot by Huffington Post readers:
MovieWedge was developed after a plane ride with my mom where I wanted to show her some movies I had saved on my iPhone to pass the time. After holding my phone for about 30 minutes I began to get tired. I tried stacking it up on magazines, soda cans, crumpled up paper, you name it! I swore once I came back home I’d buy something to alleviate this problem. I looked and looked and found nothing. Then the proverbial lightbulb went off in my head. I brainstormed, did lots of research and development, and after 10 or so prototypes came up with the solution I found to be the most elegant. The MovieWedge (www.moviewedge.com). I started selling it in March of 2009 and it’s been quite a success.
And two more we like:
Hiring freeze. Two words that were definitely not part of the brilliant plan I had concocted to make me an international businessman. Between a very temporary job and MBA classes, I spent my time zipping around the city on my trustworthy companion, worrying about my gloomy prospects. Until I realized it was time for a major haul. I needed to move things, fast! When I looked for a cheap, economic way to haul grocery bags, books, and other stuff on my scooter, I realized I was going to have to build it! That’s how ScootBoot came to life. Prototype 1 was disastrous. Prototype 2 was close to that. But who said starting your own business was easy? Finally I built the perfect trailer. I knew there had to be other scooter riders out there in need for some green, cheap and easy solutions.
After 25 years of making a living creating custom hand carved signs and lettering the names on yachts in genuine gold leaf, the bottom literally fell out of my market. From one year to the next my business dropped 80%. Being self employed left me no other options than to try and start another business, one that would do well even in a bad economy. Since I am a professional woodcarver and I used to make custom hunting knives I had the idea of starting a kitchen knife sharpening service. I soon found out that that the average consumer had nowhere to go to get their knives sharpened. People were thrilled to find someone to take care of their kitchen knives. So I worked on developing a marketing strategy to let people know of my service.
Check out the rest here.
