1. Rent-A-Green Box
Entrepreneur: Spencer Brown *
Product/Service: Environmentally friendly moving supplies, delivery and pickup
Start Date: 2005
Startup Costs: $7 million
Revenue: $2.6 million in 2009
2. Mabel's Labels
Entrepreneur: Julie Cole
Product/Service: Personalized, permanent labels for kids' stuff
Start Date: 2002
Startup Costs: About $10,000
Revenue: $4 million in 2009
3. Fatheadz
Entrepreneur: Rico Elmore
Product/Service: Sunglasses for large people
Start Date: 2004
Start-up Costs: About $500,000
Revenue: Estimated $2 million in 2010
4. Stave Puzzles
Entrepreneur: Steve Richardson
Product/Service: Hand-made wooden jigsaw puzzles.
Start Date: 1974
Startup Costs: About $5,000
Revenue: $2.5 million in 2009
Ranging in price from $125 to $5,000, these puzzles are made of cherry wood, covered with a dry-mounted image drawn by one of 100 licensed artists, and individually hand-cut into as many as 2,500 pieces. Bill Gates has one, and Barbara Bush gave another as a gift to Queen Elizabeth. "We try to make them hard to put together," said 71-year-old Richardson, who calls himself the company's chief tormentor.
5. Texas Driving Experience
Entrepreneur: Dawn Stokes
Product/Service: High-performance driving lessons and retreats
Start Date: 2004
Startup Costs: About $500,000
Revenue: Estimated $1.8 million in 2010
6. Litecubes
Entrepreneur: Carl VanderSchuit
Product/Service: Fake ice cubes that glow
Start Date: 2001
Startup Costs: About $100,000
Revenue: $1.3 million in 2009
7. Smarter Fuel
Entrepreneur: Dave Dunham
Product/Service: Biodiesel fuel from restaurant frying oil
Start Date: 2004
Startup Costs: $50,000
Revenue: $3 million in 2009
8. Sky Zone
Entrepreneur: Rick Platt
Product/Service: Arenas covered with trampolines
Start Date: 2009
Startup Costs: About $2 million
Revenue: $3 million-plus in 2009
9. Sanidoor
Entrepreneur: Gale Lemrand.
Product/Service: Sanitary, touchless restroom-door openers
Start Date: 2009.
Startup Costs: About $3.5 million
Revenue: Estimated $2.2 million in 2010
10. Geese Police
Entrepreneur: Dave Marcks
Product/Service: Geese abatement using collies
Start Date: 1987
Startup Costs: About $3,000
Revenue: Estimated $2.5 million in 2010
11. Neuberg & Neuberg
Entrepreneur: Larry Neuberg
Product/Service: Importing gold for gilding
Start Date: 1962
Startup Costs: Virtually none
Revenue: Estimated $3 million in 2010
12. Deeplocal
Entrepreneur: Nathan Martin
Product/Service: Promotions mixing the digital and physical
Start Date: 2006
Startup Costs: Financed out of initial $30,000 contract
Revenue: Estimated $1 million-plus in 2010
13. BlackSocks
Entrepreneur: Samuel Liechti
Product/Service: Sock subscriptions
Start Date: 1999
Startup Costs: $30,000
Revenue: $5 million in 2009
14. DNA 11
Entrepreneurs: Adrian Salamunovic and Nazim Ahmed
Product/Service: DNA artwork
Start Date: 2005
Start-up Costs: $2,000
Revenue: $1.4 million in 2009
15. The Fiero Store
Entrepreneur: Matthew Hartzog.
Product/Service: Parts and accessories for the Pontiac Fiero
Start Date: 1991
Start-up Costs: $5,000
Revenue: $2 million in 2009
16. Heritage Link Brands
Entrepreneurs: Selena Cuffe and Khary Cuffe
Product/Service: African wine
Start Date: 2005
Start-up Costs: $75,000
Revenue: $1 million in 2009
17. Jimmy Beans Wool
Entrepreneur: Laura Zander
Product/Service: Knitting and crochet supplies
Start Date: 2002
Startup Costs: $30,000
Revenue: $2.8 million in 2009
18. PetRelocation.com
Entrepreneur: Kevin O'Brien and Angie O'Brien
Product/Service: Pet travel
Start Date: 2004
Start-up Costs: $97,000
Revenue: Estimated $4 million in 2010
19. Murray Associates
Entrepreneur: Kevin D. Murray
Product/Service: Eavesdropping detection and counterespionage
Start Date: 1978
Startup Costs: $5,000
Revenue in 2009: $760,000
My sister-in-law sells restaurant equipment. One of her products is a catalyst (some sort of metal mesh, I think) that you put in the fryer to keep the oil fresh--makes it last 3 times as long, I think. That sort of thing will make it harder to find oil for biodiesel.
These are what I call real startups. Many of them are imaginative and solve real customer needs. I hope that many of them can grow into thriving businesses.
One point that I think is interesting is that even though they're all "offline" businesses, most were started with very little capital investment.
I sometimes get the feeling that the HN crowd is a bit (understandably) myopic and focuses too much on simplistic websites. But I believe that more articles like this, which showcase business ideas in other fields, could be very valuable in inspiring people and getting the creative juices flowing.
There's a much bigger world out there than one might imagine!
the HN crowd is a bit myopic and focuses way too much on simplistic websites.
Perhaps. But we focus on websites because those are what we know. This is a web-based community of web-based hackers. We've got that in common.
Presumably the communities of "breeders of goose-chasing dogs" spend a certain amount of time discussing the realities of the goose-chasing dog business. I know for a fact that communities of chicken breeders know something about the free-range egg business, and that if you hang around with enough folk musicians you will eventually learn something about the folk-musician business.
> I sometimes get the feeling that the HN crowd is a bit (understandably) myopic and focuses too much on simplistic websites.
i disagree with the simplistic notion. but i'd note that it focuses on software because that is YC's wheelhouse. this is a niche website, for sure. you will certainly find other somewhat similar sites more oriented towards various other things.
What is with the ridiculous use of "In Pictures" features now days?
If they want the page views, put each company on a seperate page, but don't pretend that the pictures count for more than 1% of the interesting aspect of this feature, and don't use a terrible slideshow system that makes it actually annoying to read the text.
It racks up page views and saves them from actually writing any compelling content. And it also means they're driving people away from their site as fast as possible.
It allows graphic designers to become content providers! Also probably has to do w/ the popularity of infographics, photo sharing, etc. The worst part IMO is, most people just 'create' their images in a graphics program w/o giving further thought to sharing, embedding, tracking, usability, etc. And, then post it to their site w/o alt tags or a descriptive URL path.
A great bunch of ideas but hopeless presentation. Why the heck does Forbes use this slideshow style of presenting ?
Loved the rent-a-green box idea and also the socks subscription :). Who could've thought about socks and underwear subscription, really :). Thanks for posting.
The socks idea is interesting, but the blurb says the company estimates it will save the average customer 12 hours a year buying socks. Really? 12 hours per year?
Where's the justification for most of these businesses actually being worth 20 million dollars? I mean they're awesome stories, but when you have $1-2 million in revenue and have to deal with physical products, you won't exactly have millions in profits. So if you're generating, say, $200K in profits, who exactly is going to give you a 100 P/E and pay you $20 million for that business?
Why does Forbes need to go the bullshit "How This Kid Made $60M" route to rouse interest? Can't it be awesome enough in itself that someone is making a very fine living selling labels or socks? Oh no, unless they're worth eight digits, they're not worth talking about. Sad.
Another good presentation like this was done by AdaFruit, the open source hardware company. The founder and an editor at Make: pinged 13 OSH vendors and found in aggregate they were doing $50MM a year in revenue. I'm fairly impressed by it considering they are mostly 1-3 person operations.
take the Fiero guy...sure 2 mil is impressive...but car parts are expensive...and his profit margin is most likely only 7%(seems to be the average for car parts)...which turns his 2 mil into $140K.
Prior to quitting my day job, I was propositioned by an Englishman living in my town to improve his website, which he had hand-coded in PHP. There are several million owners of vintage Japanese cars in the world, there are several thousand places locally you can find a carburetor for a '82 Camry (I have no clue if that actually makes sense -- work with me here), and there is precisely one man in town who can match up "Customer in England with '82 Camry" and "72 year old owner of used auto store in central Japan."
Which is a long way of saying that I have exactly one data point for the profit margin of a particular niche auto parts business. Suffice it to say that -- after you deduct shipping, duties, and cost of goods -- it is still higher than mine, and all I do for order fulfillment is a SQL call. (Quote: "If they don't like my prices, then they can either learn to speak Japanese or sod off.")
Agree that profit margins can be very thin, but in this case the Fiero guy is probably doing pretty well.
If the Fiero parts guy is primarily selling to end users (which it looks like he does), his profit is probably closer to 33% per item. Standard markup for auto parts to private customer is 1.5x
Source: Family run auto repair shop for 20+ years.
They just got 20 times the amount of page views though. If they provided a list that means you could have skipped through and decreased their page views.
I love the green boxes. Last time I moved my roommate spent almost $50 on cardboard boxes. After unpacking we immediately threw them away (with the additional hassel of disassembling them). This is a far better solution.
I hope they become available in my state next time I have to move.
I think the idea is great also. http://frogbox.com/ is a company started here in Vancouver who does the same thing. they also have started franchising it.
I have never used them but had a friend looked into using them and said it was too expensive compared to regular boxes. It looks like it cost about $110 for boxes for a two bedroom rental. Guess the convenience and green benefits are the selling factors.
Up votes but no replies to actually take do it. I am no where near the ability of most of you on the coding side but can take care of any other aspect of the business.
Also, not many of these are high margin businesses. Meh, you have a $2mm revenue shipping business with 10% margins and 10 employees that takes all your time to run. I would rather own a $100k/year web service.
I feel I must apologize for not pointing out the UI issues on the page right after I posted the piece - I should know better. I almost didn't submit it, but couldn't find an alternative on any blogs. Thanks to DevX101 for taking the time to post the "meat-n-potatoes" of the story! Thanks to everyone for chiming in w/ your opinions.
Thought it was pretty good rep management for the Forbes dev to stop by and leave an address for feedback - props to taylorbuley for that!
There is another startup like that in Boston called "ManPacks". A subscription service for socks, tshirts, etc. I thought it was a kind of dumb idea, but if that sock revenue number is real they are onto something big!
If you don't mind me being a bit of a contrarian, I notice that apart from the green boxes and the biofuel ones, none of these companies seem to be "saving customers money". And many are selling straight novelty items (puzzles, racing car school... glowing icecubes?) Am I missing anything here?
[+] [-] DevX101|15 years ago|reply
2. Mabel's Labels Entrepreneur: Julie Cole Product/Service: Personalized, permanent labels for kids' stuff Start Date: 2002 Startup Costs: About $10,000 Revenue: $4 million in 2009
3. Fatheadz Entrepreneur: Rico Elmore Product/Service: Sunglasses for large people Start Date: 2004 Start-up Costs: About $500,000 Revenue: Estimated $2 million in 2010
4. Stave Puzzles Entrepreneur: Steve Richardson Product/Service: Hand-made wooden jigsaw puzzles. Start Date: 1974 Startup Costs: About $5,000 Revenue: $2.5 million in 2009 Ranging in price from $125 to $5,000, these puzzles are made of cherry wood, covered with a dry-mounted image drawn by one of 100 licensed artists, and individually hand-cut into as many as 2,500 pieces. Bill Gates has one, and Barbara Bush gave another as a gift to Queen Elizabeth. "We try to make them hard to put together," said 71-year-old Richardson, who calls himself the company's chief tormentor.
5. Texas Driving Experience Entrepreneur: Dawn Stokes Product/Service: High-performance driving lessons and retreats Start Date: 2004 Startup Costs: About $500,000 Revenue: Estimated $1.8 million in 2010
6. Litecubes Entrepreneur: Carl VanderSchuit Product/Service: Fake ice cubes that glow Start Date: 2001 Startup Costs: About $100,000 Revenue: $1.3 million in 2009
7. Smarter Fuel Entrepreneur: Dave Dunham Product/Service: Biodiesel fuel from restaurant frying oil Start Date: 2004 Startup Costs: $50,000 Revenue: $3 million in 2009
8. Sky Zone Entrepreneur: Rick Platt Product/Service: Arenas covered with trampolines Start Date: 2009 Startup Costs: About $2 million Revenue: $3 million-plus in 2009
9. Sanidoor Entrepreneur: Gale Lemrand. Product/Service: Sanitary, touchless restroom-door openers Start Date: 2009. Startup Costs: About $3.5 million Revenue: Estimated $2.2 million in 2010
10. Geese Police Entrepreneur: Dave Marcks Product/Service: Geese abatement using collies Start Date: 1987 Startup Costs: About $3,000 Revenue: Estimated $2.5 million in 2010
[+] [-] DevX101|15 years ago|reply
12. Deeplocal Entrepreneur: Nathan Martin Product/Service: Promotions mixing the digital and physical Start Date: 2006 Startup Costs: Financed out of initial $30,000 contract Revenue: Estimated $1 million-plus in 2010
13. BlackSocks Entrepreneur: Samuel Liechti Product/Service: Sock subscriptions Start Date: 1999 Startup Costs: $30,000 Revenue: $5 million in 2009
14. DNA 11 Entrepreneurs: Adrian Salamunovic and Nazim Ahmed Product/Service: DNA artwork Start Date: 2005 Start-up Costs: $2,000 Revenue: $1.4 million in 2009
15. The Fiero Store Entrepreneur: Matthew Hartzog. Product/Service: Parts and accessories for the Pontiac Fiero Start Date: 1991 Start-up Costs: $5,000 Revenue: $2 million in 2009
16. Heritage Link Brands Entrepreneurs: Selena Cuffe and Khary Cuffe Product/Service: African wine Start Date: 2005 Start-up Costs: $75,000 Revenue: $1 million in 2009
17. Jimmy Beans Wool Entrepreneur: Laura Zander Product/Service: Knitting and crochet supplies Start Date: 2002 Startup Costs: $30,000 Revenue: $2.8 million in 2009
18. PetRelocation.com Entrepreneur: Kevin O'Brien and Angie O'Brien Product/Service: Pet travel Start Date: 2004 Start-up Costs: $97,000 Revenue: Estimated $4 million in 2010
19. Murray Associates Entrepreneur: Kevin D. Murray Product/Service: Eavesdropping detection and counterespionage Start Date: 1978 Startup Costs: $5,000 Revenue in 2009: $760,000
[+] [-] metageek|15 years ago|reply
My sister-in-law sells restaurant equipment. One of her products is a catalyst (some sort of metal mesh, I think) that you put in the fryer to keep the oil fresh--makes it last 3 times as long, I think. That sort of thing will make it harder to find oil for biodiesel.
[+] [-] rmah|15 years ago|reply
One point that I think is interesting is that even though they're all "offline" businesses, most were started with very little capital investment.
I sometimes get the feeling that the HN crowd is a bit (understandably) myopic and focuses too much on simplistic websites. But I believe that more articles like this, which showcase business ideas in other fields, could be very valuable in inspiring people and getting the creative juices flowing.
There's a much bigger world out there than one might imagine!
[+] [-] mechanical_fish|15 years ago|reply
Perhaps. But we focus on websites because those are what we know. This is a web-based community of web-based hackers. We've got that in common.
Presumably the communities of "breeders of goose-chasing dogs" spend a certain amount of time discussing the realities of the goose-chasing dog business. I know for a fact that communities of chicken breeders know something about the free-range egg business, and that if you hang around with enough folk musicians you will eventually learn something about the folk-musician business.
[+] [-] noodle|15 years ago|reply
i disagree with the simplistic notion. but i'd note that it focuses on software because that is YC's wheelhouse. this is a niche website, for sure. you will certainly find other somewhat similar sites more oriented towards various other things.
[+] [-] corin_|15 years ago|reply
If they want the page views, put each company on a seperate page, but don't pretend that the pictures count for more than 1% of the interesting aspect of this feature, and don't use a terrible slideshow system that makes it actually annoying to read the text.
[+] [-] kilian|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thankuz|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deepGem|15 years ago|reply
Loved the rent-a-green box idea and also the socks subscription :). Who could've thought about socks and underwear subscription, really :). Thanks for posting.
[+] [-] axod|15 years ago|reply
To artificially inflate page views and advertising impressions.
[+] [-] LargeWu|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dhh|15 years ago|reply
Why does Forbes need to go the bullshit "How This Kid Made $60M" route to rouse interest? Can't it be awesome enough in itself that someone is making a very fine living selling labels or socks? Oh no, unless they're worth eight digits, they're not worth talking about. Sad.
[+] [-] thecoffman|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] replicatorblog|15 years ago|reply
http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/05/03/million-dollar-baby-...
[+] [-] vaksel|15 years ago|reply
take the Fiero guy...sure 2 mil is impressive...but car parts are expensive...and his profit margin is most likely only 7%(seems to be the average for car parts)...which turns his 2 mil into $140K.
[+] [-] patio11|15 years ago|reply
Which is a long way of saying that I have exactly one data point for the profit margin of a particular niche auto parts business. Suffice it to say that -- after you deduct shipping, duties, and cost of goods -- it is still higher than mine, and all I do for order fulfillment is a SQL call. (Quote: "If they don't like my prices, then they can either learn to speak Japanese or sod off.")
[+] [-] SHOwnsYou|15 years ago|reply
If the Fiero parts guy is primarily selling to end users (which it looks like he does), his profit is probably closer to 33% per item. Standard markup for auto parts to private customer is 1.5x
Source: Family run auto repair shop for 20+ years.
[+] [-] iisbum|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] transition|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samjohn|15 years ago|reply
I hope they become available in my state next time I have to move.
[+] [-] AndyIngram|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] metageek|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamesbressi|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamesbressi|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rabbitonrails|15 years ago|reply
Also, not many of these are high margin businesses. Meh, you have a $2mm revenue shipping business with 10% margins and 10 employees that takes all your time to run. I would rather own a $100k/year web service.
[+] [-] iqster|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bmelton|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deepGem|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thankuz|15 years ago|reply
Thought it was pretty good rep management for the Forbes dev to stop by and leave an address for feedback - props to taylorbuley for that!
[+] [-] LiveTheDream|15 years ago|reply
http://www.smartbrief.com/news/entrepreneurs/storyDetails.js...
[+] [-] macov|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arethuza|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] replicatorblog|15 years ago|reply
http://www.manpacks.com/
[+] [-] codebaobab|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hernan7|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imr|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arethuza|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trimski|15 years ago|reply
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju9ZJSSP2h8
[+] [-] jorkos|15 years ago|reply