Crazy Business Ideas That Worked
Madison Henry
Zappos
Zappos is a website that offers a wide variety of shoes in terms of brands, styles, colors, sizes, and widths so you don’t have to spend hours walking from store to store to find the shoes you want. They don't make an item available for sale unless it is physically present the warehouse so they can get shoes to customers quickly. Zappos was the first online retailer completely focused on shoes. Investors were skeptical at first.
FedEx
FedEx uses air, water and land networks to deliver goods and services and connect people around the world. Fredrick Smith had the idea in 1965 that was designed to accommodate shipments such as medicine, computer parts, and electronics that had to get to different places quickly. He wrote a paper on his idea in college but Smith’s professor didn’t see the potential in his idea, and the paper received an average grade. FedEx now delivers to over 220 countries.
Pet Rock
Pet Rocks started as a joke and were designed to be the perfect low-maintenance pet. The rocks were packaged in little cardboard kennels complete with air holes and some straw and they became a joke worth $3.95 each. It made millions but faded within months and wasn’t popular for long.
Amazon
Amazon is an online store that offers everything from books and electronics to footballs and jewelry and can ship worldwide. Its first headquarters were in a garage and it started as an online store for just books. Today Amazon's warehouses have more square footage than 700 Madison Square Gardens and could hold more water than 10,000 Olympic Pools.
Twitter is an online site that lets people use a messaging and social networking service based on delivering less information because each “tweet” can only be 140-characters. The company was a part of and held back by the company Odeo until 2007 when it became a separate company. Twitter is now a central to the national conversation and is a big part of how people receive information. The average amount of tweets per day is over 500 million.
FarmVille
FarmVille is a farming simulation game that lets you manage a farm and do things such as plow land, plant crops, grow crops, harvest crops, and raise livestock. The idea seemed silly and made many people skeptical at first, but after seeing that people couldn’t seem to get enough of the game, their views changed. Today more than 60 million people are registered for the game and more than 20 million are logging on at least once a day.
iRobot
iRobot is a modern device that can give you an extra hand around the house or in a business to help you keep up with daily cleaning and get more done every day. It is designed so that you can program it to your unique home. The company had a good startup but struggled to grow at first. Now with the expanding technology markets the company is very successful. Today more than 14 million home robots have been sold worldwide.
Crocs
Crocs are shoes made of a material called Croslite proprietary that gives each pair of shoes a soft, comfortable, lightweight, odor-resistant quality. When McCarvel first came home in the shoes his wife told him that they were ugliest things she had ever seen but since then the idea has become one of the most successful businesses ever. Since 2002, more than 300 million pairs of Crocs in more than 90 countries have been sold around the world. The Crocs Company is now expanding and selling accessories, including hats, bags, backpacks, socks and sunglasses.
FreshDirect
FreshDirect is a business that lets people order groceries on their computer and have them delivered to their home. The idea started in 1999, when many New Yorkers supposedly became too busy to shop for groceries. An obstacle that the company faced was that the customer base for their business was somewhat limited because they were not as developed as some companies and the services were only in major urban cities. Today the company has about 250,000 customers and makes $400 million in annual sales.