I love the idea of rental businesses for a very simple reason – people pay you to use something, but you get to keep it. It’s like selling the same thing over and over again but only having to buy it once. How far can you go with the rental model? Well how about renting jeans?

I just heard about a company in The Netherlands, Mud Jeans, which for around 6 Euro a month will rent you a pair of high end jeans for a year. At the end of the rental period the customer can then either return the jeans, buy them outright or replace them with a new pair.

To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure why you’d want to do this, but I’m the sort of person who thinks you should be able to buy a decent pair of jeans outright for less than £40. The market isn’t for an old folk like me, that’s for sure.

I’m telling you about this because it opens up all sorts of possibilities. If you can make money renting something like jeans, what other seemingly ‘un-rentable’ products could form the basis of a business?

There’s no doubt that body shapes are changing and becoming more diverse. Obesity is on the rise, but so is muscularity. More people are working out with weights than ever before and that has led to a problem – and an opportunity. A lot of beefed up folk of both sexes have difficulty getting clothes to fit.

I just read about track cyclist Beth Newell who, fed up with not being able to get jeans to fit her muscular legs, decided to do something about it. She created Keirin Cut jeans to cater for sporty types with heavily muscled legs. The jeans incorporate small waists with bigger leg measurements to cater for a more athletic physique.

The wider clothing industry doesn’t seem to cater for athletic physiques in general. What’s true of legs and jeans is also true of arms and shirts. More room in the arms and chest is usually accompanied by an acre of material in the waist.

I think this is a field which is only going to grow. Bodies are changing and becoming more diverse. The one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t really work any more, and that means there are opportunities to be exploited by catering for a specific body shape niche.

What do you get if you combine two fast developing areas of technology? Multiple ways to make money!

Unmanned aerial systems (drones to you and me) are more accessible than ever before. Technological development has made them both cheaper and easier to use. And their development has been mirrored by developments in the video/photography market. Cameras are smaller, lighter cheaper and more effective than ever before. Put the drones together with the cameras (many of which can be operated remotely) and you have many different ways to make money. Here are some ideas:

– Property marketing
– Aerial mapping surveys
– Collecting industrial intelligence (spying!)
– Aerial Wedding photography
– Private investigation work
– Emergency deliveries
– Film industry work
– Aerial advertising
– Corporate videos
– News reporting
– Security surveillance
– Sports event coverage
– Natural disaster coverage
– Search and rescue work

Once you have the equipment and developed the skills to use it, all these opportunities and more would be open to you.

This isn’t a zero cost/zero effort opportunity of course, but this is a field which is set to really take off over the next few years…no pun intended! Get in now and you could be well placed to ride the profit wave.

What do you do with the ashes when a loved one or favourite pet dies? Well some people keep them in an urn, others scatter them in a place of significance, but a Missouri painter offers a different solution. Adam Brown offers clients one-of-a kind artwork made from the remains of their relatives or pets.

He produces the art using cremated remnants sent in by relatives and mixing them with paint pigment to create a “lasting memory” composition. “Having ashes in an urn on a mantle somewhere is a good way to constantly remind yourself that person died, but when you use them in an artwork it’s a good way to remember someone lived,” Brown says.

I don’t know anything about the process, but this seems like a nice way to use the remains to create a lasting memorial. If you’re an artist, perhaps this is an opportunity to investigate further.

One of the hassles of travelling is packing and transporting everything you need for the trip. For business travellers, this is even more of a problem. They travel more frequently and often find themselves hauling their luggage backwards and forwards to the same destination. The Grand Hyatt hotel in Melbourne, Australia decided to do something about it, and gave themselves a competitive advantage at the same time.

The Grand Hyatt now offers storage facilities for regular travellers complete with full laundry facilities. The hotel effectively becomes a home from home and once you have your stuff there well, where else are you going to stay next time you’re in Melbourne?

There are obviously advantages for the guest, but also advantages for the hotel. So is this an idea you could adopt or adapt? Is there some way you could ethically ‘trap’ your customers? Perhaps there’s something you could ‘store’ for them, meaning they will have to return. This will mean different things to different businesses, but something to think about.