Although things are improving, there are still a lot of unemployed people in the UK. And there are even more who are employed, but not making enough money. This is a big problem, and as we know, where there is a problem, there’s also an opportunity.

For the price of a hotel meeting room, you could invite anyone interested in employment networking to turn up and charge them a small fee at the door. You’ll need to provide some refreshments and a few snacks, but this would be covered by entrance fees. Meetings could involve guest speakers, personal presentation workshops and cv writing advice sessions.

This is one of those ideas that would cost very little to try out.

I saw this idea in the US and wondered if it might work in the increasingly traffic-clogged UK.

Beacon is a service operating 15-20 flights a day between New York and Boston. For a monthly subscription of $2,000, customers can take as many flights as they  like between the two cities. The company have plans to extend the service to include holiday destinations Nantucket and The Hamptons. The owners have previously operated a similar service connecting Californian locations. They don’t own any planes, but rather, partner with other companies. Like any subscription based business of this type, the success will depend on some customers not using the service too regularly.

So would a subscription service linking London with Manchester, Edinburgh or a holiday destination like Cornwall find a market?

How does anyone ever choose a perfume? Walk into a cosmetics department and your nostrils are hit with a smorgasbord of smells. Not sure whether you can have a smorgasbord of smells, but I just did. Anyway, it’s difficult to tell one perfume from another, or how each plays out in isolation ‘Commodity’ is a service that attempts to address this. The company offer a delivery service, giving customers the opportunity to try a series of scents in their own home, before deciding which they’d like to buy. Prices for a kit containing ten mini scents start at $24.95, and this sum is subtracted from the price when a customers buys a full sized bottle.

This business model – try a series of samples before you buy, and then subtract the sample cost from the purchase price – seems to be one with a number of applications. Might your product lend itself to sampling like this? If it’s consumable, the answer is almost certainly yes.

www.commoditygoods.com

I’m not sure I like the sound of this one, but it’s a service aimed at women – and I’m not one.

‘Skwag’ is a shoe swapping community which allows users to advertise/display their shoe collection, and then find like minded souls (see what I did there?) to swap footwear with. Members download the app and then create a profile featuring their footwear collection. Other members can then contact them to discuss trades.

I really don’t like the idea of second hand shoes, but maybe I’m a bit odd. The service appears to be thriving in the US, so maybe it would work here too. Thinking more broadly, are there other items of clothing or apparel that would lend themselves to the swap treatment – dresses, handbags, hats, jewellery perhaps.

www.skwag.com