Stories about clever young moneymakers?

August 18, 2006 9:32 AM

I'm interested in hearing stories about people who have cleverly worked the system, or set up innovative small businesses in emerging markets.

While I was at the dentist last week, the dentist's aid talked for close to 30 minutes about how her son had started (somehow) flipping properties at the age of 19 and was now (I think he was 22) working for a bank doing finance or mortgages and continuing to borrow and flip properties for a significant profit.

Another example is that I have a friend who spent a year abroad in China, and has begun importing cultured pearls from a dealer overseas. The price is extremely low, and the pearls are of high enough quality that they can be resold for decent profit.

I'd like to hear other stories/examples of other people who have done things like this, or have tapped into niche/emerging markets.

posted by mhuckaba to work & money (9 comments total)

A friend of a friend made a fortune in college by buying bulk containers of North Face jackets in China for pennies on the dollar and then selling them on eBay. Got the idea while wandering around some Chinese dockyard while studying abroad.
posted by saladin at 11:16 AM on August 18, 2006

check out http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com/
posted by fumbducker at 11:48 AM on August 18, 2006

I'm sure you've seen it, but there's The Million Dollar Homepage too.
posted by MrToad at 12:02 PM on August 18, 2006

Keep them coming :) I remember reading about a guy who was trying to take 20$ and make it into alot of money... but my google-fu fails me.
posted by mhuckaba at 12:39 PM on August 18, 2006

Err... 14$... here it is:

http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/6492
posted by mhuckaba at 12:45 PM on August 18, 2006

In college I once bought a t-shirt of my favorite obscure indie band. I paid 60 bucks at the end of an intense bidding war on eBay. I hadn't seen a shirt from this band in all my years of eBay watching and I wasn't going to let it get away.

A few months later I decided that other people might be insane enough to spend 60 bucks on a shirt. I went to a local screenprinter and ordered a 75 copies of the original. I sold these copies on eBay, one at a time and with no reserve price. I made about 50 bucks a shirt for the first dozen and then the prices settled to about 15-20 bucks apiece. I also exploited foreign markets by selling the shirts on the French, Italian, and Australian eBay sites.

I balanced my karma by buying and distributing copies of the band's CDs to friends and acquaintances. (I must have been a real evangelistic douchebag back then.)

I eventually stopped selling the shirts because others in the eBay universe noticed the outlandish bids and copied my "business" model. Today there are still plenty of folks selling the shirts at $12 a pop.
posted by viewofdelft at 1:05 PM on August 18, 2006

I have two young lady friends who were doing VERY well by baking cookies, wrapping them in fancy decorated brown bags, and taking the bags into office buildings to sell for $10-$15 a bag.

The margins are very good on this, and on food production in general.
posted by sonofsamiam at 1:44 PM on August 18, 2006

The margins are very good on this, and on food production in general.

Then chances are that they aren't cooking in a registered kitchen and don't have the insurance required to do cook commercially. The fines alone when they get caught will probably knock their profits out.
posted by SpecialK at 9:03 AM on August 19, 2006

I once overheard someone say that you can always make money selling mattresses. As opposed to a business where you have to develop a product (like a website), you just buy some matresses and do a little advertising. I guess no one ever thinks, "I'm gonna be the John Rockefeller of matresses," so the market isn't really cut throat. If you're responsible, sensible and hard working you can make money. Mystery-business-guru may have also mentioned that there are very high margins. Further, I don't think you need a luxurious showroom or to pay high rents for a prime location. It seems perfectly natural to me to think of a mattress store being next to a restaurant supply store or a commercial plumbing store, whereas, say, a bookstore would seem more inviting in a mall.

Also, there's a blog called Unusual Businesses Ideas That Work. I meant to follow it, and while I never really did, if it doesn't have the sort of thing that you're looking for then it's a pretty crappy name.
posted by stuart_s at 5:34 PM on August 19, 2006