Friday 31 December 2010

SLEIGHT OF HAND SKATEBOARDS - KNOX GODOY



SLEIGHT OF HAND SKATEBOARDS -
Started by Knox Godoy... LAUNCHING SOON so, get ready. For information; www.thesohseries.blogspot.com

Tuesday 28 December 2010

THE WAY THINGS ARE DONE


Mark's preliminary drawings are unreal... but as tattoos, they are insanely and infinitely better.

It's hard to believe that there are clients that come in and actually say, "So, when I come down for my appointment, are you just gonna tattoo it without a drawing or will you draw something first?" REALLY!?

The bottom line is... tattooing is not a game of chance and it should never ever be. We don't put the needle in until the client ok's the image and the placement of the image. Preliminary drawings are usually done in most cases. The ones you see in this blog are just some examples. You will see black line, and some blue pencil.

Look how good these are, and they are only the lines... when they are color pieces or shaded pieces, they will look a million times better. Look how awesome these are already!


Aron has a good collection of prelims on the go.. sleeves, backs.. large pieces.

Drawings never show how the tattoo will actually look finished because it's impossible to get the same smoothness or textures when drawing with a pencil as you would tattooing on skin with sharp needle groupings which have way more versatility than a graphite pencil or colored pencil wearing down on a textured white piece of paper.


Sasha stashes all her drawings... only found a few on her work area. Great sh*t. Look at the giant t*ts on the warrior woman.. hot.

When it comes to specific images, stencils have to be used. If a client asks for a portrait, or a logo... it would be silly for ANY artist to try and draw their rendition of that image, freehand. That's why, when portraits or logos come in, we ask for clients to bring us laser copies of their images so we can trace over them on stencil paper to get all the subtle shades, lines, eyelashes... lip texture, wrinkles, shades in the eyes as well as highlights and not miss a thing.

It would suck to have a portrait of your loved one end up with crooked eyes! There is a scientific and and specific technique to achieving perfect portraits, it's never a crap shoot at the Funhouse.

Juan's mirror is covered with blanket of drawings!

Whether we draw on paper, or whether we draw directly on the skin with a pen, the results are always unbelievable. Everyone here is an incredible artist. So versatile and so accommodating. We still say "there is nothing we can't tattoo!"

Saturday 18 December 2010

Bar On Wheels - The PedalPub

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You



http://www.pedalpub.com/

Entrepreneurs: Eric Olson and Al Boyce, dedicated home brewers with day jobs--Olson teaches business at Normandale Community College in Bloomington, Minn., and Boyce is a computer programmer for U.S. Bank in St. Paul, Minn.

What Possessed Them: A fellow home brewer e-mailed Olson a photo of a crazy-looking pub on wheels in Europe. "I said, ‘Damn, this is one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my life.'" He tracked down the creators--brothers Henk and Zwier van Laar in (where else?) Amsterdam--and asked how to make one. They sold him one instead.

"Aha" Moment::In 2007, they got the first PedalPub rolling and sent e-mails out to friends and family, expecting a mild reaction. "But our e-mail list started to explode," Olson says. "And that's when I had the first inkling that this might be really successful."

Startup: Savings and home-equity loans covered the $40,000 to buy their first PedalPub, plus $20,000 to buy a van, a trailer, insurance, storage and marketing materials.

Pedalmania: Olson and Boyce have six PedalPubs in the Twin Cities, one in Houston, plus licensees in Austin, Texas; Nashville, Tenn.; Lawrence, Kan., and Milwaukee; plus, one sold to Amstel Light.

Customers: Birthday parties, corporate events, even a wedding. Most are women--68 percent.

Vital Stats: PedalPubs weigh 2,340 pounds empty (without beer or drinkers) and have a top speed of 5 mph. They seat 10 pedalers, a bartender and a driver and rent for $160 to $190 per hour, BYOB.

2011 and Beyond: They plan to franchise the concept next year. Says Olson, "I'd love to see 500 of these things all over the country."

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

[Via - Entrepreneur.Com]

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

Sunday 12 December 2010

I Caught Santa And You Can, Too!

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You


http://www.icaughtsanta.com/

Mommy, is there really a Santa Claus? Why did Billy’s mom say there isn’t a Santa? If you haven’t heard these questions yet, you likely will as the little ones grow and begin to question the antics and even the sheer existence of the jolly old elf. Would you like to be able to offer a bit of proof to an inquiring little mind? Wouldn’t we all like to prolong the magic of Santa Claus even one more year? iCaughtSanta.com lets parents not only put an end to the questions and doubt—but, create a memorable photo of Santa caught in the act in a child’s very own home!

Meeting Santa at the mall or the local toy store rarely puts a child’s questions to rest. Imagine, instead, being able to offer a color photo of Santa literally caught in the act of delivering holiday joy in the child’s own living room or perhaps descending the fireplace in the little ones very own home. iCaughtSanta.com helps visitors create a unique keepsake photo of Santa inside the child’s home by combining site provided digital images of Santa Claus with a user’s uploaded digital photo as the background. Want a photo of Santa by the Christmas tree—or bending down to pet the family dog? With 20 different Santa poses from which to choose, visitors can select a wide variety of poses to coordinate with personal background photos.

Yes, tech savvy parents or photographers may be able to accomplish such a photo creation with a variety of software tools—but, for many of us, the time and effort involved is a bit too much at such a busy time of the year. iCaughtSanta.com makes it easy. In three simple steps visitors to iCaughtSanta.com can upload a holiday scene—such as a shot of the fireplace or the Christmas tree, add an iCaughtSanta.com offered image of Santa Claus and print it either at home or have it printed at participating retailers. Photos can also be shared via email, Facebook or on Twitter.

iCaughtSanta.com uses Adobe Flash technology to create custom images from user uploaded photos combined with one of the 20 Santa images available on the site. The site is designed with three easy steps in mind—but, users are able to take advantage of advanced settings to rotate and move the Santa overlay image, or adjust the size, brightness and color of both the chosen Santa and the uploaded holiday background to be sure that the Santa image matches the digital photo.

These make really cute keepsake gifts for grandchildren or nieces and nephews as well. Last-minute shoppers can also purchase Gift Cards and eGift Certificates for loved ones with children, making iCaughtSanta.com photos a unique gift idea even if you aren’t a parent yourself. If Santa doesn’t visit a child in your life—check out some of the other beloved childhood characters such as the Tooth Fairy available at iCaughtacharacter.com—the home site for iCaughtSanta.

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

[Via - Examiner.Com]

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

Wednesday 8 December 2010

Shrtn.Co

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You


http://www.shrtn.co/

Twitter and Facebook users are familiar with URL shorteners, the web tools that turn long and unwieldy links into short, shareable ones. Bristol-based shrtn is adding to that concept by helping social media users earn some extra cash while sharing product links.

Like other shorteners, shrtn has a simple interface that lets users enter long URLs, which are then shortened to something like http://shrtn.co/hb (linking, in this case, to Steven Johnson's Where Good Ideas Come From). The big difference with other services is that shrtn has signed up with over a hundred online merchants, and adds affiliate identifiers to their URLs. Ever time an item is purchased through a registered user's shortened link, shrtn receives a commission and passes part of that on to the user.

So if someone short-links to their favourite perfume on Beauty.com, and one of their friends follows that link and buys from Beauty.com, the user receives a cut of the affiliate earnings (shrtn pays out 70–80% of the total commission). Users receive their earnings through PayPal, or can choose to donate them to charity, in which case shrtn adds an additional 20% on top.

By simplifying affiliate marketing for ordinary consumers and keeping the experience unobtrusive for those who click on links (it doesn't add pop-ups or insert elements into the user's browser) shrtn seems like a win-win for all involved.

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

[Via - Springwise]

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

Saturday 4 December 2010

Storage By Mail

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You


http://www.storagebymail.com/

Centralized storage in the “cloud” is becoming an increasingly ubiquitous option for consumers' digital belongings, but tangible goods are still typically hauled off to expensive self-storage units when they can't be accommodated at home. New Jersey-based StorageByMail is a company that aims to change that, however, with a service that lets clients send their possessions through the mail to the company's central warehouse for flexible offsite storage.

Similar in many ways to Garde Robe's service for clothes and Dorm2Dorm's solution for college students' possessions, StorageByMail maintains a world-class storage facility that's also used by brands including Bloomingdale's and Tommy Hilfiger. Customers of the service begin by creating an account and an online description of any package of goods they'd like to send into storage. Next, they print a custom, prepaid USPS shipping label for each box they'd like to send; for users on the go, there's even a mobile app to send a label to the nearest fax machine. Either way, those labels ensure safe passage for the goods through the U.S. Postal Service to StorageByMail's warehouse. When the customer wants them back, he or she simply requests return delivery and the company will ship them out the next business day. Storage pricing ranges from USD 4.99 per month per cubic foot for a pay-as-you-go option to USD 249 per month for an annual plan including 100 boxes of any size and free return-trip shipping. For consumers with just a single box to store, there is no charge. A video on YouTube explains StorageByMail's concept in further detail.

We've already noted on many occasions the ownership-averse nature of today's transumers, who don't want to be tied down with possessions when they aren't currently using them. Mobile consumers, however, are likely to find StorageByMail's location-independent service equally compelling, as are space-strapped urban dwellers. One to partner with or emulate in your part of the world?

[Via - Springwise]

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

Monday 29 November 2010

Capturely.

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You


http://www.capturely.com/

Anyone who's ever launched a website knows how much trouble it can be to create a simple “coming soon” page. Templates can be expensive, and it hardly seems worthwhile setting up a server for just a single page. Enter Capturely, a new online service that lets domain registrants create a custom “coming soon” page in about a minute.

Users of California-based Capturely begin by entering a headline and body copy for their page, along with which analytics service they plan to use. They can then either pick a template for the site's appearance, or they can style their page in real time with CSS. Either way, once the page goes live, it can be used not just for publicity but also to collect the email addresses of potential customers and supporters. Soon, Capturely will also make it possible to export that email list to providers like MailChimp. Using Capturely is free for up to 20 collected email addresses; after that, it's USD 0.25 per email.

Have you registered a domain, but not yet launched your website? If so, Capturely could help you out. Otherwise, it's yet another nice illustration of one of the key principles of Marketing 101: Find an unmet need — however niche — address it well, and customers will follow! ;-)

[Via - Springwise]

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

Sunday 21 November 2010

Scratch-and-sniff wallpaper

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You


http://www.flavorleague.com/wallpaper/

Scratch-and-sniff wallpaper. Wallpaper printed with holograms. Wallpaper designed by Lenny Kravitz.

Jon Sherman's cutting-edge company, Flavor Paper, makes all of them and more. Wild patterns, intense colors and designs like the flowery/explosive Kabloom burst from the walls of his newly opened showroom in Brooklyn, N.Y., one floor up from a print studio. His windows are open to the street, so passersby can gawk at his graphic magic. "There's nothing we can't produce other than flocking," he says, and that's only because the glue's toxic.

He may sound a bit like a madman, but his work is showcased in hotels from Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas to the new W near Wall Street. These days, he collaborates with the likes of design star Jonathan Adler and does jobs ranging from an 8.5-by-11-inch framed piece to coverings for every room in the W hotel in Atlanta. He created a World Cup wallpaper with a "detailed, scrolling" pattern for Nike and also does backgrounds for photo shoots for catalogs like Banana Republic.

But how he began could be the least expected part of his story. In 2003, he was in real estate development
, looking into redesigning condo interiors in Florida to push up the selling prices, when he heard of an old stock of Mylar and foil wallpaper in Oregon that looked like "pieces of art at a more affordable price." The producer refused to sell them but did want to unload his color screens and equipment--if Sherman could move them within 24 hours. Before long he had a 52-foot, 4-ton screening table installed in a warehouse in New Orleans, where Sherman was living. And from there it was DIY.

"I assumed there were books on making wallpaper," he says. "Boy, was I wrong."

Being clueless had its benefits, though: With Sherman's first line, shown at a trade fair in New York, "we got pretty lucky with the press," he says. "We didn't know the rules on color trends, like 'Mylar's out.'" Against-the-grain Flavor Paper stood out boldly.

In May, he opened the Flavor Lair in Brooklyn, a 1929 parking garage converted, for "a pretty penny," into a production studio on the ground floor, a huge showroom above and apartments for him and two employees. (The New Orleans operation will now produce Flavor Fabric.) Wall-size samples hang on huge spools in the showroom, suitable for flipping to appreciate designs that would not communicate in a mere swatch book.

Sherman's initial investment in New Orleans, $125,000, has grown into a business that produces as many as 600 rolls of custom paper a month. The prices are dear: $150 retail for 15 feet in a single color, plus $50 per screening for additional colors. A seven-color scratch-and-sniff with tutti-frutti would be $550 a roll. (Regular scratch-and-sniff comes in either cherry or banana scents.) Everything is printed to order (in two to three weeks), so there's no waste.

Scratch-and-sniff is not the most out-there wallpaper he has made; he has also produced black-light and glow-in-the-dark ones. A client once asked for a custom bondage theme. ("You'd have to try pretty hard to offend us," Sherman notes.) Bliss spas recently ordered wallpaper with a mustache pattern for its waxing rooms, while a Venezuelan casino that chose the same pattern did not realize it was facial hair.

Sherman's latest move is into digital printing so that he can do photo-mural work; now an 8-by-10 image can be blown up to 7 feet. "We want to cover all bases," he says.

Flavor Paper even hangs in the Smithsonian, in City Park pattern (think William Morris with fire hydrants), at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Which is appropriate considering Sherman is taking his super-modern obsession way back in time, before a world where hotels used wallpaper simply to protect drywall.

"Wallpaper went from historically being the focal point in a room to being the background," he says. "I'm trying to bring it back in the foreground."

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

[Via - Entrepreneur.Com]

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

Monday 15 November 2010

Book Of Cooks

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You


http://www.bookofcooks.com/

Consumers who lack the time, energy or skills to prepare delicious home-cooked meals themselves already have semi-cooking options to help them along—including shopping and delivery services such as I Love Mother—as well as meal prep stores, with or without instruction. When even those are too much, however, BookOfCooks is a new online marketplace that can help consumers find local foodies who are willing to cook for them.

Professional and amateur chefs around the world can use BookOfCooks to set up an online restaurant or bakery that showcases their cooking talents with menus, prices, licenses and videos. Using BookOfCooks is free both for those in search of food and for those who prepare it. Consumers then can search BookOfCooks by city for the dish or food type they're craving, or they can browse the site's online Google maps and archives for links to local cooks and food aficionados, including ratings and reviews. When they find one that sounds good, they can place an order with the cook for pickup, delivery or even in-home preparation.

Meals purchased this way are frequently less expensive than what one would pay in a restaurant, BookOfCooks says, and can also make it easier to find less common cuisines such as vegan or gluten-free. For cooks, meanwhile, BookOfCooks provides a free way to establish a consistent clientèle, whether as a full-time business or—meshing nicely with what our sister site would call the sellsumer trend—for a little extra money on the side. There are, of course, legal issues to be navigated when preparing food for the consumption of others—and the related question of how many consumers will be willing to buy food from amateurs. Nevertheless, with ratings and reviews providing at least a small measure of protection, it seems possible this could spark a recession-inspired anti-restaurant trend.

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

[Via - Springwise]

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

Wednesday 10 November 2010

Sniff The Mold

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You


http://www.1800gotmold.com/

Impenetrable rainforests, palm-studded beaches--Hawaii has many stirring sights. But for Jason Earle, the putrid, mold-ridden Hilton Hawaiian Village's Kalia Tower in Waikiki was most inspiring. In 2002, during a sojourn to the Aloha State after he ditched a nine-year career as a stockbroker, he watched as the $95 million hotel was closed down one year after opening because of ventilation problems. "They thought it was a $500,000 mold problem, then it grew to $5 million," he says. "In the end, it cost $55 million to fix."

The closure got personal after Earle talked to one of the cleanup workers and read about health problems associated with mold. As a child living on a small farm in West Windsor, N.J., Earle had had serious respiratory problems that were eventually diagnosed as asthma compounded by chronic pneumonia as well as allergies to grass, wheat, corn, eggs, milk, cotton, animals, pollen and just about everything else. He had lived like the Bubble Boy, but after moving to a new house nearby, Earle's health problems had miraculously evaporated. Everyone assumed he had outgrown his illnesses, but in retrospect, Earle became convinced mold had debilitated him.

"After reading about the Kalia Tower, I asked my dad if we had mold in that house," Earle says. "He laughed and said we had actual mushrooms growing the basement."

Earle became passionate about detecting dangerous fungi and after traveling, settled in New Jersey to work for a mold-remediation firm. When he heard about a dog that had been trained to sniff out hidden moisture, he flew to Florida and bought the dog, a black Lab named Oreo, and set off on his own, combining traditional detection techniques with Oreo's sniffer.

1-800-GOT-MOLD? was a hit. (An inspection runs an average of $1,200.) And Earle began franchising the concept this year, training a small battalion of mold-sniffing labs in Florida and opening 23 locations in New Jersey and the Carolinas. He expects to open 30 more in the next 12 months and more than 300 in the next three years.

How big is the mold problem?
The mold-detection industry is growing fast, and we're the only national brand. About a third of Americans suffer from asthma, allergies, sinusitis, bronchitis and other respiratory problems. That's100 million people sensitive to mold issues. According to one website,

80 percent of homes will eventually have problems with flooding or leaks. We also try to market ourselves through doctors and medical services, not real estate companies, and emphasize mold's health effects. That's a huge separator for us.

Why use dogs?
With the dogs, we can offer superior service, and they create a tremendous amount of confidence. The dogs almost validate the human inspector because people naturally trust dogs so much. It's a huge marketing advantage. Plus, scheduling a mold inspection is up there with scheduling a root canal--it's not fun. The dog changes the dynamic. We don't use dogs as a replacement for anything, but they give us an even greater amount of data. They pinpoint problem areas that would be missed, and they reduce the size of remediation to the smallest dimensions, so there's no need for wholesale demolition of a wall.

How do clients react to the dogs?
It can be an emotional experience when homeowners see a dog alert in a room they know is a problem or makes them feel sick. It validates their concerns. They don't feel crazy anymore.

Do you breed moldhounds?
No, we use rescued female black Labs and Lab mixes. We use Labs because they are the friendliest and America's favorite dog. For some reason, black dogs are usually the last to be rescued, so we get them from kill shelters. Females are easier to train, and have a better sense of smell.

Are you still allergic to mold?

I tend to limit my time in moldy houses, and I haven't experienced the symptoms I had as a kid. I think that going in and out of so many houses with mold has reduced my sensitivity, kind of like getting allergy shots. But that's just my theory.

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

[Via - Entrepreneur.Com]

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

Friday 5 November 2010

Wheelin'N'Deelin

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You


http://www.bakedinny.com/

On weekends, one of the hippest places to shop in SoHo In New York sits at the corner of Broadway and Prince, with street artists to the west, trendy stores all around and an endless stream of tourists and shoppers flowing past on the sidewalk. Danceable music pulses out of speakers to stop the human stream long enough for it to notice a show window with graphic T-shirts and collectible toys on display. And every few minutes, a passer-by becomes a patron, handing over $35 in cash for a tee and providing a smiling photo op--everyone who buys is snapped with a Canon digital camera, his/her visage to be posted on a website.

But this is no ordinary boutique: It's on wheels, and that window is cut into the side of a converted DHL truck. Despite the name emblazoned on either side--Cookies-n-Cream--it sells nothing edible. The three entrepreneurs behind it are focusing instead on tees and toys pushed to a hip-hop soundtrack while scheming to take boutique trucks to more cities.

As the startup's creative director, Ganiu Ladejobi, says: "We're at the intersection of cool and cooler."

Already food trucks have shaken up the restaurant world, with ambitious cooks no longer confined to kitchens and committed to crippling rents and problematic locations. Now the mobile phenomenon is entering its second phase: retail. A small group of cutting-edge entrepreneurs, often from the art and design worlds on both coasts, is skipping the brick-and-mortar boutique for highly stylized sets of wheels. The movement is literally fashion-forward.

National companies have been sending their wares out on wheels. Designer Cynthia Rowley has a "mobile fashion unit" traveling the country, stocked with her latest styles and equipped with a changing room. Armani Exchange has sold jeans from trucks in Los Angeles, and the Olsen Twins did a similar stunt for their line for JCPenney last fall.

It's not hard to see why vendors would want to hit the streets; the "for rent" signs plastered everywhere are testament to how hard it is to keep a traditional business afloat. Consider the rent advertised on a ready-to-move-in store on Prince Street near the Cookies-n-Cream location: $53,000 a month. Just the rent. A truck can get rolling for only a few thousand. Add in texting plus social media like Facebook and Twitter to keep the clientele posted on whereabouts, and the marketing plan and the cool factor are both covered.

Trucks, whether selling food or fashion, offer "uniqueness and urgency," says Patricia Norins, a specialty retail expert and magazine publisher based in Hanover, Mass. "There's an immediacy factor," she says. "The customer is not sure you're going to be back. And there's a certain level of uniqueness that's important. There's a certain level of homogeneousness in the standardized mix of shops you see other places."

More important, Norins notes, is that "it feels trendy, like the hip new thing--people are interested in different types of shopping experiences and are looking for new venues. Maybe they don't want to go inside, maybe they don't think they're going shopping until they see something that creates an impulse buy."

Beyond the fashion-forward element, mobile merchandise vendors have other advantages. Unlike the ubiquitous food trucksters, they do not need licensing by the health department, their stock is not time-sensitive and at this point the competition is almost nonexistent--even the clothing stores on Broadway where the Cookies-n-Cream partners park are happy to have them, they say, because the truck and the hip-hop make potential buyers slow down to window shop and maybe venture inside.

Vending licenses can be hard to come by, though: New York City approves only 853 permits each year for sellers of general merchandise who are not veterans. (Fortunately, they cost only $100 to $200 a year.) Some cities, such as New Orleans, do not allow the sale of anything except food from a truck.

But with the bar for entry set so low, it's easy to see the allure. The Cookies-n-Cream partners got their showroom rolling for all of $10,000: the cost of the used truck plus refitting it with a sales window, stereo system and vinyl exterior in a design echoed by one of their T-shirts, which are designed by a cadre of artists. For now, the trio doesn't even pay for parking; they store the truck at one partner's grandmother's place in Brooklyn. On a good day, they might sell $1,000 worth of T-shirts and collectible toys; on a slow one, it's more like $300.

Mitra Khayyam, whose Los Angeles company Blood is the New Black sells artist-designed T-shirts both online and wholesale, was buying a taco outside an art gallery in April when she thought "What about selling T-shirts from a truck?" Despite her company's gross sales of $780,000 in 2009, she says she wasn't sure she wanted a brick-and-mortar presence, so "this is a way to test the waters to make sure we want to take a leap into permanency."

Within the month she found an old Aramark delivery truck on Craigslist for $12,000. She soon had two other companies signed on as partners, and by June 6 her Summer Fling truck was on the road around the city. It was even simpler than the pop-up stores she had tried in the past for a month or week or couple of days.

A truck basically needs an eye-catching design--hers is wrapped in wild pink with stripes and dubbed "the party zebra"--and, in most cases, a window either to display merchandise or to handle transactions. Just as with a Mister Softee truck, music is a draw, so an audio system is also useful.

Khayyam's truck carries ice cream sandwiches made by Coolhaus, a high-profile mobile vendor in Los Angeles and New York, because local laws prohibit trucks selling only merchandise. "It has a food truck vibe but mixes it up," she says. "If people are expecting food, they're not disappointed. If not, they might buy T-shirts." Or accessories for BlackBerrys and iPhones manufactured by Case-Mate, her second partner. The truck has a computer monitor on which customers can customize their I Make My Case cases on the Case-Mate website.

The truck parks outside schools, record stores and art galleries in hip areas such as Echo Park, Venice and downtown Los Angeles. "We try to go after the creatives, with like-minded customers who like having us outside their store."

T-shirts sell for $20 to $30 and ice cream for $3 to $5--"at the end of the day we make more with the tees but the margin is better on the ice cream." Her biggest expenses are the (undisclosed) wages for a part-time driver and salespeople and the cost of the truck itself.

Khayyam, who has a degree in design marketing and management from Parsons The New School for Design in New York, intended the truck to stay on the streets only through the summer because "I like the idea of doing something temporary, with a greater sense of urgency." She hopes to sell it after October, and if she doesn't recoup her investment, plans to write it off as a marketing expense.

"Everything I do is a brand extension," she said. "I'm not there just to sell tees; the point of the line is to teach people about the artists" who design them.

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

[Via - Entrepreneur.Com]

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

Friday 29 October 2010

GameTag Success Story

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You



http://www.gametag.com.au/

A stay-at-home mother of four from south-west Sydney could make a fortune out of a simple Nintendo DS accessory she invented out of frustration.

Janene Samuel, 42, invented the $20 Gametag - on sale in EBGames stores around the country from tomorrow - after her young kids kept losing their Nintendo DS games, costing the Bankstown mum close to $100 every time.

No matter how many times she told them to pack them away, the games were constantly scattered across the carpet and they were soon being hoovered up by the vacuum cleaner. All four of Samuel's kids - aged between seven and 13 - have a Nintendo DS and the tiny game cartridges were easy to lose on family outings.

"Some people I've spoken to have lost seven or eight games - that's a weekend away for a family, it's almost a mortgage payment for some people lost in a child's toy. It's a huge expense," she said in a phone interview.

Samuel fashioned her first Gametag prototype out of odds and ends she found in her cupboard around Christmas 2008, but it took her another year after patenting the invention to begin trying to commercialise it. They have only been on sale online for about six weeks.

"Other mothers started saying to me 'oh my god, where did you get that from'? In two weeks I had 12 mothers approach me and ask and I said to my husband, 'I think I'm onto something'," she said.

The deceptively simple product consists of a lanyard attached to a keyring that holds eight tags, which are stuck on to the game cartridges. They always remain connected to the handheld games console, even when playing and swapping between games.

Australia's largest video game retailer, EBGames, believes in the invention and has ordered an initial lot of 1000 units, to be sold in its stores around the country. Samuel said she was in negotiations with other distributors and retailers and also hoped to sell the product internationally by the end of the year.

She is also selling the Gametags on her website for $20, and through her local Bankstown and Fairfield markets.

Samuel estimates she has sold over 450 units just through word of mouth. The only comparable products on the market are containers for Nintendo DS games but Samuel said these don't work as kids never put the games back in the box.

"From a child's point of view they never lose the game, so we never get into that situation of $89 down the drain. You pick up the console and you have all your games," she said.

Samuel, who stopped working after having her first child, said she had sunk several hundred thousand dollars into the venture and had much of her extended family around the kitchen table helping her assemble each Gametag. She has enough stock for about 300,000 units so far.

"We're just a normal joe blow family from the suburbs so the stress of the money outlay has been the only downside to the whole thing," said Samuel.

"I didn't really set out to invent something but I'm quite humbled by the interest from everyone. Even old ladies came up to me and said I don't have a DS but I think it's wonderful."

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

[Via - SMH]

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

Monday 25 October 2010

Recycle Match

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You



http://www.recyclematch.com/

Though they're all important parts of sustainability, the 3Rs of waste management — reduce, reuse and recycle — are not equally effective. Rather, they're intended as a hierarchy, with the goal of first reducing waste as much as one can, then reusing as much as possible, and then finally recycling at the end of an item's useful life. Aiming to extend the “reuse” stage for more industrial materials, Houston-based RecycleMatch helps companies with unwanted waste find companies that want to reuse it.

Similar in many ways to BoxCycle — which focuses specifically on cardboard boxes — RecycleMatch seeks “to create an industrial ecosystem in which the use of energy and materials are optimized, waste is minimized, and there is an economically viable role for every product of a manufacturing process,” in the site's own words. Toward that end, companies with items to dispose of begin by listing them for free on the site, which will accept almost anything but equipment, trucks, salvage or other capital assets. The listing company's name is kept confidential, but other RecycleMatch participants can see descriptions and photos of the materials in question along with the quantities available and their location. When another company is interested and a match is made, the owner pays RecycleMatch a fee of USD 10 per ton for a period of up to three years plus a one-time match fee of USD 1,500. The buyer, meanwhile, pays a one-time finder's fee of USD 250. Users can also post “wanted” listings on the site for a one-time fee of USD 500.

More than 3 million pounds of waste materials have already been diverted from landfills, RecycleMatch says, with obvious benefits for the environment, the companies involved and any zero-waste goals being pursued. Currently, however, RecycleMatch serves only US users. One to partner with or emulate in your part of the sustainable world...?

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

[Via - Springwise]

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

Wednesday 20 October 2010

Art Godoy 1988


Found this online.. at the time, I was skateboarding professionally and tattooing to supplement the income I wasn't making from skateboarding. This was 1988 and if any of you remember the 80's... I think the first word that comes to mind is "the music sucked, the pink clothes sucked, it was a shitty time...". It wasn't easy being heavily tattooed in an industry run by NON skateboarders. How do you market this to the kids? Look at it today... they're all tattooed...

Wednesday 13 October 2010

Page 99 Test

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You


http://www.page99test.com/

It's not uncommon for bookstore patrons to read page 99 of a prospective purchase as a way to decide if they actually want to buy it. Now aiming to help authors benefit from such evaluation earlier in the process, Page 99 Test is bringing that practice online.

Currently gearing up for a launch into private beta, Page 99 Test lets writers upload page 99 of their published or unpublished books to the site. There, readers can read and rate those single-page samples and indicate whether they'd a) turn the page, and b) buy the book based on what they read. Each page stays up for 30 days or 50 reads, whichever comes first. The goal is “to help writers understand if their writing — judged by the reader, who has access to just that one page — was good enough to compel the reader,” the site explains. Sign-up is now open for Page 99 Test's upcoming beta period. Coming later will be a paid service allowing authors to upload full chapters of their books for evaluation, as well as a service to help them connect with agents and editors. Referral fees for published books may also be added, according to the Page 99 Test blog.

As the tablet and eReaders continue to transform the book publishing world — and as the (often self-publishing) crowds have an increasingly prominent voice in determining what gets sold — Page 99 Test could play a role in helping the cream of unpublished books rise to the top. One to watch!

For more unusual ways to make money, visit this site.

[Via - Springwise]

The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions

IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great Idea

How to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy

101 Businesses You Can Start With Less Than One Thousand Dollars: For Stay-at-Home Moms & Dads

Make Your Ideas Mean Business

Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You

Tuesday 12 October 2010

World Class Tattoo Artist Scrappy Uno


Scrappy consistently wins competitions. Plain and simple... the guy is a world class tattooist from Mexico City. He specializes in portraits and realism... black n grey. His work can be used as a standard to compare whether or not some one's work is up to par. Really... black and grey uses techniques that artists who only do color and bold lines would not understand. It's safe to say that if you understand these techniques, all the rest will be easy.

We get lots of people who come into the shop who have been tattooed in Mexico.. usually at a resort town.. and they always laugh and say "I know it sucks, I got it in Mexico." The thing is, just as in the United States or Canada.. hell, the whole world for that matter, there are shitty artists and great artists. You just have to find them. If you plan to bring home a souvenir tattoo, why not bring in a good one?

Scrappy sets a high standard.

We're proud to say that he uses Godoy Machines... it's an honor to see this excellent work done with our machines!!

Wednesday 29 September 2010

REMEMBER THIS? Guinness Prime Time 1996


This was an episode of Guinness Prime Time on which I appeared. It has been shown world wide since we appeared on it in about 1996. Julia's facial tattoos are way brighter then than they are now. She has been undergoing laser treatments to lighten and remove some of the work so that she can re do and re design her facial tattoos.

This show went world wide. A few years after the show aired in the U.S. and North America, I received a letter (not even an email, a paper letter!) from a friend in South Africa who said he saw it! Another in Australia... it had been translated into several languages and shown world wide!

Wanna say thanks to Daniel for forwarding me the link to this show!!