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Top 6 South African small business opportunities for 2008….Part 2

by Jon Cherry on 12/12/07 at 1:52 am
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Following on from last week’s first part of what we see as the biggest opportunities for South African entrepreneurs in Two Oh Oh Ate – here’s part 2:

Bite-sized: South African’s are too busy; electing new presidents, argueing about rugby coaches and generally carrying on with life to sit through 5-day cricket games, 3-hour movies and head religiously to giant Hypermarkets once a month for a good ol’ shop.

Small is the new big, quick, fast and to-the-point is the preferred choice for people racking up souring inflation figures. Think of the success of the recent Twenty20 World Cup, Woolworths ministores and 3-minute user-generated video clips on YouTube.

Time is in short supply, but the opportunities to capitalise on that trend are certainly not.

Example: Point-to-point car rental is an emerging business model in the developing world. Instead of owning a car full-time (paying for it via higher purchase, maintance, insurance, cleaning), imagine you could conveniently rent a car for short trips whenever you needed one. It would be brought to you any time of the day and picked up wherever you parked it. Need a 4×4 to head to Namibia for a holiday, your monthly car subscription would cover that option too. Drop-tops on weekends, Smart cars when parking in the city is a must – choose it, call it, get it.

Partial, temporary, bite-sized ownership from cars to handbags is really just the next step up from TV rental which was big in the 90’s. And everything from sport to retail can get the bite-sized treatment. Just think of something that’s a bit dated in size or speed and ‘bite-size it’.

Local is lekker: An imported, lead-based, toxic toy from China has a carbon footprint the size of Godzilla’s paw, Kiwi fruit brought in from New Zealand actaully has a faint taste of jet-fuel and Robbie Wessels and Steve Hofmeyer sell more CDs in South Africa than Justin Timberlake and Celine Dion combined.

Locally produced popularity is not a result of the success of the Proudly South African advertising campaign, but a global move towards the boycott of foreign made products, which form part of the increasingly hated system of globalisation and the greed of capitalists.

Example: A coffee shop which just sells coffee, muffins, milk, sugar, staff etc which are produced within a 100km radius of itself is a classic example of a locavore (a person or business that uses products produced within a set range of where it operates) – the 2007 American Oxford dictionary word of the year. Not only should the product taste better, but the whole brand positioning of a business built on this principle sticks out like a freshly baked bun.

If you make a stand and produce a wicked local product that doesn’t have golden arches setting it up as a target for distaste, you’ll be laughing for sure

Watch out for part 3….you guessed it, next week.

[ Read Part 1 ]

[ Read Part 3 ]

Jon Cherry is the founder of Cherryflava Media, a Trends & Innovation company. Jon is also the brains behind Cherryflava.com one of the most influential websites in Africa. Jon likes to pick out the business needles in South Africa's haystack. View more articles by Jon Cherry.

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