SWCAMBORNE

The Matchbook Museum is not a place.  It is a website where the curator/owner James Lileks shows matchbooks from his extensive collection along with some witty and illuminating commentary.

The idea of a Matchbook Museum is interesting to me for a few reasons:

• Online Museums are a new and very good idea that may earn some diligent curators an independent living.
• Nurit and I have been collecting match books and boxes for a few decades.  We saw Carole B’s collection and started one of our own.  Carole gave me a Piggly Wiggly matchbook fron the 1960′s.
• Matches are vanishing faster than cigarette smokers.  In the past I have pondered what will replace them as a giveaway

So we have bit of American history that illustrates a potential money making opportunity for someone enterprising who collects something.  It would have to be something that interests tens of thousands of people.  Like nail polish or lipstick.  Or maybe Disneyobelia.  Or postcards?  What about the International Bridge Museum?

The revenue stream is ads for resellers or tourism related companies on the museum site.

It is rare that even I the “ideapreneur” have an idea that is ready to go, is brilliant and has the potential to increase someones bottom line by a billion dollars.

Companies like AT&T, Apple, Microsoft, Verizon and others spend billions of dollars each year selling technically complicated products to consumers who don’t know how to use them.  Starbucks has these same consumers standing in line for coffee every morning.  Make the connection the simplicity is brilliant.  Starbucks rents a table in their stores in the morning to, lets say, Apple for $100/hour.  Apples reps can offer technical support and do training.  They cannot sell products.  The advantage for Apple is that their customers become better users and more loyal while they demonstrate a competitive advantage over their competitors.  The advantage to Starbucks is using their “safe space” to generate revenue.  The math I figured was 3000 stores time 4 hours a day time 200 days times $100.  Close to 200 million dollars a year. Starbucks has 17,000 stores worldwide.

One of the great things about this idea is that it can be tested regionally at low cost so that the rules of engagement can be clearly defined before rolling it out internationally.  Perhaps call it “in store reps” and have a different one each day, on a regular schedule that is listed on the web site.  So if I want to talk about my iPhone I will go to the Sierra Madre Starbucks on Tuesday when the Apple rep is there.

The LA Dodgers were sold for 2.1 billion dollars this week.  A billion dollars more than was expected and twice what a sports franchise has ever sold for.  I’m calling it the DVR premium.  Follow me on this for a minute and then I show you the next place where values are going to increase.

A DVR (Digital Video Recorder) allows a viewer to fast forward through commercials.  So if your okay with watching CSI later you can watch it in 40 minutes by fast forwarding through the commercials.  But sports is a contest that is best watched live so its value as a deliverer of viewers to commercials is higher than that of shows that can be recorded like dramas and comedies.

The $2 billion valuation of the Dodgers franchise is an estimate of this new reality.  It is however contingent on a few assumptions that have yet to be tested.  One potential issue is that network driven, free to the consumer, advertising financed television is not the only model available.  Another is that competition to sports as a deliverer of advertising viewers is already developing in the form of reality TV contests.  Shows like American Idol, Dancing With the Stars and The Great Race have injected an audience participation element, typically voting, that causes some viewers to want to watch live.  This is good for advertisers.

But there is a way it could be better.  If a show like Dancing With the Stars also gave its voting audience points that were redeemable for discounts and free stuff they would increase viewership of their target demographics and with the premiums the brand loyalty of the viewers.  This is a win-win the audience would receive rewards for playing and the advertisers would get live viewers.  Move over Frank McCourt this is a billion dollar idea.

Here is an App idea from Howard R.  Using the regular sightings and twitter posts of celebrities create an iPhone app that tells you what direction and how far it is to the celebrities on your list from where you are right now.

Where is Kim Kardashian?

Where is President Obama?

Where is Anthony Weiner?

Where is Rush Limbaugh?

You get the idea.  The technology exists.  All you have to do is put it together and start to rake in the money.  People want to know this stuff.

Here is an idea for bagged lettuce makers like Ready Pac.

Make a mix labeled:

Restaurant Mix.

It seems to me that the best salads are served at restaurants and this would give retail buyers the hope of recreating that experience.

The hook would be:

“today’s freshest and most flavorful greens”

Which would allow the producer to vary the mix depending on availability.

We stayed at the Royal Solaris Resort in Cancun last week and it was beautiful.  To keep track of all the guests at this all-inclusive resort they give you a color coded bracelet when you check in.  The bracelets are the same ones they used to use in hospitals and they are not well suited to the festive vacation atmosphere of the resort.

There is a nice opportunity for someone to start making improved resort bracelets.  You could set up a factory in Mexico.  I estimate that just the resorts on the Mayan Riviera use nearly a million bracelets a year.  Don’t use vinyl or pvc use a nice molded polycarbonate that looks and feels luxurious.

Interestingly the bracelets that they used at the Solaris are manufactured by Precision Dynamics in San Fernando, California.  They are clearly focused on the security issues not the appearance.

Lots more photos and stories from Cancun in the days ahead.

This is a billion dollar idea.  It is also one of the holy grail searches.  Find a material that indoor cats will use as a bathroom, that is easy to clean up and that does not get tracked all over your house.

But if you find it you will have a product worth a billion dollars.  We bought, at twice the price of the granulated clay stuff, a litter that claimed to be “The Best Litter Ever.”  Within a week I gave most of it away.  The cats hated it and it still got tracked all over the hall.

Has anyone tried the cat toilet things?

This excellent repositioning idea came from Gene B. an occasional contributor.

It has terrific potential as a way to make bars socially acceptable again so that they can compete with Starbucks.

Most holidays have parades.  People like parades.  They like to be in parades.  But Superbowl Sunday doesn’t have a parade even though it is close to being our countries biggest holiday.  This oversight seems like a big opportunity for a sunbelt city like San Diego, Albuquerque, El Paso or Tucson.

How would it work.  Bands, Floats and Sponsors followed by a chance for all the participants to watch the game on the Jumbotron in the local enclosed stadium.  I imagine a Rose Parade type event without the flower theme. Floats with fashion, entertainment, commercial and technology based themes.  More high tech than Macy’s balloons and definitely more TV friendly than the Rose Parade.  Each float and band would have three minutes or so in the limelight.  Half of the time the camera would be on the parade entry and half would be on their commercial.  Some examples:

• Victoria’s Secret no brainer
• Waffle House Tasting float
• Ace Hardware National band
• Whatever the hot new movie is.
• The State of Colorado Tourism bureau.
• Emirates Air

The main attraction for the sponsors would be a chance to have an affordable ad near the Super Bowl.  The TV Network would have a very low cost but potentially high profit product.  The bands would be delighted to march and the sponsoring city would sell 100,000 hotel room nights at very little cost after the initial roll-out.

The only question in my mind is why hasn’t someone thought of this before.

So far this year I have had three football ideas and two parade ideas and it is only February.  You can see all of the ideas here.

It would be great if you could stop and get great food when you are driving between big cities like Los Angeles to San Francisco or Chicago to St Louis.  Right now the pickings at the half way stopping points are pretty much fast foods, the Waffle House and places like the Cracker Barrel.  It takes too long and the food is barely above tolerable.

What if there was a small chain of specialty restaurants that catered to up-scale travelers.  They are situated at the best stopping places between the major cities, they have great food, served quickly and courteously and while you are eating they gas up your car and wash the windshield.  The restrooms are delightful and the decor is elegantly local.

The trick to make it successful would be to use the new GPS and cell phone technologies now available.  A customer leaving LA would access the menu on her cellular phone and pre-order lunch.  The restaurant would track the phone via GPS so that as they pulled into the driveway the meal would be ready and the table would be set.  The food would be great.  Terrific young chefs who are struggling to find a niche in the high cost cities would clamor to be able to master their craft and build their reputations out on the highway.

This idea came up because I was reading a book titled An Appetite For America by Stephen Freid at the same time that I was driving a lot of miles on the interstate.  Even I get tired of Beef Jerky and Starbucks Coffee.  The book is about the Fred Harvey Company that for almost a century fed train travelers in the same way I am proposing feeding interstate travelers.

People driving $50,000 cars shouldn’t have to eat fast food.