Editor’s note: This article was first published in March 2011. It is a snapshot of the Spanish market then, including 1,300 new personal trainers, 564 personal shoppers, five new wine tourism companies, ideas launched barely six months earlier and high unemployment. None of these figures has a source.
Over time we’ve shared a host of business ideas that, as we noted, already existed in other countries but hadn’t yet caught on in Spain. Obviously there can be no demand for an innovative service nobody has heard of. Well, within just a few months these businesses are already seeing considerable growth, and their profits are expected to rise in the short term.
Virtual assistance companies have grown, and so has the number of freelancers offering this kind of service. Now, with the government’s new regulations requiring large companies to have phone complaints handled by people rather than robots, demand is expected to increase.
Some companies are already weighing up whether to outsource this kind of phone service to an outside firm.
Meanwhile, although small businesses aren’t required to take this step, they too will consider hiring someone to handle the phones from home, whether on a temporary contract, by the hour, or under a freelance contract or a commercial services contract if that person is registered as a company or as self-employed.
Elsewhere, 1,300 new personal trainers and 564 personal shoppers have appeared in Spain. That’s good news, because it means Spaniards are increasingly open to new business opportunities and are receiving them well.
More good news comes from tourism, a sector that, thanks to the ideas of some Spanish entrepreneurs, is not only becoming a very profitable business but is also enriching the country’s economy.
Thanks to these entrepreneurs, Spain is becoming a benchmark for innovative tourism. One company worth highlighting is Multicolor Viajes, which, from its base in Granada, has already become a leader in gay and lesbian tourism.
Five new companies have also been set up in the wine tourism sector. Thanks to good online promotion, they are already seeing strong demand for visits to the country’s vineyards and its “wine route”.
It’s also worth noting that, although Spain still lags well behind in new technologies, the number of online advertising intermediaries is growing too. I’m sure that over time some of these companies will win a large share of the market for advertising on blogs and websites and become a powerful alternative to Google AdSense.
I’d ask these young companies to raise their professionalism as far as they can and make the process easier, while the rest of us should place a little trust in companies trying to carve out a place in this world. That way we’ll avoid monopolies and create alternatives we can negotiate with in the future.
So, despite the number of unemployed people in Spain, these are good times for entrepreneurship. Jobs will be slow to come back, so the saying has never been more fitting: “don’t look for a job, create one”. As you can see, some of these business ideas were launched barely six months ago and have already been well received by the market; others have been running for several years and are now expanding fast.
We’ve talked about Spain, but our readers in Latin America can take note too, and be innovators wherever they decide to bring these ideas that haven’t yet reached their countries.
If you have a good business idea, we encourage you to give it a try.
Further reading
- Business ideas for 2011
- If you have a business idea: 10 tips to make it happen
- The advantages of starting a business in times of crisis
- Why new businesses fail
- How to start a business with no money
Featured image: Shaury Nash, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr.
