Editor’s note: This article was first published in October 2012; the €200,000 in sales, the forecast to double that figure, the agreements with companies in France and Colombia and the possible expansion into Chile and Australia are figures and plans from that time.
Francisca Gamero is a living example of many of the qualities an entrepreneur needs, the ones we usually talk about here. In the middle of an economic crisis, this Spanish woman has created a product that is literally selling like hot cakes. You could say her business idea was born thanks to her daughter’s protruding ears.
She explains that her daughter has had what are commonly called “jug ears” since she was little, a small cosmetic flaw that causes so many psychological problems for the people who have it. Francisca tried all kinds of home-made fixes to solve her daughter’s problem, and even went as far as using sticking plaster and adhesive tape to try to correct it, but nothing worked. She was clear that the only way to correct the flaw without surgery would be to try to hold the ears as close to the head as possible without it being noticeable.
In 2011, in the middle of the economic crisis, she created the first aesthetic ear corrector, Otostick. Basically it’s like a contact lens that is placed behind the ear and corrects protruding ears perfectly. The product, a transparent adhesive silicone prosthesis, has already brought in €200,000 in sales, and its inventor estimates that this year they will probably double that figure.
Francisca says she already has agreements with companies in France and Colombia and could soon enter Chile and Australia.
What can this entrepreneur teach us?
Francisca has an entrepreneurial spirit and had already experienced failure as an entrepreneur twice. Her first business was a supermarket, and her first mistake was perhaps not taking the low profit margins into account. Her second business was a textile distributor, and her mistake there was not recognising the competition or doing the proper market research: she didn’t take into account the boom in Chinese textiles in Spain.
Even so, she persisted and never let herself be defeated. While some people spend their energy lamenting their failures, others learn from them and apply what they’ve learned again and again because, as the saying goes, you only fail when you stop trying.
And as we also often say, great business ideas come from the need to solve a problem, in this case a simple cosmetic one.
Further reading
- The man who started a business to save his children’s lives
- 4 business ideas worth 100 million
- Profitable businesses, although… a bit strange
Featured image: Henry Vandyke Carter, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
