Who are the 1%? They’re the rich: people who have so far provided very well-paid work to professionals such as gardeners, chauffeurs, cooks and cleaning staff, and who are big customers of luxury businesses, from megayachts and high-end cars to jewelry and even high-end bicycles. Of course, the 1% is becoming ever more demanding and ever more drawn to innovative services.
Some entrepreneurs have already got to work offering new services to this exclusive club. Here are some business ideas built around services for millionaires that wouldn’t have crossed our minds a few years ago.
1. Private chefs for luxury dogs
Some millionaires are estimated to spend around €4,500 a year on their pets. The first dog hotels have even opened, a kind of dog spa where owners leave their pets while they go on holiday. Megan Montgomery is the first entrepreneur to win the trust of this exclusive club, becoming New York’s best-paid dog chef. Her dog menus offer food with no additives or preservatives, rich in calcium and all kinds of vitamins, so dogs stay lively and healthy for a long time.
She says that if a dog is fed properly, the vet bills for treating future illnesses usually drop considerably.
2. Tanning butlers
The first company to specialize in this service appeared in 2004. At first, some luxury hotels outsourced it; later, hotels began adding these professionals to their own staff to offer it as a luxury service. So what is a tanning butler?
When a guest staying at a hotel heads out to the beach or the pool, they can call on this professional to apply their sunscreen for them with a gentle, relaxing massage. The service costs between $30 and $60 an hour. One regular customer is Jessica Simpson.
3. Gourmet food delivery
GM foods may be the future of food, but you’ll be the one eating them. The 1% prefers a different kind of food and has no time to cook it, so there are already companies that design specific, personalized menus, because this exclusive club demands vegetarian, organic, gluten-free, low-calorie, low-carb, low-cholesterol, anti-cancer, Ayurvedic or macrobiotic diets, and so on.
These companies also deliver the menus to your door, even breakfasts, and so far this business idea has proved very profitable.
4. Money can buy love
Virginia Sweetingham created a matchmaking service for millionaires that is light-years ahead of anything else out there. So much so that she still hasn’t revealed her secret for finding the candidates she puts in touch with her millionaire clients.
Hiring her costs $24,000. Her clients’ anonymity is fully guaranteed, and their satisfaction rate is quite high. The only other thing we know is that, in the middle of the technology age and with hundreds of dating websites around, she doesn’t use the internet to offer her service.
5. All-round services for millionaires
Millionaires are joining the trend of hiring freelancers for specific tasks at specific times. Even better if they can get different services from a single company by calling a single phone number. Need to send an urgent package, take care of a particular errand, pick up a dress, take some documents to an institution, or have a virtual assistant book a hotel, help cover up an affair or buy your wife a present? All of that is possible thanks to companies that already offer these services for a flat fee or charge per task.
Further reading
- 3.5 business ideas that would never have occurred to me
- Profitable business ideas for 2013
- 4 business ideas as simple as they are brilliant
Featured image: David Berkowitz, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
