Editor’s note: This article was first published in July 2011. Its references to Spain’s Plan Renove car scrappage incentives and to MP3 players reflect that time.
Some entrepreneurs only need to watch a film to come up with a business idea. This time we’re not going to the United States but to China, where a group of entrepreneurs, after seeing a film at the cinema (Transformers), decided to give recycling a new twist.
These entrepreneurs opened a scrapyard and at first started building these Transformers out of parts from the vehicles in the yard. Today the idea is aimed at private customers: “There’s life after your vehicle dies.” People who feel a special attachment to their car, motorbike or… (let’s hope nobody feels attached to a lorry) now have the chance to turn their vehicle into a Transformers-style metal figure.
As well as promoting recycling, the business is profitable: they’ve found strong demand from private customers who want to take their car home with them.
They also realised it would be boring to have a Transformer at home that doesn’t talk. While they haven’t managed to get your car to argue with you, it does come with a radio as standard and a USB port for your MP3 player, and it can be fitted with a light and an alarm clock.
It’s a profitable business in China, although I have my doubts about whether it would work in Spain: on top of paying for the labour to recycle your vehicle, you lose the chance to use the Plan Renove (Spain’s government scrappage incentive) towards a new one. But who knows.
Nobody can argue that the idea isn’t original.
Further reading
- Two millionaire business ideas “made in Japan”
- BeautifulPeople: the exclusive social network for good-looking people
- Business ideas to start this year
Featured image: Pgartsevents, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
