Thursday, June 24, 2010

The shower is such a niche.


Isn't it funny how random ideas and thoughts occur when you least expect them. As I was showering the other day I became distracted by number of bottles and the colors they attribute to their usage. Not only is a shower a good place to see the evolution of product design but it also a great place to what a niche is.

The shower is a place where things get clean but who would have thought that marketers have dissected the body into hundreds of niches. On the basic level, they have soap for guys and girls. They have soap bars and then body wash. They have conditioner and shampoo. They have a combination conditioner and shampoo. It's amazing to see just how dissected the body can be.

The next time you take a shower, take a close look at all the products in there. What are they for? How are they different from another bottle? Could one bottle satisfy other tasks or has the marketer created a unique niche?

Has the "shower industry" taken niches too far? What do you think?

Monday, June 21, 2010

Should I wash my car today?


Everyone or most everyone who owns a car asks themselves this basic question "Should I wash my car today?" It is such a simple question yet there is so much to consider. The weather. Your time. Your laziness. The weather. It all boils down to whether the weather will hold up long enough for your time to be worth washing your car today. I mean, I would hate to wash my car only to wake up the next day and it's raining. What a waste!

Washing your car is one of those rituals and spiritual moments where we become one with our car. It's like the car knows that it's getting clean and somehow we think it runs better after a nice clean, which usually takes between 2-4 hours. Not sure where the time goes but when you get back in it the next day it's a feeling of accomplishment. A feeling of a freshly washed car, vacuumed interior and you even found some febreeze and used it on your seats. Ahhhh, what a lovely feeling.

But it all boils down to the basic question "Should I even wash my car today?"

The answer is YES. Or, it could be NO. Fear no longer and stop crying. We have developed a solution. The iShould Car Wash App.

A couple months ago I found myself asking the same question and it struck me. I then formed the iShould App Project to help answer the car wash question but it actually applies to many other questions. Should I surf? Should I Hike? Should I Divorce? Well, not the last one. But the underlying concept (patents pending) let's take all this free data, weather in particular and make some use out of it. So that is what we set out to do.

So, be on the look out in your nearest app store for the iShould App Project. Our first app will be: iShould Car Wash. We will be launching on the android market by summers end and then move to iPhone and Blackberry. After we release the initial app, we will be following up with additional apps which are in the queue.

Have any mobile app ideas that you think are cool? Don't have the resources? E-mail me and we can talk.