Ridiculous Businesses that Made People Rich

Bangalore: People come up with many weird ideas but they don’t implement it thinking that it will not work well in the market. But sometimes these ridiculous ideas work wonders and make people rich. So all you require is an idea and who knows you can turn lucky if it clicks well. Listed are some ideas those were considered absurd initially, but it eventually made lot of profits.  

Smiley

Harvey Ross Ball designed Smiley in 1963. Harvey served the military for 27 years and was awarded a Bronze Star for his heroism during the World War II.  When he retired from the army he was hired by an Insurance company which is now known as Hanover Insurance, Massachusetts, as a freelance artist. It was at the time when his insurance company merged with Guarantee Mutual Company of Ohio, and which resulted in low morale of the employees. So the smiley was created to mark as the friendship between the two companies.

Charles Ball said that his father was not money driven person, he used to tell his son that he can only eat one steak at a time and drive one car at a time. Later the smiley was used by the brothers Bernard and Murray Spain, who trademarked the smiley with the tagline that read as, “Have a nice day.” They created this smiley saying have a nice day to sell novelty items. And so the brothers created coffee mugs, T-shirts, bumper stickers etc. Along with the button manufacturer N.G. Slater they were able to produce over 50 million happy faces badges by 1972.

The Spain’s had established the first dollar express in the eighties and they sold these smileys. They sold their chain to the Dollar Tree at $500 million in 2000. So their estimated profit was $500 million.