This Business Idea Will Make You Rich

Let us here introduce some very practical

suggestions as to how the laws of Imagination, Cooperation

and Pleasing Personality may be blended, or

coordinated to profitable ends, through the creation of

usable ideas.

Every thinker knows that "ideas" are the

beginning of all successful achievement. The question

most often asked, however, is, "How can I learn to

create ideas that will earn money?"

In part we will answer this question in this lesson

by suggesting some new and novel ideas, any of which

might be developed and made very profitable, by

almost anyone, in practically any locality.

IDEA NUMBER ONE

The world war has deprived Germany of her

enormous trade in toys. Before the war we bought

most of our toys from Germany. We are not likely to

buy any more toys from German manufacturers in our

time, or for a long while afterward.

Toys are in demand, not alone in the United

States, but in foreign countries, many of which will

not buy toys from Germany. Our only competitor is

Japan and her toys are of so poor a quality that her

competition means nothing.

But what sort of toys shall I manufacture and

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where will I get the capital with which to carry on the

business, you will ask?

First, go to a local toy dealer and find out just

which class of toys sells most rapidly. If you do not

feel competent to make improvements on some of the

toys now on the market, advertise for an inventor

"with an idea for a marketable toy" and you will soon

find the mechanical genius who will supply this

missing link in your undertaking. Have him make you

a working model of just what you want, then go to

some small manufacturer, woodworker, machine shop

or the like, and arrange to have your toys

manufactured.

You now know just what your toy will cost, so

you are ready to go to some big jobber, dealers, dropshippers, (merchant) wholesalers or

distributor and arrange for the sale of your entire

product.

Note: Drop shippers are another type of limited-service wholesaler. Although drop shippers take title to the goods, they don’t actually take possession of them or handle them, oftentimes because they deal with goods that are large or bulky. Instead, they earn a commission by finding sellers and passing their orders along to producers, who then ship them directly to the sellers. Mail-order wholesalers sell their products using catalogs instead of sales forces and then ship the products to buyers. Truck jobbers (or truck wholesalers) actually store products, which are often highly perishable (e.g., fresh fish), on their trucks. The trucks make the rounds to customers, who inspect and select the products they want straight off the trucks.

If you are an able salesman you can finance this

whole project on the few dollars required with which

to advertise for the inventor. When you find this man

you can probably arrange with him to work out a

model for you during his spare evening hours, with a

promise that you will give him a better job when you

are manufacturing your own toys. He will probably

give you all the time you want in which to pay him for

his labor; or he may do the work in return for an

interest in the business.

You can get the manufacturer of your toys to wait

for his money until you are paid by the firm to which

you sell them; and, if necessary, you can assign to him

the invoices for the toys sold and let the money come

direct to him.

Of course if you have an unusually pleasing and

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convincing personality and considerable ability to

organize, you will be able to take the working model

of your toy to some man of means and, in return for an

interest in the business, secure the capital with which

to do your own manufacturing.

If you want to know what will sell, watch a crowd

of children at play, study their likes and dislikes, find

out what will amuse them and you will probably get

an idea on which to build your toy. It requires no

genius to invent! Common sense is all that is

necessary. Simply find out what the people want and

then produce it. Produce it well - better than anyone

else is doing. Give it a touch of individuality. Make it

distinctive.

We spend millions of dollars annually for toys

with which to entertain our children. Make your new

toy useful as well as interesting. Make it educational

if possible. If it entertains and teaches at the same

time it will sell readily and live forever. If your toy is

in the nature of a game make it teach the child

something about the world in which it lives,

geography, arithmetic, English, physiology, etc. Or,

better still, produce a toy that will cause the child to

run, jump or in some other way exercise. Children

love to move about and moving about is of benefit to

them, especially when stimulated by the play motive.

An indoor baseball game would be a ready seller,

especially in the cities. Work out an arrangement for

attaching the ball to a string that will be suspended

from the ceiling so one child may throw the ball

against the wall and then stand back and strike it with

a bat as it rebounds. A one-child baseball game, in

other words.