Trendwatching writes:
MINIPRENEURSaremillions of consumers making some money on the side, satisfying their enterprising urges instead of relentless consumption. Can you in turn satisfy them?
Increasingly, consumers are participants instead of passive audience members, and this mega-trend manifests itself in a variety of ways.
How are brands taking advantage of minipreneurs?
- Cafepress.com has a network of over 2 million members who have created more than 8 million designs on 70+ customizable products ranging from apparel and home and office accessories to music and data CDs and books to prints, posters and cards. Every day, roughly 14,000 new items are added, and approximately 1,000 new, independent shops join the CafePress.com network.
- US-based eMachineshop.com, which lets ordinary consumers download free, easy-to-use software which they can use to design objects like car parts, door knobs, in metal or plastic. They can then get a quote, order the product online and eMachineshop will forward the design to a 'real world' machine shop for manufacturing.
- UK-based Zopa, a place where creditworthy borrowers who'd like to borrow money can get together with other consumers who are happy to lend it to them.
- UK-based Scoopt, a 'civic media press agency' helps members of the public sell photographs and videos of newsworthy events to the press. In their own words: "we bridge the gap between amateur photographer and picture desk - and by 'amateur', we mean anybody with a digital camera or a cameraphone who just happens to be in the right place at the right time.
Big, sucessful brands have to increasingly co-opt customers in the consumption process. Imagination, ideas and mindset could be the only barriers for them!