Starting a business isn’t as difficult as it seems.  You don’t have to come up with some invention or idea that no one has ever thought about.  (Sometimes, only geniuses can do that.)  However, what you can do is take a standard business model and add a twist. 

One such example is starting a business that offers children’s toys for rental.  One mom came up with this idea because she grew tired of buying the best toys on the market for her twin boys and then watching the toys pile up as her boys lost interest in them.  The web-based company she launched, Baby Plays, takes on this problem by allowing parents to rent four or six toys every month by mail.

How It Works

Subscribers choose a membership plan that is right for them.  One plan offers four toys per month for three months for $28.99.  Another plan offers six toys per month for three months for $35.99.  You can also sign up for a year and get six toys per month for $31.99. 

After selecting the right plan, subscribers add toys they want to rent to their wishlist.  On the website, they can browse among nearly 200 toys for newborns through preschoolers.  They receive toys from their wishlist (in increments of four or six, depending on the plan they choose) within a few days. 

No Late Fees

If parents keep a toy for 30 days or longer, they still only have to pay the monthly fee for the plan they chose.

Exchanging Toys

When parents are ready to get some new toys for their children, they simply have to place the toys they want to return in the original box in which the toys were shipped; tape up the box with the tape provided; place the pre-paid UPS shipping label (also provided) on the box; and drop off the box at any UPS Store location.   

When Baby Plays receives the toys, it will send out the parents’ next shipment of toys from their wish list.

Relieving a Burden on Parents

As a parent, I can attest to a child’s short attention span.  My eight-month-old daughter gets bored of certain toys in a very short period of time.  My wife and I have to rotate toys in and out to keep her interested.  We also make frequent visits to the local Babies R’ Us or Target stores to find new toys she’ll like.  And with an eight-month-old who can’t exactly express herself very well, who knows what she wants!

Thus, Baby Plays makes toy-shopping as easy as renting movies online.  You pick out toys, receive them in the mail, and once your child gets tired of the toys, you ship them back, and exchange them for new toys.  It saves parents valuable time and energy by cutting out frequent visits to toy stores and children’s frustration with old and used toys.  And today, working parents could use that time for other, more productive things.

Anyone Can Start a Business

The owner of Baby Plays wasn’t a genius brimming with ideas.  She was a mother who understood the challenge of keeping children happy.  Children might seem thrilled at the sight of a new toy, but they’ll lose interest within a few days or even a few hours.  She diagnosed that problem and felt that there had to be a way to solve it.  People rent movies and video games online, so she thought renting toys was a possibility.  There were no other online toy rental companies, so she started her own. 

She didn’t come up with a new product or some new patented invention.  She simply looked at an issue within a particular industry (keeping children happy with new and interesting toys) and figured out a way to address that issue.  The large majority of successful start-up businesses begin that way. 

We all have familiarity with a certain field.  As a parent, I know a little bit about anything and everything that has to do with infants: strollers, car seats, diapers, etc.  One way to start a business is to look within the field with which you’re familiar, find a problem or issue, and think of ways to solve that problem.  It requires some out-of-the-box thinking, but it’s certainly not out of reach.  We can all start something that way like this mother did.   

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