Water Rhapsody have established 16 franchisees in water conservation over the past 6 months from the Cape to the Limpopo. They are still looking for ecopreneurs who want to own their own green businesses in the Free State, North West province and in the Northern Cape. Water Rhapsody has been in business offering water conservation systems for the past 16 years and has some 3000 installation to date. Six months ago it started expanding its operations from Cape Town into the rest of South Africa and there are a few key positions left. For further information see Green Business Opportunities and the Water Rhapsody website

Every now and then a brilliant idea comes along and one needs to find that unique individual to match the opportunity. Usually its the other way around – by this I mean there are lots of good people looking for opportunities, but no good ideas !

At Ecopreneur we are going to help find one individual who is looking for his own business, but is short of a great idea. We have a client who has a brilliant idea in the South African (and could be world wide) security business and is looking for someone to partner him to build a great business. Our client has done the necessary research and is well skilled in business start-ups and particularly in marketing. He seeks a partner to help develop this business – he wants the person to develop the technical, and operational side of the business and to ultimately train others to grow the business. To begin the process please make contact via info@ecopreneur.co.za

The right candidate will be an enthusiastic and passionate person who has been looking for the right idea for his own business. He may be currently in a corporate environment or already on his own. He is ready to commit to a vision and begin to build a business of which he will be proud. He will be useful with his hands and have a sharp engineering type mind that seeks to technically innovate on existing technologies. He may have had some experience in the electrical/mechanical disciplines, but generally loves a challenge. He will be able to impart his knowledge to others to help grow the business. He will be comfortable with marketing, although this will not be a long term part of his role.

If this is for you, please send an email motivating why this opportunity is for you together with your CV. Details here: info@ecopreneur.co.za

As time goes on, one of the more interesting trends that continues to happen with surprising regularity is how frequently new business models and ways of doing business are emerging through social media and online tools. In many cases, these trends are helping to reinvent how businesses sell and consumers buy all kinds of products. For that reason alone, new sites are worth paying attention to no matter what industry your business happens to be in.  The benefit of that for your small business is that watching these new models may also spark a new idea or method of selling that you can consider for your own business:

1. Woot – This online retailer takes the unique approach of only selling a single product each day. Around each daily product is a dedicated conversation stream, live commentary and a detailed description. By focusing on a single product, not only do they add a layer of conversation and description to the product, but they also give their users the perception that each daily deal is special and only available for a limited time. This focus allows them to add urgency to their site and convert browsers to buyers quickly. While you may not be able to convert your entire business to just selling one product at a time, this model may be the next evolution of the long-standing “deal of the day” model that many businesses have used at one time or another in the past.

1. Groupon – How much would you lower your standard prices if I could guarantee you 100 customers? Or how about 1,000? The premise behind Groupon is to offer customers “collective buying power” – which essentially means that you can offer a great deal and it will only kick in if a set number of consumers take you up on it. Go on the site and you will see deals sorted by region and many of them have been redeemed by thousands of people. What Groupon shows you is that sometimes you CAN actually count on volume to compensate for lowering your prices. The nicest thing about the site is that instead of trying to recreate this model on your own site, you can add a special offer for your business to Groupon.

1. Hotwire – By now most people are familiar with the new auction based pricing model that Priceline introduced into the travel industry. Letting consumers set the price for what they are willing to pay was a revolution in the travel industry at the time when Priceline was introduced. Hotwire used the slightly adapted model of offering exact prices, but not letting you know the details of what you booked until after you pay. If you have your own eretail site, this model can be a good way to get rid of excess inventory in a different and more fun way.

1. Blippy – If you don’t live your life in social media, the idea behind Blippy will likely confuse you. It is a social site that lets people automatically share the latest things they have purchased (and how much they paid for them) by linking the site to a single credit card. This level of transparency and sharing may seem crazy to many people, but the site represents a social experiment that points to an interesting opportunity for businesses whose customers may be used to sharing every small detail of their lives. It may be an outlier in this list of business models as they admittedly don’t have a revenue model for the site as yet – but the shift in what people are willing to share online is the real trend worth watching.

1. Dubli- This site offers some of the most creative pricing models you can find online – and models that have not yet been duplicated across many others sites. The first is what they call a “reverse auction” where products have a starting price and you use credits that you purchase on the site to reveal the current price. Each time a member of the site uses a credit to reveal the price, the price goes lower until someone decides to make the purchase. The second model is based on a “unique price auction” which means you need to have the lowest bid that no one else chooses to have in order to win

With the soccer 2010 World Cup just around the corner, South African ecopreneurs are ready to show the world how South Africa can host the 2010 World Cup with ecopreneurial flair. The World cup has provided huge stimulation to galvanise ecopreneurs into providing products and services to meet the coming demand beginning in early June. We take this opportunity to attach the schedule of the matches to be held in cities around the country.