There are some of those days in your life when as an entrepreneur, you have a bit of time to just sit and think about how far you have come and how far you still need to go. Often this is when you even get a bit of time to perhaps go through some notes you may have jotted down concerning some ideas you’ve had along the way, but some of those ideas may not even make sense anymore. This was definitely the case on one occasion when I came across a mind map I’d drawn up which had something to do with some sort of cunning way of getting free web hosting for one of my business sites, for life.
It may not have been so clever after all because for the life of me I just don’t remember the full details of the original idea — or perhaps it was just too clever…
Anyway, the ensuing wild goose chase I went on in an attempt to try and jog my memory had me realising just how many more opportunities entrepreneurs have available to them, perhaps without even knowing it. Since my original idea involved something to do with web hosting, I sort of fiddled around the industry a bit and uncovered something which is effectively evident throughout all industries, that being the fact that there are very few Original Product Manufacturers (OEMs) in this world. Due in large part to globalisation as well, chances are if you’re buying a product or service from your supplier’s supplier, you’d still not be dealing with the OEM. You’d have to go up the supply chain a few more steps to get to the OEM.
In my specific case I settled for seeking out the cheapest way to host my website since I could no longer figure out how to get it hosted completely free and what became evident is that there are just one or two companies who manufacture all the servers everybody uses and just one or two companies who actually make use of those servers to offer the web hosting service. Everybody else is a reseller!
You look at the mobile phones sphere as well — pretty much every component of every smartphone brand is manufactured somewhere in Asia (mostly China) and yet the different brands charge different prices for the final product.
This isn’t particularly a bad thing, I don’t think, especially from the point of view of an entrepreneur like myself. What this model of global business means for guys like me and others is that we can take advantage of the “missing middle” between the cost price of manufacturing or producing an original product and the retail price. When everything comes together and for example you put the savings amassed through using your Energy Casino promocode with the savings you’d get by buying from a supplier of goods and services just a few steps up the supply line, a whole new world of opportunities to make some good profit mark-ups reveals itself.
The challenge however is putting seemingly different industries together, as is the case with the casino promotional code example.