Emerging Markets: Toys for Adults

You may or may not be surprised, but toys are becoming extremely popular. Sex toys, that is. The market for high-tech sex toys is booming (link to NYTimes' article...), and it's making their inventors (and consumers) very happy indeed.

Just last week, a man unveiled his $7000 talking sex robot (link to CNN's article...) invention, of which he apparently has received hundreds of orders already. I don't know how much it costs to produce each one, but if there's a market for something this outlandish then the simple doodads and hoosawhatsits out there to tickle your "fancy" must be selling like crazy.

I live with 5 girls that are in a sorority (Craigslist...another post, haha). I've recently learned about "slumber parties" or just referred to as "parties" where a sales representative comes and sells sex products to a group. The point is that one of these parties sells about $700 worth of items.

In Australia and Germany, for instance, I've seen sex shops on main streets that look like a small Best Buy store. Non-discreet nor shameful, they were almost classy. It's a more open kind of thing there, I suppose.

What I'm saying is that someday you'll wish you had thought of the iPod of sex toys and had the guts to move the idea forward.

Oldies but goodies

You know what market(s) you probably don't think about much??????

Old people...or elderly to be P.C.

Baby boomers have JUST begun to turn 60 in the last couple of years. It would be wise to get to know the elderly and decide what their problems may be or what their fears/desires/needs are. You don't need to invent some sort of new pacemaker or anything to keep them alive (though that's certainly wonderful), but something that improves their lives will be just what brings in the huge profits.

You know who's smart? Apple. Everyone's like "Ohh the iPad is so lame" but I personally think their target market is going to end up being these elderly people that aren't very technically savvy and want a simple, large, easy to use device that puts all of their books and communication capabilities in one place. Even better, the closed interface along with the App store - you can't screw it up!! It's frustrating to me and anyone that's accidentally installed WeatherBug or some crazy toolbar to have your computer bogged down by unwanted applications. The iPad has been made pretty foolproof in this sense, don't you think?! It's not for me, but perhaps in 50 years I'll buy something a young'n has developed for people my age.