Ultrasonic Cleaners
I stumbled across these devices when I first had the idea of setting up ideas2earn. They are obscure enough to raise an eyebrow or two but common enough to have a definite market, either for supplying units, or providing a specialist cleaning service.
For those who are not sure what I am talking about Wikipedia has the following definition; -
“Ultrasonic cleaners, sometimes mistakenly called supersonic cleaners, are cleaning devices that use ultrasound (usually from 15-400 kHz) to clean delicate items.
They are often employed for cleaning of jewellery, lenses and other optical parts, coins, watches, dental and surgical instruments, fountain pens, industrial parts and electronic equipment. In everyday use such devices may be found in use in most jewellery workshops, watchmakers’ establishments, or in cellular phone repair workshops (where it could be used for cleaning a phone that has been exposed to enough moisture to hinder its operation).”
As suggested in the introduction above there are actually two possible business models here. You can get hold of domestic level ultrasonic cleaners for about $15-$20 on Ebay, presumably at this price they have been used a couple of times but judging by the pictures not much more than this. If you decide to go into the supply side of this business then this is the level to look at.
More expensive models go up to about $12500 even on Ebay. If you plan on spending this kind of money I guess you have a better idea about this business than I do. This sort of money buys a 90 Gallon industrial unit that can be used for cleaning fairly large industrial items, this is not what you would use for cleaning jewellery.
Going back to Wikipedia we can see that the automotive, sporting, printing, marine, medical, pharmaceutical, electroplating, engineering and weapons industries all use ultrasonic cleaners. A little research should help you to understand the opportunities for supplying, or renting use of industrial level cleaners within this sphere.
For the time being let’s focus on jewellery and other smaller items. We know that there is a demand for these cleaners in certain industries such as Dentistry and for hobbies such as rare coin collecting. What we need to do is to find the private buyers within this industry who are not aware of the benefits, or the low cost of entry level models.
Regardless of whether you are selling, or offering a cleaning service the methods of distribution and promotion will be similar: -
Website
Direct Response
Advertise
Regardless of your other activities you should have a website, or better yet a series of websites targeted at the different items you will clean. You do not for example want a housewife with jewellery to clean thinking she is in the wrong place because she found references to dentistry. Much of the information you present will be the same, but your images and “spin” will be subtly different for each segment. This may be best done with sub/domains such as www.ultraclean.com/dentists or www.ultraclean.com/jewellery (Note I made these up as examples they don’t exist).
Direct response in this instance might be as simple as calling all the dentists and jewellers in your local yellow pages to see whether they are currently using an ultrasonic cleaner, or cleaning service and whether they would be interested in talking to you about the provision of either their own machine, or a quote for your cleaning service. Another possible line of enquiries might be pawn brokers who often have old items of jewellery with ingrained dirt left with them unclaimed.
Regardless of the response to your telephone calls you should advertise in the Yellow Pages and the Local newspaper as a minimum, but you may also want to advertise selectively in trade magazines and on trade related websites to attract customers who may already be thinking of buying or replacing a machine, or existing service contract.
You can buy your stock through Ebay at competitive prices but you may get a better deal buying several at a time through manufacturers such as those found on www.alibaba.com or through worldwide brands (see www.neversayanything.com) who rank their suppliers and vet them thoroughly to avoid fakes and scams.
Despite the number of cleaners available on Ebay a search on Google for “ultrasonic cleaner” only produced just over 1 million results, which is not overly competitive.
Read up on the subject if this is something that interests you. There are plenty of niches to be exploited on the industry side but if you plan to go business to business then you had better know your stuff.