Whats the best way to take the feathers off a chicken? ( when its dead of course!) You use paraffin wax...you know like women do when they shave their legs. At a recent innovation workshop ( which i still run) i had a guy from Rainbow chickens and he had some great ideas of his own. So I mentioned that another young entrepreneur who wanted to work with women who slaughter chickens in the township and then defeather them came up with this concept ( which is quite commonly used in Europe by the way) and wanted to make a defeathering kit ( as millions of chickens are slaughtered this way in South Africa). Otherwise the women basically use hot water which is quite a difficult process. Here the wax just takes the feathers off quite easily. Awesome. On another note in the same workshop one of the guys saw a bowl of baked beans in a very nice ceramic plate. We looked at the picture and after a bit of discussion agreed that in South Africa there are 2 markets. The mass market and the "what i want to call the artisan" market. This is very evident with coffee. From crappy instant coffee the whole market seems to be moving to artisan coffee and willing to pay for it. So I said to him why not artisan baked beans. Lightbulb! I definitely think it would work in the making and packaging of baked beans. South Africa seems to follow the trend of the rich. So if the rich start using a certain product then everyone wants it as well as a trend and a "i wanna be like them". I have mentioned this before re: brands. So if the mass market sees the rich eating artisan baked beans then they will start to eat them too and pay a higher price. Thinking aloud a great example of that is purity baby foods and nappies which make no sense at all in the mass market as they are very pricey. Yet the rich have it so the mass market aspires to it. Image and advertising which is slighly different from other countries like India...or is it? What i have been saying for quite some time is that we live in an aspirational country. So to launch new products they should sell to rich first and get assimilated into the mass market as a brand you need to get. A great example is that of coffins. If the rich are seen to be buried in sideways coffins which are made with plastics then the mass market will follow! or will they? Damn i just thought of another great idea. Building private pools in the townships for householders. They charge people a fee to use them for leisure as well as charge for swimming lessons. Not bad! In the workshop mentioned above one of the participants saw a guy in cowboy gear. Now imagine a store that imports all the cowboy and cowgirl stuff and started a small retail store. I love this idea as i can see the trend growing in Tshwane with dudes walking around in their stetsons.