Ronald Su dot Com

We Can Charge Them Up For 5 Dollars!

Look around your friends and family members and try to find one of them not having a cell phone. It’s hard! Almost everyone has a cell phone now-a-days. Making money off cell phone users is gold. There are roughly around 160 million cell phone users in USA. Most of them are young, tech-savvy people. They are willing to spend money on their phones. Covers, screen protectors, stickers, cases, headsets, bluetooth, Micro-SDs, you name it. Many businesses are successful at selling to this group of consumers, but many people missed this small niche: cell phones need to be charged frequently.

I used to work at a wireless network retailer in one of the busiest shopping mall in Vancouver. It amazed me that there were lots of people everyday asking if we could charge their mobile. I told them they needed to buy a $30 charger from us and then we could charge their phones with the charger. About 70% of them actually agreed to buy the charger.

If someone rent a small booth in a busy shopping mall and take 5 dollars to charge a customer’s phone for 15 minutes, there’s going to be big potential. Here’s my theory on shoppers and their cell phone usage:
1) Shoppers are mostly young people. They are mostly tech-savvy consumers who know how to “play” with their phones. Their phone batteries will drain faster and need to be charged more frequently.
2) Many people like to shop alone. When they shop alone, they like to chat with their friends on the phone. Next time you go to a mall, pay attention to the number of shoppers that are on the phone. Their phone batteries will drain faster and need to be charged more frequently.
3) People in shopping malls are more willing to pay to get their phones charged. They can drop off their phones, continue with their shopping and pick them up when they are finished.

If you want to go full-scale on this idea, you can even build cell phone charging machines and put them in every populated location. Actually, they have those machines in many shopping malls in China. The bad thing about the ones in China is that the customers need to stay around the machine to watch over their phones while they are charging. (They are called “Cellphone Gas Station”) Build one that acts like a vending machine and secure customers’ phones, and you will be rich.

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