This Saturday one of my close friends said the most important “Yes” in his life so far, hence a big crowd of friends and family gathered for a lively celebration in a ballroom in central Stockholm. The wedding was lovely; luxury residence, delicious dinner, great entertainment, you name it… And on top of all this I got lucky with my table company. (Worth mentioning is that my friend married a girl from India, thus the audience was very mixed in terms of both age and culture, something that I, as a young trendspotter, consider being a perfect environment for trendspotting).
By the end of the evening I ended up talking to a guy in his thirties who seemed to have done everything from hiking in Peru to starting up a Swedish Student Association at a University in Australia. He has travelled the world and gave the impression of being driven and ambitious. He told me that at the moment he was running a coffeehouse in Odenplan together with his girlfriend, but that soon he would be getting the license and dilute the current menu with some alcoholic beverages.
But for a young Stockholm-guy this didn’t seem to be enough and soon we started to talk about his collateral project that he was working on together with one of his friends. Sandshoe, which is the name of the company, started its existence in May 2008 and less than one month later the pilot group got the privilege to try it out.
The idea of Sandshoe is simple – surf trips to South America, combined with voluntary work in that area. The company offers a cheap price for your surf holiday, while you in return spend a few hours a day contributing with your knowledge and skills to the local development projects. At the moment the company has specified on surf holidays (everything between 2 and 8 weeks) combined with teaching English, bringing a great value to the ongoing local projects in Las Tunas, Ecuador.
But how did these two guys manage to come up with such an idea? The answer is simple: they spotted two trends and put them together in one business idea. Growing tourism that takes people further away from their homes in order to experience more adventurous challenges and better awareness of the world situation that increases the voluntary work around the globe. These two trends combined together generated a new business idea, which gradually led to Sandshoe, a company that truly brings together business and pleasure by creating a great value within the areas of education and sustainable community development and giving their customers a good deal on the price for surf holidays!
Key take away from this story: A good trendspotting eye can generate a profitable idea and at the same time contribute to the progress in developing countries.
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