10 of the Most Unusual Business Ideas of All-Time

While most people take the traditional route and stick to tried-and-tested concepts, a rare few dare to think out of the box. That may not always be a good idea, as some of the most unusual business ideas in history have also been massive commercial failures, though quite a few have succeeded, too, creating their own market niches where none existed before.

Love content? Check out Simon's other YouTube Channels:

Simon's Social Media:

[StageRight]

I work at a ski resort at high elevation with a lot of tourism that comes from sea level. The canned oxygen is actually sold at some places locally for tourists that are not used to the thin air at higher elevation.

[RHCole]

2 reminds me of PerriAir from Spaceballa.

[Zackaria_sMax]

0:55 So I can finally smell what was in those 2 girls cup!?!?!

[johngregg]

In 1984, FedEx dropped $100, 000, 000+ on a revolutionary way to send documents quickly. They opened up a series of locations where you could take your document in and fax them to other FedEx locations where the recipient would pick them up. For around $5/page. They see the tsunami of cheap fax machines that was coming.

[eifelitorn]

The first one that came to mind were those pet rocks salesmen

[seadog]

You can buy canned oxygen at almost any flight store. I have two cans in my plane to help with hypoxia. When you're a little off at altitude, getting a shot of oxygen is like drinking a cup of expresso, lol--especially at night.

[skrag]

Did they get that bottled air idea from 'Spaceballs'?

[Hillbilly]

Amaze me Factboi! Kinda like what P.T.Barnum said, there's a sucker born every minute. LoL. Cheers from Tennessee

[twocvbloke]

Aside from being amusingly placed as "Number Two", bottled air is just basically a rip-off of the PerriAir from Spaceballs, so if anything, Mel Brooks invented it... :P

[freesk]

How about the soy-based drink Soylent? The green flavor is literally people! Soylent Green is People!!! :)

[PewPewPark]

What the bottled air people didn't say was they got the idea while high after watching Space Balls.

[richardbenson]

Most laundry matts have change machines on site which are free to use as you're probably going to spend it there either on the washers/dryers, soda/snack machines, or laundry detergent dispensers...

[danidavis]

I always wanted to invent a shredder that had a built in wifi scanner. The document would be scanned right before being shredded as it went through. I would send these shredders to government agencies and tech businesses disguised as "mishipments" and gifts. You know many of them would be placed in offices and used. And every time someone shredded a document, the hidden, built-in scanner would send me a copy.... heh heh heh

[spddiesel]

Here's a transcript from the first No More Woof test run: "Hey! Hey! Hey! Are you a dog? I'm a dog! Hey! Hey! You hear that? I think it's another dog! Touch my head! Touch my head! Hey!"

[breezeytfu]

Scream on lamps...
Like clap on but metal

[BiroZombie]

The last item on the list reminds me of that episode of The Simpsons where Uncle Herb invents a device to translate baby talk.

[bunyipdragon]

Diedinhouse amused me - I grew up in an old UK village and my house was built in 1770. In the 1970's it was one of the youngest houses. We used to laugh as kids as we all knew that many generations had died in our houses -not much in ghost stories though 😔

[michaelpipkin]

Dude, I dropped my cereal spoon when you said porn would be incorporated into Smell-o-Vision...

[randoir]

What's next, canned frozen snow from the rockies or everest?

[GregHuffman]

How about a grocery gps that takes you the fastest route to get all thr groceries you need in a store?