Joburg Unhinged

Unhinged: Surviving Joburg - Promo from Loveland Plant Hire on Vimeo.


A good friend of mine, Adrian Loveland is the Producer and Director of Jo'burg Unhinged. This is a black documentary shot in HD featuring the good and bad of Johannesburg. The movie is due for release in a month or two and we are looking for various program buyers around the world who would be interested in screening this documentary on television. With the world cup football in South Africa in about 6 months it would be an ideal opportunity to for a station to have a very topical piece prior to the world cup. I think it will be awesome when completed.

Business Idea 2: Ski Deck UK

South Africa has no snow and is at least 24 hours from any skiing destination anywhere in the world. This has resulted in a need for South Africans to learn how to ski before they go away on holiday, this has resulted in the development of the ski deck. There are many benefits to the ski deck in that people can learn to ski without falling over and hurting themselves, as well as established skiers being able to build strength in their legs for the forth coming season. We have felt that there is definitely room for this product in the UK, with 1.2m skiers heading abroad annually. The ski dome in Milton Keynes is too far to go to during the week and is also extremely expensive, we are aiming to bring skiing into the heart of London. Our first site has been located and we are going to install the deck at Play on Sports in Canary Wharf (http://www.playonsports.co.uk/) they already have a footfall of 10k every week for their other sports, which would prove to be a great marketing tool.

 

Check out this link which shows in detail how it operates: http://www.vimeo.com/7516023

 

Business Idea 1 - Wasted space above your head on aircraft

Being a regular traveller between the UK and South Africa, and also being a fairly big chap, the eternal discomfort of airline travel as caused me to spend many hours in my discomfort coming up with new methods to improve airline travel. What I have realised is there is a huge amount of wasted space above passengers heads which could be far better utilised, namely in a manner whereby all economy class passengers would be able to recline completely or at least partially, making the journey far more comfortable. There would be a few ways to do this, the first would be to have three bunks where the passenger could book a bunk for the entire journey. This would mean that the passenger wouldn’t be able to have the classic aircraft meals that are common on all current flights. But might only have the option of a sandwich or something quick at the galley at the rear of the aircraft. In the horizontal position the passenger would still have the LCD screen which would come out from the bunk above. This would be the complete and ideal solution, and I believe the customers would even pay a small premium for such a luxury. The second, and less drastic solution would be a facility where seats are linked to the seat either in front or behind the seat in pairs. One of the chairs reclines, similar to that of a dentist’s chair and the other chair slides above / below that chair. I might not offer a complete recline but would still be far for comfortable. The only downside would be that if either passenger needed to get up for any reason it would disrupt the peaceful slumber of the other passenger. Please see below which hopefully gives a bit more detail.

 

Streetskins - Windows of Opportunity

This is a business I started just over a year ago, it originated from the fact that steel shutters are an eye-sore and a complete waste of space on an urban landscape where every piece of real estate has a monetary value. After trying a few various methods, the product was finalised and sites set up in Manchester and London, the workings of the unit can be found on the website: http://www.streetskins.co.uk/index.php/product/

 

The aim of the business is to build various portfolios of sites that target various product categories, our primary focus at this stage is to target sites in nightlife hotspots around London, like Shoreditch, Clapham etc, and market this portfolio to the entertainment industry including West End music productions, movies, musicians, drinks and alcohol brands etc. The strategic view of our business is to have numerous portfolios targeting different markets around the UK. We are also pursuing the possibility of selling these units into major retailers, whereby they can advertise their own products. A business with no sign is a sign of no business. Let’s do things differently..........

 

 

 

So let us begin the journey......

I have always felt it would be worthwhile to jot down my thoughts, where there would be a repository of information that could be referenced by myself and for other people if there is something that they find interesting, so this is the start of documenting these facts. There will be no real direction that this blog will take, but I believe it will have a flavour as depicted by the title, it will contain ideas that would have stemmed from the most important word in the English language: “Why?”, without ever asking that question a person is never moving forward. I’ll keep my first post brief as to ensure it is loaded correctly, and we have a lifetime together, so what’s the rush?, here we go............