6 Budget Friendly Businesses to Start in 2024. Perfume vending!? Ep. #040
24 Dec 2025 · 34 min
Podcast episode (Chris Koerner with Nick) exploring multiple budget-friendly business ideas and content concepts. Key ideas discussed: an app/content series called "Known For" that surfaces what local places are "known for" (scraping reviews/A.I.); a long-form anonymous-style podcast format for business trauma stories; launching niche inbound call centers (examples: cleaning, cannabis, home health/hospice) with cited unit economics; and novelty vending concepts (perfume vending machines, a pee-measuring urinal game). The hosts trade execution notes, unit-cost estimates, and early market signals to assess feasibility and next steps.
Questions this episode answers
July 17, 2024
$2,000 to $2,500 (machine cost, pedestal or wall-mount options)
$1 per spray (single-use payment via card reader)
About $10,000 per agent per month (revenue to the call-center business)
Approximately $1,500 per month (international staffing cost)
Chapters
It's $2,000, maybe $2,500. You can put it on a pedestal or you can mount it to a wall. It's about the size of a large mailbox and it just looks like this. It just, it's got like this glass display with five bottles of cologne or perfume. And then there's a little tube going into each bottle and then there's a credit card reader and five buttons underneath each one. You swipe your card for a dollar and. And you put your hand up to it or your neck or whatever and you pay a dollar to get one spray of perfume. And it's. So it's like 90 plus percent margins. Welcome to the Kerner office. We have another Holdco Bros. Episode for you today where Nick and I talk business ideas. We had five business ideas this time. I think we. One was an app idea. We had two different podcast ideas. We had an idea to do inbound call center based on a specific niche. And then we had a couple of unique vending machine ideas followed by a content idea. Kind of like Diners Drive Ins and dives, but better. So hope you enjoy, hope you have fun. Please, like, and subscribe and we'll see you next time. All right, so this is just kind of a kitschy little app idea. Okay. You know how I went on the. I went on a camp out with my church group about a month ago. We went to middle of nowhere Missouri. Beautiful, but very, very rural. And we went ziplining, yada, yada, yada. And then afterwards it's like, hey, we're going to go get ice cream at this random place. And there was this random gas station. I don't remember what it was called.
Random.
It was very run down. And there were no signs for ice cream out front, but they were known for having these massive Stop me, stop me massive ice cream cones. Soft serve, where like the baby size was like 10 inches. The small size was like 16. And then large was like. It was like 3 pounds of ice cream on a cone. Okay.
Did they advertise that it was 10 inches, but it was actually like 6.
I'm gonna power through that. So there's no signage out front. It's just like gas station and country store. There's. It's nothing about ice cream out front. But then you walk in and then off to the left they have the little, you know, it's just soft serve machines and pictures of the ice cream cones so you know what size you're getting. And it's huge. And they were as big as advertised. Okay. And so that's what this place was known for. And I don't remember. Hold on, let me actually find it. One sec.
What did you search?
Large ice cream cones. Gas station, Arkansas. Okay, so this is.
There are some people who are AI prompt engineers. You are a Google prompt engineer, my friend.
I am. I am. So this place is like an hour from Bentonville, Arkansas, right near the border of Missouri in a city called. Geez. Garfield. Got. Hold on. Garfield, Arkansas. Okay. And the gas station is called Shortstop. Conoco. Okay.
Okay.
So if you go look this up. Shortstop, Conoco, 4.2 stars, 1400 reviews. And you can see the picture. Shortstop General Store. Okay. Jewelry, leather, yada, yada, yada. And so my point is, you don't know this place sells ice cream. But like, ever, all the locals were like, you should go to shortstop. You should go to Shortstop. Okay, so we went in and it was delicious ice cream. It was really good. And it's like if you go to a random part of the world or country, you want to get what that place is known for, right? You don't just want to go to McDonald's. You want to go to something unique. But how do you find that you can't go to Google Maps. You can't go to Yelp. Okay. So I think someone should build an app, like an app app. An iPhone app called Known For. Okay. And you tediously scrape. I don't. You could use AI to do it. You could use. You could. You could literally use AI to scrape all the reviews for the most common words, like who? Who knows? Wow. We found a gas station in rural Arkansas where all the reviews are talking about ice cream. Hmm. There's something there. We're going to put that on the app. And it's like a Google Maps or Yelp, but for things that these place. Maybe it's New York City, maybe it's Garfield, Arkansas. Known for. That's what it's called. What do you think?
That's a good idea. What was. What was the original company that Sam Par launched?
I don't know.
I want to say it was something similar to this, where it was like New York City specific X.
It was like a roommate matching service.
That's what it was. That's what it was, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Roommate matching. And he did this where it was like they went hyperlocal in certain markets and they aggregated the data and they got a ton of subscribers for it.
Right.
Because they were putting out it out. That's what it was. It was like this restaurant and this market is the Jerry Seinfeld of this market. Right. And people loved it because they're like, it is the Jerry Seinfeld.
That's hilarious. Yeah. They use that to make infographics to drive more users to their app. Right, right. Because infographics would go viral.
It's the same idea of like you could.
Yeah, you could use the same marketing idea for this.
Right, right. A micro newsletter or anything else that's localized. But I love the name. That is a freaking great name. You already bought the domain, right?
No, it's not available. I got another good name for you.
Okay.
Sometimes the best business ideas are. Are born from the best business names. Make that the hook. Muhammad. Here's a podcast. This is a podcast business idea name where you interview people that are like, what?
I think I know where you're going and I'm excited for it. Keep going.
I don't think you do.
Okay.
You interview people that like, work for companies or something. Maybe they're anonymous, maybe they're not, but they're kind of like whistleblowers. They're spilling the secrets of an organization or a person or influencer or something.
Is it called Dirty Dogs? Dunder Chip?
No.
Oh, okay.
It's called off the record. What do you think.
That was a record. Scratch that. I just did. That's a really good one.
It's a good name, right?
Dude, there could be an app too, off the record. Remember that app, Whisper?
Whisper, yeah. Yeah, it's kind of like that, but it's like a long form podcast or YouTube channel and it's like someone that works for Apple and they're like spilling these secrets and it like I did just. People love hearing secrets. It's in our human nature, you know.
I think there's a market for that in the sense that like, I'm trying to get feedback on my podcast right now and you know this. It's just hard to get people to actually fill out feedback. And when they do, they know you. And so they're like, it's so good. I listen to every episode. I love your humor. Right.
And thanks, mom.
You just tend to discount that. You're just like, okay, cool. I mean, you like me, but I want to know the real feedback. And that would be a cool app idea or, or whatever idea where it was like anonymous feedback that you could sift through. And I would probably get like toxic really quickly. But just somewhere you could go where it's like, I want to see, like, what does Whisper say about this company? Oh, interesting. Those are the things that actually people complain about, right? Just so you have a balanced side of both things. Like, you just know what you're getting into potentially with the company as you were talking. You know, I think what else would be like a really good podcast is identifying those types of companies, right? The short stop Conoco, Phillips or whatever, ice cream shop. And like flying to those places and filming, like, getting the ice cream, talking to the owner, and just bringing awareness to that place. Because there's like, every city has that place. Like, oh, you gotta. You gotta try Steve's pizza place. This is the best paid place in three counties.
Tri state area.
In the. In the tri state. We're not the tri state, we're the dew state. I'll tell you what. But that I like, that would be really interesting. Like, I would watch that. And it doesn't just have to be food places, but food places obviously was, like, really popular because like you said, you want to experience what that place is known for.
Yeah, well, that's what I'm trying to do with the business, right? Like, I'm going to a barbecue place in Tyler, Texas next month to film a video. And. And it's not like a Guy Fieri thing on, like, tell me how you make this brisket. It's like, tell me what you paid for this brisket and how many do you sell a day, right? And it's like, it is a twentieth of the size of the market as, like, diners drive ins and dives. But it's like, that's fine. I. I want to talk to only business owners anyway.
You could do it where it's just focused on food, or you could do it where it's like, all right, this week I went to Rolling Suds and I went. Went with them on a job and we talked about the economics, right? And this week I went to this barbecue restaurant. And on. I don't know. Lincoln, Nebraska, is known for corn husking. And when you go to Lincoln, you gotta go to this corn husking event. Like, you know what I mean? Just like something cool that you got to go see. Everywhere has that where it's like, oh, you got to go see this, or you got to go eat at this place. And. And that could be cool. Like, just going through the experience.
Known for. Yeah, maybe known for is just like a content series and not an app.
Oh, that's so good. Gosh dang it, that's good. Oh, gosh, dude, that is so good. I love that idea.
Can I tell you another podcast idea.
That could be the Netflix pitch. Dude, I know you talked to a guy from Netflix. You could be like, hey, known for. We go to cities around the country, off the beaten path. Like, we're not going to San Francisco. Or we could go to San Francisco, but we're going to, you know, I don't. Eureka, California. Like, just off the beaten path. What. They're known for that, that people write in about. And it's like, the city would love it. Right? Because they're going to. You're going to bring potentially tourism. The businesses would love it because you're going to expose them and people will just be interested in seeing cool stuff that's out there.
Yeah. Here's another podcast idea. So something about this is a weird quirk I've learned about myself. I love hearing people's trauma stories. Is that weird triggered?
What do you mean?
Like, just someone that had a rough childhood. I like, I love hearing their stories. Right. It just. I don't know, it makes me grateful. It's interesting. Like, I'm not alone.
Okay, hold on. Are you like, I like hearing their trauma stories from people who are like, still in a crappy situation, or do you like hearing trauma stories where it's like I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and now I'm. I own $700 million worth of real.
Estate and I don't even think it. That's.
You don't care about the outcome. You just like hearing about people's backgrounds.
I just find it really interesting. I love hearing people's stories, period.
Same. Yeah, I'm the same.
And so I found this podcast randomly and it's actually really popular. It's called this is Actually Happening. I told you about this. And it's a very interesting format because it's basically an interview, but you can't hear the interviewer's voice. And I. I don't even know. I want to go to the forums and ask how it's made because I don't know if it's someone just talking freely and then they edit out boring parts or if someone's literally interviewing them and they tactically remove all of the questions. So it's just. It sounds like someone's just talking free form. Right. Okay. And there's been like 400 episodes. It's really entertaining. They're usually about an hour long and some of them are not suitable for families. But like, one of my favorites was a guy that got attacked by a grizzly bear in Canada. And it's just this heart wrenching story. And you're like almost crying as you're listening to it because he crawled. And like, no one's ever heard of this guy. There was no movie made out of him, but it was. He wrote a book. It's not very popular, but it's this incredible survival story. And there's stories about people that grew up in abusive homes or people that just have these weird mental conditions. And I've listened to almost every episode and it like everything I listen to is business except this. And so I'm actually going to test this format on this podcast. And I tweeted about that, the, you know, what happened with my two business partners a few years ago, and it went viral. I got almost 2 million views on this 1700 word long form story about getting screwed by two business partners. And so that showed me there is a market for this. People like reading about these trauma stories. And so I want to test the same concept on this podcast with just one episode to see how well it does with someone telling like their business trauma stories. And people say all the time, like, there's not enough content about failures, about people that failed. Yeah. So it's like, okay, on one hand there's a market there. On the other hand, people speak with their wallets or their ears or their attention and not necessarily with what they say. You know what I'm saying?
I had Joe Benson on my podcast and this is his idea. He and his brother want to start a podcast that's called like Business Horror Stories or something like that where they just covered crappy situations. Right. Like, I, I agree with you. I think there's a market for it because we want to hear it.
I don't know how this podcast thought to do this format where it's just someone talking, but I want to test that specifically where I'm not interviewing them. I give them a bunch of notes and say, this is, this is kind of what you should do. This is what you should touch on. But then you just talk and I'll just publish it.
Well, I mean, you could still interview them. You would just edit yourself out.
Exactly. Right?
Yeah, but it would just, it would take a lot more time to produce than like this. We can just sit down. We have 30 minutes free. It's like, cool, let's record a podcast. That would probably be like three hours of footage and recording whittled down to 45 minutes. You know what I mean?
Yeah.
So there's a lot more production involved in that. Anyways, so I had a conversation with a guy recently who, his name's Donald Spann. He's on Twitter. He grew a call center, built it and grew it. Actually, let me take a step back. Donald Spann launched a cleaning business back in 2012. So this is pre modern Twitter where it's like everybody has a cleaning business and a course associated with it. He launches a cleaning business and he realizes, man, I need someone to answer all these sales leads that I have. I don't want to keep taking these sales leads and, and closing on them, but I don't want to necessarily hire for this position. It's got to be a need for other people. So I'm going to start a call center. And it's not outbound, it's inbound. They handle all the calls that come in, their sales leads. So they're qualifying the lead, they're taking their information, they're scheduling. In some instances, they're closing.
Right.
Because there's people who are just calling and like, hey, how do you guys price cleaning a 3,000 square foot house? Anyways, so he builds this company up and over, I don't know, five years, seven years. He sells in 2019, and he has a really good exit. He sells. And then he has now spun up another call center right now. And it's specifically targeting the cannabis industry, legal cannabis industry. So they are in again, inbound. This is not outbound. Inbound. Handling inbound calls for the legal cannabis industry. But as we were talking about it, he talked me through the economics of it. What would you guess is like the average revenue per agent at a call center that he's running? Right? Like, I'm not saying all call centers. I'm just saying the one he's running for cannabis. Cannabis or the other one.
Like, how much revenue does one caller drive? Right.
Well, no, no, no, not for the businesses I'm talking about specifically the revenue for the call center. Right. Like, yes, they're inbound call center for other businesses, but not what's not, what's their close rate or what do they generate for the businesses. I'm talking about the call center business itself. One agent generates about $10,000 a month. They're charging anywhere from like 150 to $3 per minute.
Okay.
That the agent is on. So then he started talking about the economics of it. I'm like, okay, what does it cost for an agent? It's like, well, if they're stateside, it's like three to 4,000, but if they're international, it's like $1,500. Right. And so you can do the margins There, Right. If you've got $10,000 a month coming in and $1,500 a month going out to an international person, you're above 80% gross margins, 85% gross margins, which is fantastic. And then he talked through, obviously, the economics of the business that you have to have a robust software platform, there's some management involved with those team members. You have to have key metrics, blah, blah, blah. But he was telling me, he's like, by the end of it, by the time I grew it, I spent 10 hours a week in that business. And the one that I'm growing now, I spend even less time, mainly because he has an operating partner. But what I thought was fascinating is like, getting a call center spun up in specific niches. So he's not just going like, hey, we're a call center. We handle all inbound. He's like, oh, we are for cannabis. His first one was like, oh, we are for cleaning companies. And then you can, like, you can expand, I'm sure, over time. But the first initial offering was cleaning. And so I've thought about this. Like, he was asking us. He's like, well, who answers your calls for Fast Tree Care? I was like, oh, James, he's our local operator for the most part. Oh, like, that would be the perfect solution. Right. You feel that to an inbound call center, they handle it, they convert, et cetera. So I have, like, just been thinking about and becoming obsessed with this idea of finding a niche or a vertical that you could apply this to. So, like, I have really good healthcare experience. Why would I not launch a call center? I mean, especially if it is as simple as, like, he's making it out to be, like, I could go and drive the business. Obviously, we need to figure out the fulfillment on the back end. But in my mind, like, that's something that could be easily. It's figureoutable. It's like. It may be a logistics nightmare, but it is figureoutable. Uh, and I wanted to talk to you specifically about it, because you've done this a couple times, like, LCD cycle. You had a call center, essentially, in Dallas, where you just had people calling all the time, and then you've done calling campaigns with virtual people. What do you think about the idea of starting a call center with a specific targeted niche?
First of all, we say call center. Is that just like a fancy way of saying you hire a VA and mark up their rate?
Yeah. They're not like, in a place. Yes. It'd be a remote call center, essentially, like, pre Covid. You would have done a call center post. Covid. It's like, who cares where they are? They're just going to handle the calls.
So, I mean, he's really closer to like a shepherd than an actual call center. He's finding niche VAs that specialize with being on the phone in certain industries, I guess.
So what do you say?
And then marking up their rate.
Yeah, yeah, but what do you. Like, the call center offers the service of answering the call, fielding the lead, converting it, scheduling it, et cetera.
I would just call this whole industry telemarketing, sourcing, or like inbound.
Inbound lead management or something like that. Right. Like, it's just easier to say call center. It's easier to say inbound call center because that's like an establishment sounds.
I mean, it sounds fancier.
Yeah, but yes, yeah, I get what you're saying.
Yeah. I think there's completely a market for that. You could find people on upwork and just mark it up.
Why did you never do this? Because he was talking to me and he was like explaining it. I was like, why did Chris never do this? Like, you had the call, you know, the call center, the team with LCD cycle. But it just seems like it would have been something that you did, because I'm surprised that you never did it as a service for other people. Does that make sense?
Well, I tested it, like, with assistant realtor with Ed, and I started that. It was a call center for real estate agents. So, like, I have done this, but I didn't, Like, I didn't stick with it. It wasn't promising enough. The opportunity cost was.
Do you think you picked the wrong vertical or do you think your execution was poor?
Probably some of both, because it seems.
Like to me there's a lot less execution risk. It's like, okay, get a va, train them on how to answer the calls, transfer the calls. You have software that's going to track everything. Like, what's the worst that happens? Obviously, if they suck at customer service, they suck at customer service. Yes, there's some front end stuff, but it just doesn't seem like there's a lot of. There's not heavy operational lift post onboarding a client.
I think the hard part with this is you have to pick a niche, and you have to be sure to pick the right niche, because selling call center services to someone like James, something like an H VAC or plumbing business is. Is very, very hard because they're very set in their ways and they do their own thing. But I think that Donald is onto something by finding a specific type of business. I bet you anything that most of his customers in the cleaning business were 32 year old guys starting trying to start a remote cleaning business. They weren't 56 year old guys that had owned one for 20 years and that were finally delegating some of their tasks.
Right, yeah, that's a good. I didn't ask him that specific question. Talk me out of doing this in home health and hospice, like, why would I not? I have a great network. I have the perfect operator that I could go to to be like, hey, look, I just need you to go close leads and ensure quality control. We'd have to figure out the back end, the back office piece of the VAs, but theoretically even that could be white labeled. Or we could go through a Shepherd or a Sagan or through somebody to source those people. Why would we not do this?
Would your customer be replacing an employee or would they be growing with you?
It would be both, potentially. So home health and hospice, let's say, for example, after hours, we're not a hospital. We're not like the office itself isn't open 24 hours a day, but we have patients who may need us 24 hours a day. In home health, it's a little less urgent that, that we would get a call like midnight, but there are times where we may need to go out at midnight. Hospice, we have to go 24 hours a day. We have to be available to go. You can't control when somebody dies. And so if they're actively dying, you got to go out there, right? And so you're, you have to have a call service after hours, between the hours of like 5pm and 8am the next day. And then every morning you walk into the office and it's like, hey, what was the triage report?
Oh, cool.
These are the calls that came in. This is what we did, this is how it was routed, et cetera. So every home health and hospice has to have on call. Now, some of them can do it in house. They could have their clinicians like rotate on call or they have a call service that they use. The vast majority use call services. So for home health and hospice, I would say it's offering that call service to their teams, to teams that either are using existing clinicians to do this on call stuff and need a break or replace their current like on call offering. Like, I know it's a massive need in the space. So that's where I would focus.
If you were, first of all, have you Heard of Ruby receptionist. So these guys started this whole industry. They, they were rubyreceptionist.com now they're ruby.com. they are like the goats at this whole industry.
Okay?
Which just proves this is a big industry.
Dude, he told me. Hold on. He told me it's a $300 billion industry that's growing at 6.7% a year.
That's crazy.
Blew my mind. Anyways, keep going.
But I went to ruby.com as you're talking to look at, like, what types of offerings are they pushing? Because, like, if you want to go copy shepherd, you go look at, you know, what they serve and you know, look at their dropdown, and they're most likely sorting it by most common type of customer. And so if you look at who we serve on Ruby.com, it's legal, home services, business services, health care, financial services, and small businesses. So first of all, of all, the industries, they have six, and healthcare is one of them. So that, that's a thumbs up for me. One thing I'm wondering is how many customers would you need to give someone 40 hours a week? So if you could pay 1500 to make $10,000 a month, how many home health and hospice customers do you need based on call volume?
Yeah, that's a really good question. I'd have to crunch because essentially what, like, I know what those contracts look like. When I would use a call agency, there'd be a flat fee. It'd be like fifteen hundred dollars a month and then three dollars a phone call. Or like, I can't remember exactly what the numbers are. I have like, it in my notes. So I'd have to create the profile of an existing agency and then back in from there. Okay, so that's one way to test it for sure.
Yeah, to me that. God, like, to me, it would be.
More about testing whether or not we could get customers. Because if we could get customers, I know we could operationally execute. Right. And I feel confident be able to get customers in myself or this operator who, I mean, you know, Justin or he may not want my name. Sorry, take that out. But like, we know a lot of people in this industry, so it'd be an easy conversation to talk about, hey, we started this, this after hours call company, you know, go with us. But then from there we could expand into like adjacent health care spaces. Donald was saying like, his main customers were health care companies, which surprised me. And there's like HIPAA issues that you have to kind of get around. But he was. And again, it's like on Twitter. It's like, oh, no, it's super easy. It's only five hours a week. But he was adamant. He's like, it's for you to do this, especially if you had somebody that you could have kind of run it. He's like, it's minimal work. It's very minimal. There's the onboarding. He's like. He's like, I could walk you through the onboarding. You could pay me a consulting rate. But really the hardest part is getting the clients. It's not in the operational execution of it. And I just found that interesting.
Yeah, I think the. The sweet spot, and this is probably why Ruby has Legal listed first. The sweet spot is a customer that is high volume and not that hard to sell into. I think the one downside with healthcare is that it's probably harder than average to sell into and the volume might be lower. Therefore, you're going to have a hard time finding new customers and the customers aren't going to be very big.
Right.
But with you having an in, you could overcome that. Like, I would just get five people on the phone and ask them straight up, like, do you need this? Okay, if yes, then what would you pay for it? If they give you an answer, then will you pay me that right now? Because I can.
Well, and I know for a fact there are like, there are five people that I know that I'm friends with that would be like, oh, you have a company. Yeah, for sure. We'll use it. Like, yeah, it's not even. Hey, would you use us? It'd be like, oh, yeah, of course. What's your company send over? You know, the W9 and like, let's get you onboarded.
Yeah. But you know, what the freaking you are you waiting for? What the freak are you waiting for, dude?
No, I just got to do a little more research. I got to read a book. I gotta.
Yeah. Buy a domain name file.
I think I'm gonna buy. I haven't bought a domain name. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
I haven't got to do some market research.
Yeah, for sure, dude. I'm still talking to a few people. I'm still. I got a couple, couple guys that I'm talking to.
Yeah, you put. You've put filing an LLC on your calendar for September. So that's been done for such haters. We're such haters.
That's so good.
I like that idea. That seems like a good fit for you specifically.
I know, I know.
And it's like, it's one of those things where it's like, all right, I got one customer. Thousand dollars profit a month. All right, let's get a couple more. All right, 3,000. It's just like, you just keep stacking these wins, and I bet the churn is very low.
Yeah, that's what he was saying. He's like, the average customer length with him was 22 months.
Wow. And I bet that jumps every month, right? Like, sure. He hasn't been around for a decade, I'm sure. But.
But you think if churn is 22 months, that means that your churn rate is, like, less than 1%? Because if your average length is 20 months, 1 20th is 5. Is 5%. Sorry, I messed that up. Yeah, 5%. So if your churn is 22 months, then it's less than 5%. That's a great churn rate, especially for an industry where, like, it's going to cost fairly little. Like, he was saying it was 300 acquisition costs for the companies that he brought on, and they're going to be sticky for a long period of time. That's all right. I like that idea.
It's a good business. I got a couple ideas for you. You ready? I'm ready. You know Quinn Miller, the vending guy?
Yeah. Yep.
So we just spoke today, and he owns a ton of vending machines in Southern California, and he does really well, and he also owns a bunch of ATMs. So we talked all about that business, yada, yada, yada. And I asked him what was the most interesting vending concept you've ever seen? And this blew my mind. He went to a bar in Lansing, Michigan, once, and he went to the bathroom, and they had, like, a leaderboard display screen above the urinal, and they had a device in the urinal that you pee into that measures the strength of your pee and the volume of your pee. And then it ranks you against other guys that have been to that bar, and you have to pay for it. And then it runs ads as you're peeing, and you pay. You. You pay to pee and be shown ads.
No freaking way.
Yeah. Isn't that amazing?
That is amazing. Because what guy is going to be like, I don't. I'm not feeling it right now.
I don't want to know how strong my p strength is. I don't. It doesn't matter to me. My wife says it doesn't matter.
Not my wife. I. I would lose this game because as I'm getting older, my stream is not strong.
My stream. I'm like, an inch thick and just short burst like I just get it out.
I've heard you pee.
It's aggressive.
It's aggressive. It's a Super Soaker.
Like the line in the other guys and the sound of your piss hitting the urinal. It sounds feminine. Anyway, I thought that was interesting. No, I'm not about to go launch that, but that's the most interesting vending concept I've ever heard of. Second one, which I've talked to you about, and I like this idea. I still like it, is the perfume vending machines.
Yeah, I remember this. Yeah.
They're based out of like, Latvia or Estonia or something. They're only in Europe. Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Middle East. They're not in America yet. It's $2,000, maybe $2,500. You can put it on a pedestal or you can mount it to a wall. It's about the size of a large mailbox, and it just looks like this. It's just. It's got like this glass display with five bottles of cologne or perfume. And then there's a little tube going into each bottle and. And then there's a credit card reader and five buttons underneath each one. You swipe your card for a dollar and you put your hand up to it or your neck or whatever, and you pay a dollar to get one spray of perfume. And it's so. It's like 90 plus percent margins because those bottles have like 300 sprays in them. Right? Okay. And then in addition, you can play ads on it, and then you can put QR codes underneath each bottle to like, oh, I like that smell. I want to buy that. And it's just an affiliate link. You don't. It's not an e commerce business. You don't have a website. It's just an affiliate link for you to make 10 bucks every time you sell a bottle. What do you think?
As I thought about it, here's what I hate about that business.
Where are they?
Can you describe it again?
What type of venue?
Just tell me geography where they are.
Europe.
Smelly?
Yep.
Keep going.
Keep going with what? What do you want?
Where's the other place? Where's the other place? You said there's the other places.
Okay, Middle east places where they don't wear deodorant.
Pair of places where they want don't wear deodorant.
Like, we wear deodorant here.
We don't stink as bad.
So it's like.
It's like, oh, Ivan, you stink very bad. Go to bathroom, get little spritz of perfume. It's like, yeah, okay. Those guys freaking need it. Have you smelled a guy after he's had borscht? It's not. It's not good, dude.
But do people in America buy perfume and cologne? Yes or no?
If I had to answer that. If I had to answer that, yes.
Okay. I just asked Chat. GPT and it's looking good for you so far. I said, what countries sell the most cologne and perfume? Number one, France. Largest exporter. Largest exporter. Exporter.
Get out of here, Chat.
I mean, I completely agree the big risk here is the cultural thing, but here's. I think you could solve that. Solve for that by placing these in 10 to 20 different locations and just learning, because I think in the right location, even in America, these could do really well. I was talking to Sam about this, and he's like, I keep a bottle of cologne in my gym bag. When I go to the gym, I just. I don't want to shower, but I don't want to stink. So I just. I give a little spray. So if there is one of these in the bathroom or at the exit and I might use it, or I'm thinking, like, just in, like, a very busy mall. Like, just a pedestal in the middle of the mall. Because you've got youths. You've got these. You know, those youths walking around, they might be interested in this. Or even, like, next to the line at the Cinemark at the movie theater, and people are standing next to it in line.
I'm all about incentivizing. Less cleanliness.
All right?
So if I go to the gym, I work up a sweat little spritz.
All right, Shower. I. I followed up with Chad. GPT. And this one's not looking good for you. Okay? I said no, tell me. Consumer purchasing. This is number one. The US Is a major market for perfumes and colognes. Country accounted for 8.7 billion in fragrance sales. 2023. Brazil, number two, 4 billion. So half as many people and half as much perfume and cologne. France, number three, 2.6 billion. UK 2.3. Germany, 2 billion. DOL.
Interesting.
There you go.
Math checks out.
Hey, other notable. Yada yada. Turkey stands out with 85 of its population regularly wearing perfume, the highest percentage globally. There you go.
No, I'm not surprised.
No, I was in Turkey's neighbor's country, you know, last week. Checks out.
Okay, rub it in. We need. We get it. You went to Greece. Jeez Louise, dude, rub it in.
Is that a. Is that a cologne pun, my friend? What did you got for me?
Were they like, my friend, my friend, please come try the Colafel.
No, no, no.
Come on, I want to hear some accents.
I got nothing, really.
I love it.
I've got more notes, but it's just. Yeah, I think this is a good. This is a good cut off.
I love it and I love you. I've never heard that before. This is a good cutoff.
