One of the biggest stumbling blocks to starting a business is often what industry to choose. If you’re not someone with a specific specialty you’ve developed over the years such as customer service, construction, web design — etc. — then choosing an industry that’s primed for making cash registers ring all day long can be an agonizing decision.
Lucky for you, I’ve put my feelers out over the last couple of weeks and came up with this list of confirmed booming niches just waiting for a hungry entrepreneur to come along and take advantage of:
5. Cloud Migration Advisors
The boom in social media advisement has given way to a need for cloud advisors to fill a need for cloud professionals to help migrate company data to cloud-based servers and to help get virtual office environments set up and working properly. Dubbed “The Year of the Cloud,” 2015 is expected to be the year when most of those who’ve been late to get onboard with this technology to make the shift for good.
There is a rather large inherent risk here, as anyone entering this space needs to be adaptable and ready to shift their focus, considering that less and less “migration” will be required once everyone’s on board. The best bet is to create a full-on cloud service business, able to help with the current need for migration help while also offering other services such as app integration and maintenance, ensuring data security, as well as building your own data center so you can offer lucrative storage solutions for clients.
4. Yoga Instruction
Yoga instruction is one area of the fitness industry that’s hotter than ever, and which doesn’t appear poised to take a nosedive in popularity for the near-distant future either.
One of the most interesting benefits of this business is that the current trending with themed yoga practises such as “Karaoke Yoga”, “Spicy Yoga”, “Lazy Yoga”, “Primal Yoga” and hundreds more offshoots. This makes yoga a prime industry for innovating and putting your own flare and excitement into your own yoga business.
Current predictions from the Economist put the projected American spending on yoga classes and products at over $8 billion by 2017 (source). Indeed, there are unlimited expansion opportunities available and both service and product sales.
3. Medical Technology
In the past, in order to break into this industry, a startup owner would need access to hundreds of thousands (even millions) of dollars to afford the sophisticated manufacturing equipment needed to break into this billion-dollar industry, including 3D printing technology, which has come down significantly in price over the last three years.
In order to successfully break into the booming medtech industry in the coming months and years, focus on what you can do to make medical treatments more time efficient, cost effective, and comfortable for patients and you may just have a winner! Mobile health is another up-and-coming winner in the medical technology niche; app creation for the purpose of giving our aging population medical information and monitoring services are huge right now.
2. Senior Care
Senior care will always be a paramount service to offer, conceivably until something similar to Skynet or the IRobots are running everything and humans no longer have to lift a finger for themselves or others anymore. Senior care is always a safe business to move into. You don’t need to have a huge commercial space for building a retirement home to profit either.
A senior care business can be just a small shuttle service to help them do errands and get to appointments; a food and medication pickup and delivery service; a senior’s home cleaning service; a pet care service to make sure their pets get walked and taken care of — etc.
Senior moving specialists are also hot right now and have a fairly low barrier to entry, cost and regulations-wise. Whether they’re moving to Florida or some other tropical locale, or need help moving to a senior living facility, seniors need help moving more than ever before in their life.
1. Baby Product Sales
This is a very recession-proof business model for any successful entrepreneur to delve into. In particular, the online baby product sales industry proved to be one of the most successful of all of 2014, earning the #5 spot on INC.com’s list of the 8 best industries for starting a business last year. Projections put online sales of baby products somewhere in the $6 billion range by the end of 2015.
Think of a baby product you could sell online, set yourself up with a good fulfillment process to make shipping fast, easy and inexpensive and you probably have a winner. The more unique your product, the more likely your success. Just like you’ll find in online pet sales, baby products tend to evolve with adult health trends such as offering BPA and preservative free containers, toys, foods and drinks.
Check out the video below to learn how actress Jessica Alba turned her concern for the health of her children and turned it into her own slice of super-niche heaven with The Honest Company:
There are tons more industries out there. If you know of a booming sector that’s prime for jumping into headfirst, leave a quick comment and tell everyone.