Tuesday, June 30, 2009

hotcakes.com/feasibilityproject


So you come into a bit of money and think, ‘Well hell. I have a bit of business savvy, I have a bit going on. I’m a bit of a dude. And I have all this money. What shall I do?’

During an economic crisis, and when banks are a little uppity about lending a first time business nobody a great sum of cash, one has to think along the lines of Mrs Miggins' Flop Proof Tart.

You want to give that bank one heckuva good reason to lend you a bunch of shekels these days.

I am writing this with a hoodie on, because a) I’m hatching a plan (it’s free*) and b) to keep my head warm while looking like a gangsta.

Just say you wander into the bank, conversation, I imagine, would go something like:

You: Hey, so I wanna apply for a small business loan.

Bank dude: What’s your credit history?

You: I aint got no credit history, but I do have credentials.

Bank dude: Why should I lend you a million bucks?

You: Well, it’s a virtually flawless, guaranteeably failure-proof design.

Bank dude: You can never know that, most start-ups go belly up after a year.

You: Ah. But was it retail? Foolproof retail, based on one intensely-popular idiom derived by English-speaking conversationalists across the globe?

Bank dude: What does the company sell then?

You: Hotcakes.

[pause. For effect.]

The hotcake industry. Shit sells like hotcakes, so then this should be a pretty shweet deal.

[pause again, this time ever so-slightly, but with your head cocked]

Nothing sells like a hotcake, even you can’t argue with such a watertight statement. And look, I already have a marketing jingle. ‘Nothing sells like……….’

Bank manager: Genius. How much do you need?

Why didn’t anyone think of this before? Cakes are cakes, and cakes are cold.

Usually. So all I’d need to do is assemble some sort of microwave contraption on the intersection of William Nicol & Main, whack a dude in an apron that says, Sells Like Hotcakes, Dog, give him a stand, and mass produce reams of fluffy hotcakes to the uncomfortably cold hands of Joburgers who happen to be loitering around the intersection with such a penchant for hot cake that he’s half-aroused.

Bang, hello Rockefeller. Of the school of hard knocks (because you can’t afford to buy into hotel chains).

On investigation, hoodie wobbling on my head with excitement, it’s not determined exactly which type of cake a hotcake is.
The term is rather broad, I am mean it’s not a niche market thing. But fully-adoptable clichés have been named after these supposedly obscure and possibly tasteless warm confectionaries, that indeed, apparently they’re gonna sell. And they’re gonna sell good.

*Shotgun.

8 comments:

po said...

Genius. They are gonna sell like hotcakes I tell you.

Nessers said...

Can you do fat free ones also please hehehe

Revolving Credit said...

Ermmm...sounds like you're selling poen on a street corner?

Peas on Toast said...

po - I know, who woulda thought? ;)

Nessers - absolutely! Imagine how THOSE ones will sell :)

Rev - No babe. That would mean I'd have to branch out as a hotcaking Escort Agency ;)

Spear The Almighty said...

Lol, at revolving Credit.

Thank God I left banking, you get weird people like Peas all the time. :)

Peas on Toast said...

hahahah Almighty :)

'I think this product is going to be amazingly lucrative. Stats and studies and cliches have shown it so'

Bank manager: What is it then?

Peas: Hotcakes. What else?

Charmskool said...

Being of a scientific bent I googled "hotcakes" it said "American and Canadian pancakes otherwise known as hotcakes". Meh... I'm not so sure hotcakes will sell like hotcakes. However, icecream in summer sells like hotcakes but not in winter - see it's seasonal, so you'd go mechulah in winter. Back to the drawing board?

Peas on Toast said...

Charmskool - you ahve a point, and I'll hire you as Chief Of Strategy.

However, if I were, to say, sell hotcakes in the North Pole, seasonality is but someone else's inconvenience. But let's say we don't do the North Pole, because people there eat fish not hotcakes and we sell ENOUGH during winter so that for the rest fo time, every summer, we can lie back and spend our money for 6 months on a yacht in Bermuda, whaddoyoussay?

We work winters only. Hotcakes sell as they do. I'm telling ya.