Priceonomics

Hipster Business Models: How to Make a Living in the Modern World Priceonomics

Tight pants, fake reading glasses, beards, irony: this is modern society?s interpretation of the word ?hipster?. Yet, today?s young people have much more to offer. If half of the hipster stereotype is a consumer who tries to show off how cool he is based on his tastes, the other half of the stereotype is ?The Maker? -- the person out hawking homemade cheese, knitting sweaters for your beard, or repurposing steel-framed bicycles. The hipster business model is distinctive: Make a product you love so much that you?ll make it yourself. See if anyone wants it. Try again. When they want to build apparel companies, they teach themselves how to sew. When they dream of producing toys, they learn how to use 3D printing software. When they don?t know investors who will back their restaurant concepts, they open food trucks. All the while, they are guided by books, instructional videos, and intuition; only later do they move production to real factories, or hire lawyers. They frequent public parks to see if anyone will buy their custom, typewritten stories. They use crowdfunding websites to raise money from customers before their products even exist. They post their ideas to massive web forums to gauge interest, or set up online shops the second they have a product to sell. In their world, sales come first, not last. While each entrepreneur featured in this book embarked on his or her own unique quest, their stories share a common thread: like true hipsters, they were not afraid to try new things.