Came across this while visiting a bead-making setup in Krobo (Ghana) with my folks at fromTetr college. They take discarded glass bottles, crush them into powder, and turn them into beads → bracelets, necklaces, etc.
The process looks simple from the outside, but it’s all manual and skill-heavy, moulding, firing, hand-painting. And it’s not just a craft thing, for a lot of people there, this is their primary source of income
What stood out was this, it’s literally taking waste and building a steady business out of it
Apparently some of these setups are doing pretty meaningful revenue (~$90K+ range)
Made me think, we usually associate “innovation” with something new, but many real businesses are just better use of what already exists
Wdyt? Do these kinds of businesses scale, or are they naturally capped?