When I was seven, my best friend Richard had a border collie called Rocky. We discovered that Rocky had fleas and we also discovered that our parents did not know the difference between fleas or headlice.
This created a massive opportunity for us. You see, in those days if you had headlice you had to wash your hair with this horrible shampoo and then cover your head with a type of grease (I'm sure it wasn't grease but it felt like it), but here's where the opportunity came in, you weren’t able to go to school the next day!
Each day after school we would meet at Richards house and harvest the fleas from Rocky and put three fleas into a match box. Rocky loved the attention and we loved the opportunity to make some easy money. The following day we would sell three fleas for 15 cents with clear instructions on what to do. The trick was that just before you got home, you would take off your cap (yes, school caps were part of the school uniform) and you would then tip the three fleas on top of your head, quickly put the cap back on your head and then tell your mother that your head was itchy. She'd lift off your cap, the fleas would jump off and you would be heading to the bathroom with the lice shampoo and a smile.
Much to the embarrassment of the school, they had to send out a newsletter explaining that there was a lice epidemic with clear instructions on how to look for and identify headlice.
Richards mother didn’t take long to put the pieces of the puzzle together, our new-found love for Rocky and the huge amounts of sweets and treats Richard and I were eating, not to mention heaps of loose matches everywhere. She didn’t say anything! But the next day when we were at school, Rocky got dipped.
And just like that, literally in the blink of an eye we were out of business.
The morale of the story...................you can never just rely on one supplier in your business.