According to WC Fields, one should never work with children when making a film — and yet providing services for someone’s child is one of the most profitable avenues of business you can undertake.
The reasons for this are simple — people love their children, even more than they love themselves. Parents look at their kids as an extension of their ideals; they want to protect them and nurture them towards a future that’s better than the life they’ve lived themselves.
Moreover, they want the highest quality services for their children, whether that means the healthiest nutrition, the highest level of education or the latest in electronics.
Because of this, there are a wealth of successful SMEs providing services geared directly towards the healthy development of children — and we’ve found three of the most impressive.
1. Nim’s Fruit Crisps
Persuading children to eat fruit and vegetables is like trying to give your cat a warm bath — it’s only going to end in tears.
While some kids take fruit and veg dutifully, the majority will avoid them like the plague, most likely because the buzz of sugar-filled snacks has made healthy eating seem about as appealing as a trip to the dentist.
Enter Nim’s Fruit Crisps, a company that presents healthy options in a form that children love — fruit rolls, cereals and crisps.
2. Teachers To Your Home
Teachers To Your Home is a private tuition agency which has helped thousands of children achieve better exam results. Its aim? To help private tutors connect with students in need of help.
Founded in earnest in 2015 by a group of school leaders and teachers in Oxford, the scale of the operation has since ballooned to over 18,000 private tutors based across the UK.
Its success is no doubt down to the fact that many tutors practice their craft in an unregulated environment, making it difficult for parents to find someone they can depend on. Teachers To Your Home maintains consistent and rigorous standards for the teachers it supplies, and in doing so has created a business model that can be trusted.
3. Raspberry Pi
One of the biggest signs of our current generational gap is the way that children communicate with technology. Unlike parents, who fiddle with a Nintendo Switch as though they’re engaging in advanced physics, kids are unfazed by touchpads and tablets.
Helping them advance in the technological age is the Raspberry Pi, an affordable piece of kit designed specifically to teach programming. The Pi was a fledgling company less than a decade ago, and has since been distributed to thousands of schools across the UK. It’s a sign that an SME which can keep up with the pace of change has a high likelihood of becoming a hit.
That’s our list! Can you think of any other SMEs that help meet the needs of parents and children? Let us know in the comments below.
