Tumbling in the Cash

November 28, 2007 by Dane | 4 Comments
In Ecommerce, Entrepreneurial Lifestyle, Profiles

All Linda Katz had to do was step outside of her house to make thousands on the Internet. Now the Midwestern entrepreneur is building a business selling a piece of the old west online: tumbleweeds.

Linda started her online business, the Prairie Tumbleweed Farm, as a joke. It was 1994 and she wanted to teach herself how to design a website. Since she lived on the prairie in southwest Kansas, where rolling tumbleweeds are sometimes the only dynamic feature of an endless flat horizon, she invented a farm that sold tumbleweeds, listing prices at $15 for a small one, $20 for a medium and $25 for large.

Comments

Adrian Dunevein on November 28th, 2007 at 11:35 am

Talk about a great business being right under your nose !

This article shows how so often the great business ideas are right in front of us. For Linda Katz the tumbleweeds were commonplace but for others, who had only seen them on TV and movies, tumbleweeds are an icon of the old west!

Now if only someone would be interested in the litter thats blows across my front lawn….

Thanks
jazz club los angles - james on November 28th, 2007 at 1:05 pm

DID YOU KNOW THAT TUMBLEWEEDS WERE BROUGHT TO AMERICA AS A FOOD CROP TO START WITH? THAT THEY ARE INDEED EDIBLE WHEN HARVESTED IN THE EARLY STAGES OF GROWTH (BEFORE DEVELOPING THORNS)
TUMBLE WEEDS ARE A EXAMPLE OF A FOOD CROP THAT WAS FORGOTTEN ABOUT FOR BETTER CROPS AND THEN WENT OUT OF HAND WHEN LEFT ON IT’S OWN.
I THINK IT’S GREAT THAT LINDA KATZ FOUND HER OWN VERSION OF THE PET ROCK RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER AND HAD THE MOXIE TO SELL THEM!!!
Dane on November 28th, 2007 at 2:33 pm

I didn’t realize that tumbleweeds weren’t native:

Several species, but most notably the central Asian S. tragus, are invasive outside their native range. They have become particularly abundant in parts of North America, where they are listed as noxious weeds by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The salt-tolerant genus was first reported in the United States around 1877 in Bon Homme County, South Dakota, apparently transported as a stowaway in flax seed imported by Ukrainian farmers.
Daniel on November 29th, 2007 at 11:38 pm

James, your use of caps makes me want to beat you with a telephone book!