This is the sixth post in a series of seven inspired by the third episode of the current series of The Apprentice on BBC. These business ideas are aimed at anyone wanting to start a business on a budget of £200 or less.

I’ve never met one but I’m told that door to door vacuum cleaner salesmen used to be common, but while I don’t believe you’ll get far selling the latest Hoover or Dyson cleaners these days I do think there’s a good opportunity for someone to travel around door to door offering to service the cleaners.

Consider this, last year we thought our Dyson was dead but on careful inspection and with the confidence (ok gleeful delight) that comes from being technically minded I started taking it to pieces and found that it was simply blocked, a quick clean and some long overdue new filters and it was as good as new. Total spend around £8 for the filters if I remember rightly, whereas a new one would have cost around £230.

The population in general though doesn’t get the same excitement when things break, to them it’s not a “good reason to take it apart” instead it’s a complete pain in the neck. This presents the budding entrepreneur with a business opportunity, for little more that the cost of a small toolkit and a starting stock of common vacuum cleaner filters and bags.

Simply take this equipment and stock around the houses door to door offering to clean and/or fix vacuum cleaners, in the case where no fix is needed there’s the opportunitity to supply and fit new filters. Get it right and you could schedule a portfolio of customers whose filters you’ll replace on a regular basis.

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