You’ll have a tough time finding someone who talks positively about their constipation problems, but one Utah woman is one of those rare exceptions, and for good reason. It was her constipation that inspired her to create a simple stool that now helps millions of people improve their bowel movements.

Judy Edwards has been struggling with constipation her whole life, but the problem only got worse with age. A few years ago, a medical professional advised her to use a foot stool while sitting on the toilet, and that worked surprisingly well for her, so she passed on the same advice to her husband Bill. They were both amazed both about the difference that a little foot stool made and that they had only learned about this trick in their 60s. But it wasn’t until their son Bobby, a self-described gypsy always looking to make a “big splash”, learned about the benefits of the foot stool that the idea of a profitable business started to materialize.

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For some reason, many Japanese people find it incredibly difficult to quit their job and prefer paying a third party hundreds of dollars to quit on their behalf rather than have to face their boss and co-workers and handing in their resignation personally.

Senshi S LLC is a Tokyo-based startup founded by childhood friends Toshiyuki Niino and Yuichiro Okazaki last year. It operates ‘Exit’ a unique service that basically handles job resignations on behalf od clients, for a fee. Rather, than having to tell their bosses that they can’t or don’t want to work for them anymore, Exit clients prefer to pay between 40,000 yen ($350) and 50,000 yen ($450) to have someone else do it for them. Exit’s founders declared themselves surprised that so many people find quitting their jobs so stressful, but they have been more than happy to help hundreds of them get through this process.

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South Korean parents are increasingly turning to “uncle service” providers to make sure their children don’t have to put up with bullying in schools. Such services are apparently a pricey but efficient alternative to having schools handle the matter.

Earlier this month, Korean media reported on the growing business of leasing intimidating uncles to either protect children from bullies, gather evidence of bullying for filing an official complaint with the school, or even contacting the bully’s parents at their workplace. Most companies offer different packages to meet clients’ needs, and business is reportedly booming. But while many South Koreans view this type of service in a positive light, there are those who see it as simply answering bullying with another type of bullying.

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In urban areas like New York, Denver, and Los Angeles, it’s become a trend for the elite to shy away from traditional pets such as dogs and cats, and to raise chickens instead. Although raising chickens used to be predominantly for rural farmers, it’s now not only chic to own these birds , but a status symbol as well. And Julie Baker, an enterprising woman from New Hampshire, is cashing in on the trend by making fashionable chicken diapers. That’s right, chicken diapers. In fact, she’s drawing in $50,000 a year from this business, which isn’t exactly small change.

10 years ago, on her small Claremont farm, Julie was raising a whole flock of chickens with her daughter. They they happened upon a YouTube video of a chicken wearing a diaper so it wouldn’t leave droppings everywhere. Julie recalls thinking something like ‘Oh my goodness, I so need to do that,’ especially since her daughter often brought her favorite chicken Abigail into the home.

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The owners of a struggling hotpot restaurant in Chengdu, China, hoped that a month-long all-you-can-eat promotion would bring in new customers, but it actually put the place out of business in under two weeks.

On June 1st, Jiamener, a relatively new hotpot restaurant in Chengdu, China’s Sichuan province, kickstarted its cheap all-you-can-eat buffet in the hopes of gaining a new client base. Patrons were offered the chance to fill their bellies for just 120 yuan (US$19) per day, for a whole month. The two owners had anticipated that they would suffer a financial loss during this period, but they hoped that the promotion would pay off in the long run, with some visitors becoming loyal customers. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

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Gregg Miller is living proof that a crazy idea can sometimes turn out to be pure genius. He is the inventor of Neuticles, silicone implants for male dogs to replace testicles after neutering so they don’t lose their manly look, and he is a millionaire.

Miller came up with the idea for a purely cosmetic replacement for animal testicles in the early 90s, when he bought a bloodhound puppy named Buck. He refused to have him neutered simply because he didn’t want to put the dog through surgery, but after Buck went missing for four days after picking up a female’s scent, the witty inventor had a change of heart. He describes those four days as the most hideous of his life, and knew that if he didn’t neuter his dog, he risked losing him again. But he still wanted Buck to maintain his “God-given naural look”, so he asked the vet if someone made testicle implants. The veterinarian told him that it was the dumbest thing he had ever heard of, but Gregg knew he was on to something.

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Looking for an original business idea? How about renting out expensive things to poor couples to show off as dowry during their wedding? A Thai company has been doing just that for the past three months, and business has been booming.

Chiang Mai-based special event company Romantiese has been making news headlines in Thailand for their newest service – a dowry rental option for couples who can’t afford to properly honour their parents on their wedding day. Known as “sin sod”, the dowry system is still very deeply rooted in Thai culture, and considered both a of honoring your bride’s parents for raising their daughter well and proof that you are financially capable of starting a family. Unfortunately, not everyone can afford to have stacks of cash and gold bars on display at their wedding, which is where Romantiese comes in.

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Mothers who can’t wait to hold their babies until they are actually born can now fulfill their greatest dream with the help of 3D-printed, life-size models of their unborn children based on ultrasound imagery.

Embryo 3D is not the world’s first company to offer parents 3D-printed plastic models of their soon-to-be-born children, but it claims to offer the highest degree of realism, not to mention several choices of material, from basic plastic to gold or silver-plated plaster. They apparently use advanced ultrasound technology that offers an incredibly detailed 3D image of the baby, including face, hands, feet and umbilical cord.

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Vietnamese women looking to avoid the social stigma of having a child out of wedlock are increasingly turning to grooms-for-hire businesses that specialize in throwing fake weddings complete with fake grooms and guests for a hefty fee.

Becoming pregnant before marriage is usually frowned upon in Vietnam, particularly in the northern parts of the country, where traditional social norms are still very strong. With over 300,000 abortions recorded every year, Vietnam’s abortion rate ranks fifth globally and first in Asia. Data shows that most of these pregnancy terminations are caused by social pressure, as 20 to 30 percent of women seeking abortion are not married, while most of the rest are young students. But what happens when a mother wants to keep the baby while at the same time avoid disgracing herself and her family? Well, that’s where the grooms-for-hire businesses come in.

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After noticing that many of the male developers and graphic designers they approached were either condescending or vaguely disrespectful, two female tech entrepreneurs decided to invent a male partner to handle communications. They claim that the difference was “like night and day”.

A year ago, Penelope Gazin and Kate Dwyer decided to create an online marketplace for bizarre and dark-humored art, as an alternative to big sites like Etsy, which they believe have too much limitations and excessive censorship. With minimal tech skills and a very limited budget of a few thousand dollars of their own money, getting “Witchsy” off the ground was never going to be easy, but one thing the two ladies didn’t expect was to be treated differently simply because of their sex. Some of the people they contacted to work on the site either took a condescending tone with them, like opening an email with “Okay, girls”, while others took it even further, like a developer who tried to delete their site because Penelope refused to go on a date with him. But everything changed when a certain “Keith” took over communications.

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Sharing E Umbrella, a new umbrella sharing company based in Shenzen, China, recently announced that it had lost most of the 300,000 umbrellas it made available since it launched, in April.

China’s sharing economy has been booming, with companies offering anything from bicycles and basketballs to smartphone battery banks on a rental basis. Customers make a small deposit and get to use the item for a set period of time for a daily fee, with penalty fees put in place for every day that they fail to return the product after the deadline. It’s a simple business model, and market data shows that consumers see sharing as a cheap and convenient way to reduce waste and avoid clutter. However, it doesn’t always work out as well as entrepreneurs hope.

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17-year-old Brennan Agranoff started his custom sock business in middle school, with a small loan he got from his parents. He has so far sold over $1 million worth of socks online in the last four years and is now planning to get his wacky socks into retail stores as well.

Brennan came up with the idea for his custom sock company at just 13 years old. He was attending a high-school basketball game in his home town of Sherwood, Oregon, and noticed that many kids his age were wearing the same white Nike sport socks. The young entrepreneur told himself that if these plain white socks were so popular with kids, then some cool custom designs would surely be an even greater hit.

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Bikini Beans Espresso is a coffee shop chain with branches in Arizona and Washington where patrons can have their favorite coffee prepared and served by beautiful women wearing bikinis, g-strings or just three strategically-placed stickers.

Thanks to its attractive dress code, Bikini Beans Espresso has become hugely popular, especially among its male clientele. Apparently, a simple visit to one of these coffee shops has a way of brightening up a man’s day, and it’s definitely not just the coffee. But despite encouraging sales, impressive 5-star ratings on Yelp and thousands of followers on social media, Bikini Beans Espresso has its fare share of critics, most of which claim that the mandatory dress code of the staff is degrading for women.

That’s definitely not how the owners of Bikini Beans Espresso shops see it, though. They claim that the girl’s skimpy “uniforms” actually empower women, helping them feel comfortable in their own skin.

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A few years ago, most of the 2,000 or so villagers in Donggaozhuang, northern China, were struggling to put food on the table by growing wheat and corn. Now, dozens of them are millionaires and more on well on their way of making six-figure fortunes after switching to selling yarn online.

Donggaozhuang’s success story started with the idea of one villager, who set up an e-shop on Taobao, China’s largest online commerce platform, to sell yarn. Things went way better than he had anticipated, and in just three months, he made a profit of $2,900, a small fortune, considering that the highest minimum wage in China is currently around $330 per month. Word of his booming business spread like wildfire around Donggaozhuang, and the village elders soon approached the man, asking him to teach other members of the community how to set up their own online businesses.

Since yarn had worked so well for Donggaozhuang’s first online entrepreneur, everyone followed in his footsteps and they all started making money. Realizing the potential of their businesses, many sold their lands and put their farming days behind them to focus solely on their e-shops. They started buying wool, turning it into yarn and selling that on Taobao.

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With Women’s Day just around the corner, social networks like Instagram and VKontakte have become flooded with ads from Russian entrepreneurs offering women in Moscow the chance to rent impressive 101-rose bouquets and designer shopping bags for 10-minute photo shoots.

If your boyfriend is cheap, but you want to spark the envy of all your girlfriends without actually breaking the bank, or if you just want to make your boyfriend jealous, and you live in Moscow, Russia, there are a number of online services that you can use to have a gorgeous bouquet and an expensive-looking gift delivered at your doorstep for a 10-minute photo session. You can then post the pics online on March 8 and watch everyone go green with envy.

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