In March, we covered a five star hotel for cars: The Engine Room in Belgium. Besides offering secure and swanky warehouse storage for members' automotive treasures, the Engine Room is also a private club. Recently, the engine people added a third offering: The Engine Room Challenge. For annual fees ranging from EUR 15.000 to EUR 22.000, members have up to 10 weeks access to a range of exclusive cars. Automobiles to choose from include the Spyker C8, Aston Martin DB9, Rolls Royce Silver Seraph and Ferrari 456 MGTA. Membership fees cover storage, maintenance, taxes and insurance, as well as full use of the club's facilities.

In short, members get all the fun of using an exclusive car, without the hassle and unexpected costs of ownership. Which will appeal to wealthy transumers, described by trendwatching.com as those consumers that are driven by experiences instead of the 'fixed', who increasingly live a transient lifestyle, freeing themselves from the bothersome aspects of permanent ownership.

Although it's great to see them combining it with their other services, The Engine Room isn't the first to enter this space. An exclusive car sharing club we featured earlier is British ecurie 25, and trendwatching.com spotted a number of similar initiatives across the world: Classic Car Club, P1 Club, LuxShare Auto Club, Club Sportiva, Van Horrsen Group, Oversteer Spain and Ascari.

Should give you plenty of inspiration for coming up with a fractional ownership scheme of your own ;-)

Website: http://www.engineroomchallenge.be
Contact: Erik Groes, info@engineroomchallenge.be

What blogs, citizen journalism and YouTube have done for media, CrowdSpirit hopes to do for product development. The Scottish-French venture's focus is on harnessing the power of crowds to allow inventors and adaptors to take their products to market. By involving end-users in every aspect of a product's life-cycle, CrowdSpirit aims to set off a crowdsourced manufacturing revolution.

How it works: inventors submit ideas for innovative new products and contributors submit problems for inventors to work on. Members vote, define a product's specifications, and can invest money to finance development. After a first prototype has been created, selected members test and help fine-tune in cooperation with manufacturers. Once the stage of product development has been completed, contributors continue to be involved, for example by acting as a product's ambassador and promoting it to retailers, or by providing product support, like translating instruction manuals.

CrowdSpirit's primary focal point is electronics with a market price below EUR 150 / USD 190. If all goes well, this will be followed by more expensive electronics, and other sectors as the concept develops. A selection of inventions will be launched in parallel, so that the community can work on several projects at the same time.

What remains to be seen, is how customer-manufacturers will be rewarded for their efforts. CrowdSpirit clearly states that contributors give up all intellectual property rights when they submit an idea or product, or when they help define a product. As trendwatching.com points out in its briefing about the customer-made trend (a.k.a. co-creation), "as co-creators get smarter and realise how much they're worth, expect kick-backs for co-created goods and services to go up. If you don't pay a fair share, talented members of the global brain will take their business elsewhere."

Website: www.crowdspirit.org
Contact: team@crowdspirit.org

As you know, Springwise is all about spotting and sharing good ideas. So we're always thrilled to hear from readers starting up a company (partially) based on something we've written about. Vincent Wek wrote this weekend to tell us about his new company – Home Sweet Home – which he was inspired to start after reading about eco-friendly cleaners Greenway Maid, featured here earlier this year.

Home Sweet Home is dedicated to providing London with an environmentally friendly cleaning service, aiming to offer a deeper and healthier house clean. The company uses Ecover cleaning products, which are made from natural plant and mineral ingredients, have a minimum impact on the environment and are safe for cleaners and a home's inhabitants. Home Sweet Home also uses microfiber cloths, which clean hard surfaces with just hot water, saving the environment (and allergy sufferers) by minimizing the need for harsh cleansers.

We hope increasing numbers of entrepreneurs in service industries will go for the green, and look forward to hearing from you if you're launching a business based on a new business idea you spotted here.

Website: www.homesweethome.uk.net
Contact: Vincent Wek, vincent@homesweethome.uk.net

As long as our spotters send us spottings like Babyplanners , Springwise will never go out of business. This newborn London-based company has managed to find yet another niche-market waiting to be penetrated: young, hard-working parents-to-be, who are willing to shell out some dough to have others deal with the endless shopping, researching, conflicting advice and general stress and confusion that come with a first-time pregnancy.

As Babyplanners state on their website: “your dedicated babyplanner takes care of all aspects of life concerned with the upcoming arrival: we help you decide what you need and when you need it.” Think sourcing the best baby carrier, create the baby’s bedroom, or pre-selecting and arranging birth prep or parent confidence classes. Planning doesn’t stop there: once the new arrival is safely delivered, Babyplanners will help its clients settle into mother and fatherhood, from putting them in touch with maternity nurses or short-listing nannies/nurseries, to advising on feeding and establishing routines.

Babyplanners offer two programs: the ‘Good’ plan, which contains all the details of the service new parents will want and need, where to secure them, and a timeline of when they need them, and the ‘Great’ plan, which filters products and services based on individual needs, and which then goes on to organize them. The ‘Great’ plan also includes three one-hour, one-to-one sessions, and a 24-hour response email relationship.

With the number of time-starved, well-earning new parents only increasing, this is a great opportunity for any service-minded entrepreneur who’s been through pregnancy, cashing in on hard-earned skills and diaper-stained experience. Tokyo, Paris, New York and Singapore to follow?

Website: www.babyplanners.co.uk
Contact: enquiry@babyplanners.co.uk

After last week's post on dorm furniture for hire, another student-run dorm venture has been brought to our attention. Dorm2Dorm was founded by college students, for college students. According to the company's co-founder, Matt Nelsen, Dorm2Dorm offers relief during a period of high stress – finals week. The service is simple: students order storage materials online, which are delivered a week before finals. Dorm2Dorm comes back a week later, when finals are out of the way, to pick up packed items and store them for the summer. When the new semester begins, the stored goods are delivered to the student's (new) dorm room.

Costs for a typical amount of storage are around USD 70 per month, including delivery of materials, pick-up, USD 800 insurance, storage and delivery. The company can also arrange shipping and long-term storage for semesters abroad.

Dorm2Dorm launched in 2004 at the University of San Diego, and currently serves 11 colleges and universities. Although it isn't the first to enter the student storage market, it prides itself on running a highly professional and streamlined business. The company has doubled in size every year they've been in business, and is actively seeking managers to expand to other universities, while controlling sales, logistics and customer service from a central office.

It's one of those businesses that just works: a simple service satisfying an enduring niche market, that's ambitiously run like a market-leader right from the start.

Website: www.dorm2dorm.com
Contact: Matt Nelsen, mnelsen@dorm2dorm.com