A UK company has sparked controversy online for selling glass bottles filled with the “freshest coastal air” for up to $105 per bottle.

Coast Capture Air started bottling fresh air and selling it as a souvenir and a talking point about the importance of clean air in the modern era, but then people from polluted areas of the world reportedly started buying these bottles for practical purposes, inhaling the clean coastal air every day. They told the company that it helped counter the harmful effects of air pollution, so it kept selling it and even attached a price tag that seems staggering for what is essentially an empty glass bottle – £75 ($105).

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Telecubes, mobile offices the size of phone booths, have been popping up all over Japan, as demand for public working spaces continues to soar.

Japanese media originally reported on the rise of Telecubes back in 2019, when Mitsubishi Estate announced plans to start rolling out the tiny but cozy offices at airports and train stations all over the country, to help out remote workers. The idea was that having micro-offices available everywhere would make it easier for people to work near home or while on business trips, while enjoying privacy and quiet, which venues like coffee shops or shared offices can’t always offer. Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and the demand for Telecubes grew to unprecedented levels.

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Would you ever sell your face? If the answer is yes, there is a Japanese company that wants to hear from you. It’s in the business of buying the rights to people’s faces so it can sell them in the form of hyper-realistic 3D-printed masks.

Ever since Kamenya Omoto, a Tokyo-based specialty mask maker and store, announced its intention to buy the rights to people’s faces for 40,000 yen ($380) a pop, it’s been overwhelmed with offers. The company wants to reproduce people’s faces in the form of hyper-realistic masks and sell them for an estimated ($940). If a mask proves popular with clients, the person whose appearance inspired it stands to earn a percentage of the profits as well. The controversial project, named “That Face”, reportedly aims to give a sci-fi twist to the idea of buying and selling faces.

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After struggling to stay open during the Covid-19 pandemic, a sushi restaurant in Japan’s Aichi Prefecture, has found success with an ingenious “macho delivery” service that involves using buff bodybuilders as delivery boys.

Masanori Sugiura, a third-generation owner of the 60-year-old sushi restaurant Imazushi in the city of Anjo, started working out at the gym when he was in his 20s, but he never imagined that his hobby would one day help him keep his family business afloat. The trained chef had seen his profits plummet from the usual 100 million yen ($940,000) for the April-June quarter, to just 10 million yen, because of the coronavirus, and at one point had cut his staff from 50 to just four. But then he had a wacky idea to put his muscles to work as a way of attracting new business, and the “Delivery Macho” service was born.

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The Covid-19 pandemic is forcing tourism businesses to think outside the box in order to stay afloat. Case in point, a Kerala hotel and spa that turned its pristine swimming pool into a fish farm.

The Aveda Resort and Spa in Kumarakom, Kerala had to shut down operations in March, as part of a nationwide coronavirus lockdown, and hasn’t been able to open since. To make sure that its employees have some activity and that the property generates some income to hopefully pay basic bills so it can survive until tourism opens again, management decided to repurpose a 7.5-million-litre swimming pool as a fish pond.

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They say money does not smell, but a lucrative venture thought up by a German circus is proof that money can actually stink. The Krone Circus in Munich is in the business of selling lion poop.

Circus are forbidden from performing during the pandemic, so many of them have been struggling to stay afloat in the last few months. Animal circuses have it even worse, as they have dozens of creatures to feed every day, so many of them have been forced to think outside the box in order to stay solvent. The Krone Circus, in Munich, Germany, has come up with a stinky yet profitable business idea – selling jars of poop from their 26 lions and tigers for 5 euros ($6) a pop.

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With tourism at an all-time low, a struggling Japanese railway operator is trying to avoid going under by selling canned stones from its railway tracks.

Founded in 1923, the Choshi Electric Railway company, in Japan’s Chiba Prefecture, had to overcome adversity several times during its 97-year history, but the situation has never been more dire than it is now. The railway operator relies on tourism to support its operations, but with the novel Coronavirus wreaking havoc all over the world, business has never been worse, so management had to come up with alternative ways of generating income. Among these, starting a YouTube channel and selling canned stones have been proving unusually successful.

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After seeing his business affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, a Michigan jeweler decided to close shop and make money by using about $1 million in precious metals as treasure for would-be treasure hunters willing to pay for clues.

Johnny Perri has been a jeweler his whole life, after learning the business from his father, but the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus proved too hard for his shop in Macomb County, Michigan. He had to options: either sell everything and retire, or find a new way to make money using the jewelry. Perri and his wife chose option two, allegedly burying or otherwise hiding around $1 million-worth of jewelry in dozens of spots, from the Detroit metropolitan area through the Upper Peninsula. Now the jeweler is challenging people to go hunting for his treasures and claim them for themselves, if they can find it.

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A 40-year-old Thai woman has been getting attention on Asian social media for her ingenious strategy of selling second-hand clothes online. Since most of her garments come from dead people, she decided to cosplay as a zombie during online livestreams.

40-year-old Kanittha Thongnak, had been selling second-hand clothes on the streets of Chon Daen, in northern Thailand, for three years when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and while she never made huge profits, she could at least support herself. Things changed drastically once the lockdown came into effect, so like many other vendors, she decided to try her luck online. Selling second-hand clothes, most of which were left behind by the deceased, was always a taboo niche, but the lockdown only made things worse. Kanittha only had a handful of viewers during her livestreaming sessions and hardly made any sales, but luckily she came up with a brilliant idea – to embrace the thing people feared the most about her job by becoming an undead.

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A tailoring shop in the Spanish city of Bilbao has sparked a heated debate online after it was reported that it started charging people 15 euros ($16.7) just for trying on clothes.

Camino Azula Pascual, co-owner of the Pascual Bilbao tailoring shop in downtown Bilbao, has been making custom men’s suits and tuxedos for 40 years, so she doesn’t even need a measuring tape anymore. As soon as someone walks through the door, she knows their measurements, and, if they’re in a hurry, she can even recommend something that would suit the special occasion perfectly. But this is a skill that she and her brother Carlos have  honed over four long decades, and wasting it all on people who don’t even want to buy anything is no longer acceptable. That’s why starting this year, Pascual Bilbao has implemented a 15 euro tax for everyone looking to try on suits in the shop.

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A convenience store owner in Osaka, japan, sparked a lot of controversy recently when he decided to close his business for a day on New Year’s. Appaerntly that was a pretty big deal in a country where convenience stores a traditionally open 24/7, all year long.

While convenience stores are still pretty popular in the United States, they are nothing compared to the so-called “konbini” stores found on every corner of every street in urban Japan. They are beacons of hope that make life easier for the average person, offering a wide range of services (ATMs, Wi-Fi, printing, delivery services, etc.), as well as groceries, all in one place, day and night. In fact, the thing that makes Japanese convenience stores so convenient is that they are open all 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, making it possible for anyone to pick up some groceries, pay the bills or get a quick bite to eat,whenever they need to. So when one convenience store owner decided to close his business for a day on New Year’s, it made national news.

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The unexpected death of 30-year-old Gerald Cotten, CEO of Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX, sent shock waves through the whole crypto currency last year, especially as he took the password to about $163 million USD in bitcoin to the grave with him. But now investors want his body exhumed to confirm Cotten’s identity and cause of death.

In January of 2019, QuadrigaCX announced that its 30-year-old founder and CEO had died about a month earlier, due to “complications with Crohn’s disease” and that he had taken the password to at least 180 million Canadian dollars ($137 million) in cryptocurrency with him. Following the shocking revelation, QuadrigaCX was forced to close and applied for creditor protection with the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, while roughly 76,000 people were struggling to come to terms with the loss of their cryptocurrency. Some still haven’t been able to do that, as evidenced by their recent request to have Cotten’s body exhumed and his cause of death confirmed.

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For the average person, having a nice-looking signature is not that big of a deal, but for business people and public figures it’s apparently pretty important. A strong yet elegant signature expresses confidence and can help build trust between business partners, so it’s no wonder that some people actually pay for designer signatures.

Ivan Kuzin, a 20-year-old student from Krasnoyarsk, Russia, has created a lucrative online service offering business managers and entrepreneurs custom signatures. He came up with the idea last year, when he turned 20 and had to change his passport. He realized he didn’t like his signature at all, and since had already started his first business, which was already bringing in steady income, he decided to change it. Ivan turned to his friend, Anastasia Zdor, who had mastered oriental calligraphy while studying in China. She designed a beautiful signature for him and then patiently taught him how to write it himself. The whole process got Ivan thinking about offering designer signatures to others as a paid service.

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A Chinese man recently took a supermarket chain to court after allegedly being cheated out of 0.04 yuan ($0.008) because the checkout clerk rounded down the change he was owed.

The plaintiff, named only as Xiao, claimed that after shopping at a branch of Yonghui Superstores and offering 55 yuan ($8.16) for groceries worth 54.76 yuan ($8.12), he was given only 0.20 yuan as change instead of the 0.24 yuan he was owed. He didn’t really need the 0.04 yuan, but he considered the supermarket’s rounding off system to be cheating, so he decided to sue them and draw attention to the practice, hoping it would get fixed.

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Food stalls in Japan have apparently gone to the dogs. The aptly-named “Dog’s Sweet Potato Shop”, a small kiosk selling roasted sweet potatoes, in Sapporo, Japan is manned (dogged?) by a three-year-old Shiba-Inu dog.

Japanese Twitter user @hina_shii_ver2 first learned about the unique “Dog’s Sweet Potato Shop” in her home city of Sapporo earlier this month, when her husband texted her a weird message – “There’s a dog selling sweet potatoes”. She thought he was joking, of course, but then he sent her some photos and, sure enough, they showed an adorable dog sitting behind the counter of a small kiosk, seemingly waiting for hungry customers. @hina_shii_ver2 posted several photos and videos of this unusual food-stall on Twitter and they quickly went viral. Of course they did, how often do you see a dog running a business, and a food stall, no less?

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