What's the Brand Idea? 17 and creating party paraphernalia herself. It led to her small idea. Why not launch a mail-order party business for frustrated moms like herself? Launched in 1987, Party Pieces was the United Kingdom's first mail- order party company. Initially, it was just Middleton working from the shed in her back garden. Carole developed in-house branded items such as party boxes and party food boxes. They were such a success that Party Pieces cre- ated specialty boxes and other products for every party theme. Before long, her husband left his job as a flight dispatcher to help run the business, and their three children got involved. Today, with more than thirty employees and working out of three converted barns, Party Pieces is the U.K.'s leading online and catalog party company. And they keep expanding the party line beyond children's parties to the adult party and celebration category. 11 Of course, Party Pieces got some unexpected publicity when the Middleton's eldest daughter, Catherine, became engaged to and then mar- ried Prince William, and traffic to the website has spiked dramatically. Mindful of a conflict of interest, the royal family buys its party supplies elsewhere, but the rest of England orders through Party Pieces. brainStormer: is there something Ï in the market that you could supply? missing the mashup When you're trying to come up with a new business idea, you might try put- ting together two related but unlike things and see what you come up with. Jack Dorsey first came to fame--and fortune--as the creator of Twitter. The idea for that groundbreaking innovation grew out of his fascination with the way people communicated within cities, especially the "haiku" of people such as bike messengers, delivery truck drivers, firefighters, and taxi drivers who stayed in touch with one another via GPS devices, CB radios, and cell phones. He was intrigued with the code words and special language they developed to communicate with each other quickly and efficiently. The only problem, as he saw it, was that this form of communication was confined to the members of these specific groups. The rest of us were left out--there were no regular people in these networks. 12