Small Town, Hot Idea

This article was written by Jessica Chen of Entrepreneur.com

From small beginnings come great things. While they're not often seen as places to start trends, small towns can be incubators for new ideas by providing entrepreneurs with community support and a place to start-up with little -- if any -- competition. So while new concepts may have little staying power in a trend-obsessed place like Manhattan, small towns can be the perfect breeding ground for the right idea.

O2 Fresh

For sisters Stephanie and Laurie Mara, that idea was an oxygen bar. The bars first appeared in Japan then began popping up in hipster cities like Los Angeles and Las Vegas in the late '90s. After a night of gambling at Caesar's Palace, the New Jersey-born sisters came across an oxygen bar and felt compelled to give it a try. Experiencing the positive health benefits of breathing up to 92% pure oxygen convinced the sisters, who had been searching for a business idea, to take a gamble on the concept.

"We wanted to open our own business for years," Stephanie says. "There were negatives to everything that we came up with and this didn't seem to have a negative."

In 2003, Stephanie and Laurie started O2 Fresh, an oxygen bar and aromatherapy shop now based in Newport, Kentucky. Stephanie says the key to the start-up's success was being in the right place at the right time.

Located in the heart of Newport's bustling entertainment district, the bar attracts many of Cincinnati's convention-goers and sightseers that visit the small town. Yet the business also has benefited from locals spreading the word about oxygen's appeal.

"People want to know they're on the next big thing," says Stephanie, who believes oxygen is still emerging as a trend in some parts of the country. "We're not, say, in L.A., where there are other [oxygen bars]. We have no competition." And oxygen is also part of healthy living, which never goes out of style.