55 Beach Business Ideas You Can Start Today [2023]

In 2012 I started working as a freelancer in business planning, website design and development, and internet marketing in West Bengal. In 2014, I moved to Bangalore and founded Creatisoul. Under the roof of Creatisoul, we served many clients in Education, Real Estate, NGOs, Insurance, Catering, and the Packing-Moving Industry.

We have a strong network of more than 700-800 packers and we have successfully served more than 50,000 customers across approximately 23 cities.

While working for the packers movers industry, we noticed that customers were mainly impacted by fake and unprofessional moving companies. Once we delved deeper into the industry, we found many loopholes and high levels of disorganization.

We’ve been friends for awhile - we met right out of college in New York and stayed close even though we took fairly different professional paths.

Saara worked in the corporate world for a number of years before moving to Mexico where she launched a jewelry business aimed at rehabilitating sex trafficking survivors. Stephanie was a business consultant before going to law school and becoming a corporate lawyer; along the way, she launched an argan oil company that empowers women in Morocco.

The Idea of Slyde Handboards started back on the beaches of Cape Town South Africa where I grew up. My Mother would take me and my brother down to the beach a lot to get us out the house. We spent most of the time bodyboarding or bodysurfing. We used to find all sorts of objects that we would use as a planning device to get us a little more speed and lift on the wave from frisbees to flip flops, some worked well others not so much. It wasn't until my teens that I decided to break open an old surfboard and re-use the foam to shape into a mini handheld board that would later become the very first prototypes for Slyde.

I figured we were the only ones doing this, but It wasn't until I went travel surfing around the world and met other surfers and water men and women and heard their stories of growing up using all sorts of found objects like lunch trays or even making boards themselves. It was then I realized there was a possible opportunity to create a brand around this awesome growing watersport movement, as no other company was doing this.

There is definitely a defined problem that we solve, in that a handboard is easy to learn, hassle free and fun to take to the beach. The idea was really born from simple enjoyment that I was having using one. It felt almost selfish to not share it with the world. It turns out I wasn't wrong, because almost immediately we started to form a community and movement as more and more people started to find out about us either online or through friends.

In primary school, I was asked what I wanted to become when I was older. My classmates came up with answers such as firemen for the boys and nurse for the girls. But not me. I wanted to become the first female prime minister of The Netherlands. I saw myself becoming the boss of an imperium, but could have never guessed that would turn out to be an imperium in the escort industry.

Some years later I started my studies in Business Administration at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. But as time flew, I found it difficult to decide which Master I was going to do. I had this vague idea of becoming a consultant, but a consultant in what? To make the choice easier I decided to do two internships. And that did indeed make the choice much easier because I quickly learned I am not the type for a 9 to 5 lifestyle. Neither am I a very good employee. I should have been grateful to the boss of the French company where I was doing an internship. Great opportunity, he even paid for my housing. Instead, I pretty much called him an amateur bungler. I still feel ashamed, thinking back on it. Lesson learned; I need to be my boss. Luckily that year a new Master was introduced; Entrepreneurship and New Business Venturing, which I decided to choose.

During my Masters at university, I met a young lady from the same university at a party. She was doing social studies and worked as a glamour model. She was often approached with requests to spend time with men for money, as were her other model girlfriends and this is how she got the idea to start an escortservice. However, she was lacking the business skills to do so and that’s where I came in.

Gikken’s foundation was laid in 2011 or so. I don’t remember the exact year but I was in high school. I was amidst my most active English learning years. I was trying to read as many articles, blogs, essays, etc in English as possible. At some point, an idea that it’d be great to double click on words to get them translated right there struck me. It was the early days of Google Chrome that wasn’t the most popular browser yet. And, I think it already could translate pages entirely, but it was totally useless for me because when I can understand 80% of the text, why would I translate it entirely? It’s also terrible for mastering a language. Guessing the meanings of words from the context works better for memorizing new vocabulary. The more effort your brain takes, the stronger neural connections are.

So, physiology aside, I wanted a fast way to translate single words I didn’t understand or double-check sentences. The previous flow involved copying it, switching to a new tab with Google Translate opened there, translating it, and then switching back. Terribly inefficient and annoying when you have to do it 10 times per article, 100 times per day.

By the time I was obsessed with this idea, I could already easily implement anything I wanted on the web. I started coding at 13, so I had already at least 2 or so years of experience with copycatting news portals, trying to build my social network (who didn’t!), and reinventing a few popular JavaScript libraries. It was the early days of not only Google Chrome but also Chrome Web Store—the extension store. I made an extension that I needed for my own needs, called Instant Translate, and uploaded it to the Chrome Web Store. Uncunningly, the timing was perfect for organic growth through the store as Instant Translate happened to be one of the first extensions there. The 15-year-old me knew something only about building apps but absolutely nothing about turning them into a business. Thus, I relied on "organic growth". In other words, routinely checking analytics and praying that it grew. I did nothing more than that for the first few years.

On a starlit evening in 2013, Museum Hack’s founder, Nick Gray, went on a date to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That night Nick fell in love... with the museum. Over the next few weeks, Nick hosted renegade tours for his friends while working his day job at the family business--a company that sold electrical equipment for small airplanes.

Everything changed when a blog wrote about Nick’s tours. The next day more than 1,300 people emailed Nick wanting to join one of his tours.

The first real-time he started to charge was when he’d let people skip the waiting list. He’d say, “I’ve got like 1,500 people on the waiting list. If you want to skip it, you can pay and you can sign up for a couple of spots this weekend.”

However, on his first paid tour, he ended up giving everyone their money back. He said it felt wrong to have so much fun AND get paid.

We both had previous experience in another start-up called Soul id which was a social media platform for action sports. We ran the marketing and media at that company which was a blast. After we left that company, we split directions. Eli got involved in the eCommerce industry by starting a brand called Winterial which he grew to hundreds of SKUs. Kyle headed in the media direction and started a commercial photography company where he worked with Fortune 500 companies and small businesses.

At this time Kyle wanted to be able to get back in the start-up world, grow a large brand and a team of like-minded creatives and innovators. So like any entrepreneur, he jumped on Google and started to search for media companies that were also technology-based companies as well. That is where the inspiration of starting a digital agency that solely focused on the media portion for brands and product companies came to life.

Culture is the centerpiece of a successful company. Creating a place for employees to come to work and enjoy what they do, the environment and who they work with will pay long term dividends.

My name is Beth Baxter and I co-founded Camper Cafe, a mobile coffee van business. The idea for our business started with my partner’s love for vintage VW campervans. He had a rusty old shell of a T25 Campervan given to him, that he wanted to convert into a trailer for his motorbikes.

Although we never really thought about this ever becoming more than just a lifestyle business, we found we were turning so much work away from that in 2019 when the company was turning over around £150k from working only 70 days of the year, we decided that I should go full-time to see the potential.

I'm Shenglong You, one of the co-founders of Thurso Surf. We make award-winning stand-up paddleboards packages with best-in-class accessories to make every step of your journey to the water easier than ever so you can focus on having fun out there.

Since 2018 when we launched thursosurf.com we have grown rapidly and earned a name as one of the best SUP brands in the highly competitive mid-range market. We've sold thousands of boards in dozens of countries, including the US, Canada, the UK, and the EU. We’ve been named one of the top blogs in the SUP sector and we've seen traffic increase 16X since our first year in operation with sales not far behind. We're still in rapid growth mode and don't plan on slowing down!

Hi, I’m Andrei Calinescu and I am the Founder and CEO of One Life Meals.

We are an online retailer that specializes in licensed music merchandise focusing on the heavy metal music genre.

We are Taylor Hood and Gretchen Bayless, founders of ROAMERICA. A company that specializes in adventure vehicles, including 4wd campervans.

My name is Albert Williams. I am the President and CEO of The Best Deal Group of Companies. located in the Boogie Down Bronx. Best Deal is a transportation company, who specializes in local community transportation, Corporate Transportation as well as Non Emergency Medical Transportation (NEMT).

Below is a picture of our cars gathered to pick up 30+ passengers for one of corporate accounts

Tripadvisor was founded by co-founders Stephen Kaufer, Langley Steinert, Nick Shanny, and Thomas Palka in February 2000. When they first launched Tripadvisor, they emphasized official words from newspapers, guidebooks, or magazines.

Tripadvisor, now the world’s leading travel advice network, assists hundreds of millions of people in becoming better travelers, from planning to booking to traveling.

Travelers use Tripadvisor to get bargains on lodgings, book activities, reserve tables at wonderful restaurants, and discover excellent locations nearby.

Kaufer co-founded TripAdvisor in 2000 to assist tourists worldwide in planning and having the perfect trip. The business idea came about when Steve was preparing for a vacation, and he searched the internet for a vacation idea, and his experience wasn’t pleasing.

At that moment, he decided to work on a travel search engine that would find those backwater pages, insights, and opinions of what other travelers found.

Their original search engine would search what was already out on the web, find biased information, pull it back into a central database, and then license it as a B2B model to other travel providers.

Their first client came a year after its founding when Lycos, the number 3 web search engine in 2001, allowed TripAdvisor to power the travel sections on Lycos and provide all the travel-related content.

Before co-founding TripAdvisor, Kaufer was an independent software vendor and CenterLine Software’s co-founder and vice president of engineering, where he directed the creation of many award-winning programming environments.

The platform has over 1 billion reviews and recommendations from almost 8 million companies. This travel guide firm works across 43 markets and offers services in over 22 languages, making trip planning simple regardless of the sort of journey.

The global revenue of Tripdavisor, Inc. increased by approximately 49 percent in 2021 over the previous fiscal year after dropping sharply in 2020 due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Overall, the company’s revenue worldwide amounted to 902 million U.S. dollars in 2021, rising from 604 million U.S. dollars in 2020.

• Paulana Lamonier started this swimming coaching school named Black People Will Swim specifically to break the stereotype that black people don’t swim.

• Although Black People Will Swim officially launched in January 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic delayed the start of swim lessons until July 2021.

• Paulana Lamonier's small business journey began operations thanks to a tweet. When she tweeted that she wanted to teach 30 Black people how to swim on Long Island, New York, she received hundreds of requests from people all over the country.

• Motivated by her personal experience and tired of stereotypes and statistics, Lamonier set out to change this statistic, and thus Black People Will Swim was born.

• Within a few years, the 31-year-old was able to secure a pool, hire swim coaches, and begin teaching students.

• The founder used $5,000 of her savings to start the company, which included forming an LLC, renting a pool, and hiring a business coach and a creative director.

• Since then, she has raised nearly $136,000 in grants, including a $10,000 grant from Adidas and a $25,000 grant from American Express, both of which aim to support female founders who are making a difference in sports.

• Currently, Paulana makes around $500 to $1000 after paying for the rent, the instructors, and her aquatic director.

My name is Ben Elizer, and I am the Founder and President of Velocity International Group, a full-scale logistics company, offering SameDay delivery, Expediting, Distribution, Fulfillment, andmany Warehousing Services. We offer to consult and some other services as well to help our customers succeed in an ultra-competitive environment. Velocity started with 2 vans and many faces to face conversations. We now have 10+ vehicles, including trucks, and have grown to 25k+ square feet of warehouse space as well to best serve our customers.

Over the past 2 years, our revenue has grown over 300%, which has completely contributed to the great people and culture we have at Velocity. After having to move out of my apartment (because I put everything financially I had into this company), and move back into my mom’s house in my mid 20’s, it was difficult, but just 6 months later we had our first small office and warehouse space. I’m fortunate I had a support system to move back into, or else Velocity might not be here today. The business has grown ever since because of hard work, trust, and relationships. We focus on what is important.

I'm Vaibhav Kishnani, an engineer but a passionate writer by profession. I established Content-Whale in 2017 when I was in my third year of engineering. Going by the maxim that quality writing is everything, Content-Whale caters to 42 different content types that form the backstory of every company’s digital presence and marketing efforts.

I started this content agency with a mere sum of Rs. 2,500. Today, we have drawn a revenue turnover of Rs. 4 Crores! In my opinion, it is not individual progress. Instead, a start-up is about connecting with the right individuals at the right time, who keep the show running ahead with their strife for perfection.

Hi, my name is Monika Kalinowska and I’m the founder of Plant Circle, an online plant store for rare and tropical plants with headquarters in Berlin. I have started Plant Circle in 2017 after going through a burnout caused by my previous job in journalism.

Since the first year, Plant Circle has been almost quadrupling revenue each year, now arriving at +/-100k a month in 2021.

I'm Bryan Clayton CEO of GreenPal which is best described as Uber for Lawn Care.

Good thing early investors told us no because with their capital they would have owned and controlled 30% of our business.e are self-funded and my cofounders and I own it all.

I’m Jono Santamaria, the director of Nina’s Laundrette, a laundromat located in Northcote, Australia. I purchased the coin laundry in July 2021; an older gentleman had run the laundromat then, and the shop was dated and only accepted coins.

The most significant impacts that led to this dramatic increase have been investing in our digital presence, upgrading the store’s machines, and creating a new and modern brand. We also added a commercial laundry service which brings in an additional AUD24K per year.

Hi, I am Paris Munn and I am the founder of Sensual Sinsations, an online lingerie boutique. Sensual Sinsations aims to encourage modern women to celebrate their bodies and embrace their sexuality throughout the different phases and changes that the female form experiences throughout a lifetime.

Currently, Sensual Sinsations is garnering an average of $2,500 per month in sales, an 813.69% growth rate when compared to our post-closure sales from January 2020 through April 2020. We only just relaunched on September 30th, 2021.

In the late 1980s, Darrell and Geoff Manchester established Intrepid as a brand new way of exploring the world.

Intrepid Travel offers more than 1,150 trips on all seven continents that are sustainable and experience-rich.

They didn't set out to build the biggest purpose-led adventure travel brand in the world, but they have done so now, by generating $43 million in annual revenue.

They are the biggest adventure tour operator in the world, operating a network of 26 DMCs and a nonprofit foundation.

Since 2002, their nonprofit organization, The Intrepid Foundation, has raised over AUD 12 million for 135 charities worldwide.

Read the full story on forbes.com ➜

Hi guys! My name is Bosco Soler and I'm the founder and only FTE employee of SinOficina: the first online coworking for the Spanish speaking community of freelancers and entrepreneurs.

What it started as a need to solve my own isolation as a freelance a year and a half ago, became a subscription model business that is now my main source of income making $3K/mo without spending a dollar (or euro) on paid advertisement.