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By:

Gwen Moran

Great ideas are everywhere. And when you happen upon that combination of inspiration and ability, you may have a successful business idea. Here are the stories of how three online

entrepreneurs built their businesses.

Lisa Lane was enjoying a family beach vacation with her family. There were 15 of them in all, plus their dogs. And she was sick of all the cleaning.

"I was constantly cleaning bathrooms. And I was constantly rinsing dogs off,” she says. “I thought, ‘There's got to be a better way.'"

That's when she came up with the idea for Rinseroo, a faucet and shower head attachment and hose, which would allow her to better direct the water and make everything from washing pets to

cleaning the bathtub easier. She and her son worked on building a prototype from their Clarksburg, New Jersey, home base, making multiple trips to the hardware store to try out different

hoses and connectors, she says.

She learned about an engineer in New Hampshire from a book she read and reached out to him. “My prototype was a really rough, functioning thing, but it worked,” she says. “He was able to

create drawings that showed me it could work.” The engineer also introduced her to a manufacturer in China that could make the product.

Lane decided to sell Rinseroo as a third-party seller on Amazon. The platform would fulfill her orders, which freed up time and head space that she could use to grow the company. Then, she

learned about the Amazon Launchpad, a program that showcases innovative products by vetted startups. She knew she had to have at least five reviews with at least a 3.5 star rating to apply.

She was accepted and her sales took off even more. Choosing a third-party platform gave her access to a much broader audience and has let her sell far more product than if she was trying to

do everything on her own, she says.