Entrepreneurship: Take out the middle man and make more money!

Entrepreneurship is often associated with uncertainty, particularly when it involves creating something new for which there is no existing market.  Even if there is a market, it may not translate into a huge business opportunity for the entrepreneur. A major aspect in entrepreneurship is that entrepreneurs embrace opportunities, irrespective of the resources they have access to. Today, my wife told me that she sold  a considerable amount of  catfish from the farm in our back yard. Just as I expected, the neighbors were catching on that buying the fish from the source would make it cheaper than buying from a wholesaler who had bought from a fish farmer and added his own margin. 
Research from the market showed us that the wholesalers who buy from the farmers build in as much as 100% of the cost of each unit of fish that they buy. Sometimes they are able to dispose of the stock that they buy in one day. This means that the middle men between the farmer and the retailer is actually making most of the profit from the fish farming at very little risk. So our new  business model is to take out the middle man, raise the cost of each unit of fish marginally and sell retail! That way on the long run we are making more money than we did in the last cycle. 
Every budding entrepreneur has to be able to recognize opportunity when he sees it. We got into a discussion with a lady who sells soft drinks the other day. Her argument considering fish farming is that the process is too complex and the work is too dirty. "You have to wait four months for your fries to mature" she said, "but I simply get my soft drinks from the distributor and sell them to customers, no risk, no waiting." Well my answer to this was indeed its true that she has no risk or waiting period to make her money, but the market for soft drinks is seasonal. Right now we are in the rainy season and soft drink sales fall in cold weather. Where as, fish is purchased all year round, no matter the season. And with the value of the Naira falling consistently, the pressure on Forex is huge so people importing frozen fish would either reduce their purchases, increase prices and/or stop that business completely. 
I first stumbled on the middle  man elimination in the model introduced by Apple to sell their computers in the United States. The elimination gave the Apple Corporation amazing profit margins in a market that was highly competitive because PC were cheaper than Apple Computers and were selling more. But on the long run it appeared that Apple was keeping the margin of selling to retailers through its own outlets to itself. 
 Entrepreneurs this century are looking for measures to cut costs.  These days not every body requires that huge business premises to set up. The basic approach is start small and grow gradually in a bottoms up plan.No matter what kind of business you are in,never let your expenses exceed your income. This is basic.