They include Lego, Ikea, American Girls (toys), Nike ID and so on. This is not because the brand is seeking to cut costs or create a feeling of ease and convenience, it’s more about customising products to meet consumer needs when lifestyles are becoming a lot more complex.

I’ve heard some women criticise cosmetic brands, saying “they’re overpriced, over packaged and full of chemical nasties. So shouldn’t we try cooking up our own cosmetics?”

When a woman talks about beauty, she has a lot of her own tips with which to pamper herself. That’s her way of having fun as well as having her beauty secrets.

Men say “they overcharge me at authorised service centres for doing car maintenance. I can do it myself.” Replacing the lubricant oil is not a hard job to do at home, and men tend to enjoy tough jobs like gardening, repair car, woodwork and so on.

Any brand contemplating a DIY concept has to create a sense of “fun”. Customers will always ask, “Can I really DIY for the whole project?” The DIY brand must be able to say, “Yes, you can do it. It’s simple and only basic skills are required. It’s a fun thing to do.”

Ikea’s creative DIY concept

Ikea is an amazing store and an amazing concept. It proves something to me that I have been saying for years: people go out of their way for a deal. People also do not mind a do-it-yourself concept. This is pretty amazing when you consider the facts.

When a new IKEA store opens they get 25,000 visitors at the opening. That’s a lot of do-it-yourselfers. Of course, there is a significant target demographic that wants nothing to do with assembly or finishing a product. However, the numbers of people purchasing from these stores shows a staggering difference. People will make a lot of effort to save a little money.

Consider this: IKEA carries more than 10,000 items in their stores and catalogues. The stores are the size of five football fields, and are six times bigger than your average Target or Walmart. They also have a global following.

If you compare the concept of do it yourself to running a business you get an interesting analogy. In business, most owners, vendors, store operators, franchise owners, and webmasters do not really embrace the concept of “doing it themselves”. If they are contemplating a new business idea or start-up, they find it hard to put in the effort required to market a site or business. Ironically, in business that is exactly what you need to do to succeed.

I find that when I am “in the trenches”, writing articles or figuring out how to get links, that is when I think of new ideas and concepts. It’s an invigorating process, but it does take effort. You can easily understand why people hire so many avenues of promotion and marketing for their businesses. The reason is because it’s not fun. I would like to suggest that assembling furniture is not fun either, but I have to accept that most people think that saving money is fun.

If you were to build a business on the concept of do it yourself, or you were building something yourself, and you were able to make it a fun process, you would probably have a winner. Once the word got out about how cool and enjoyable your business concept was, you would be flooded with visitors and people ready to give you their hard-earned money.

The DIY concept does work, but you have to be creative. Being creative is fun, but it does involve some work. You may now be starting to see the “Catch 22″ of business.

What service or business do you offer? How do you make it fun? And how do you make it easy? When you stumble upon this formula, you may have something like the “IKEA effect” working for you. You never know, people may take the day off work to visit you; to find out what fun it is to do business with you.

Pongsak Sanitwongse na Ayudhya is executive vice president of Dentsu Plus, part of the Dentsu Asia Network. Follow his articles in Hi! Managers on every first Friday of the month.