Twenty Million-Dollar Businesses You've Never Heard Of

While visiting Las Vegas in 2004, auto-dealership fleet manager Rico Elmore decided he needed some stylish sunglasses for his honeymoon. Elmore is six-foot-three, weighs 300-pounds and has a head to match, so finding shades that fit proved a struggle.

"I must have tried on 300 pairs and literally found nothing that fit," recalls Elmore, 36. "I walked out and said, 'This is ridiculous.' I decided to make sunglasses for people like me with fat heads." Elmore's company, Fatheadz, now sells "full-figure" glasses, for $28 to $54 a pair, and is on track to hit $2 million in sales this year--up from $700,000 in 2009.
Have a nutty business idea and need some inspiration to pull it off? We went looking for small companies that generate at least $1 million in annual revenue in unexpected ways. Look hard enough and they are legion. For a list of 20, click here.
Like many entrepreneurs, Elmore had a good idea but needed a little luck, too. Back in Brownsburg, Ind., after his honeymoon, he worked up a basic design for his super-wide specs. He hired a product-engineering company to make the molds and a contract manufacturer to crank out the frames and temple arms; he assembled the glasses at home during the evenings after work. Elmore tried patenting his discovery, but lawyers told him he could only patent the design of the glasses, not their size. Sales were a trickle.