Archive for September 2007
MSNBC: When it comes to family-owned businesses, fathers and sons have long been considered the classic entrepreneurial team. But the explosive growth of women-owned businesses has paved the way for a new breed of entrepreneurial pairing: mother-daughter businesses. Although no concrete statistics have been compiled for the number of mother-daughter businesses nationwide, family-business experts say [...]
Mom Opens Indoor Playground, Coffee Shop
Hudson Star-Observer: Felicity Plansky thinks she knows what stay-at-home mothers like her want. “We want good coffee. Good food. Comfortable seating. We want to know that our children are safe and secure. And it needs to be clean.” They want a place where they can meet with their friends for a cup of espresso coffee [...]
The New York Times: A couple of years ago, Jonathan Hall and his wife, Kate, decided that there must be a way to capitalize on the popularity of iPod add-ons. Cases and “skins,” had become big business by then — but those items decorated only the main device, which was usually stuffed in a pocket, [...]
Entrepreneur: If you’re looking for a dose of entrepreneurial inspiration, check out this article from the LA Times. It tells the story of Richard Crasnick, entrepreneur and president of FIKI Sports, which stands for “Flick It and Kick It.” What started as a game being played between him and his brother 16 years ago is [...]
Million Dollar Biz: Xlear Inc.
Entrepreneur: Nathan Jones was deeply involved in underwater welding when a breathtaking opportunity brought him quickly back to the surface. Jones’ father, a family physician, had invented a xylitol-enhanced nasal wash in a desperate attempt to cure his patients’ recurring ear infections. A naturally occurring sweetener, xylitol had primarily been known in Finland for its [...]
Self-Chilling Bottles From Coca-Cola
OhGizmo: Coca-Cola is ready to roll out a new type of bottle that uses a specially developed technology to chill the inside when the top is removed. The company says the new bottles will do away with the need for ice which dilutes the beverage as it melts but does anyone ever actually put ice [...]
North County Times: 11-year-old Jason O’Neil recently became the youngest person to receive the Young Entrepreneur Award. The 2007 winner was given the award by the Young Entrepreneurs of America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating and motivating young entrepreneurs. He turned a simple craft, which he calls Pencil Bugs, into a business when he [...]
Naperville Mom Anxious To Open "Paint It Yours"
Daily Herald: Tammy Hockett knows a little bit about craft projects. When you’re looking for ways to stay close to your 10-year-old twin daughters and keep them and their friends entertained, you get used to working with paint and paste, stencils and stamps. Tammy Hockett knows a little about adversity, too. When you’re a divorced [...]
Mom Takes Her Designing To A Higher Level
Deseret Morning News: For Kristy Lee, scrapbooking isn’t just for her kids. That is, keeping her photos of her babies and tracking her family’s life. It’s a career and a showcase opportunity for her creativity. Lee is a scrapbook designer with five children, two Internet jobs and a bunch of magazines that feature her ideas. [...]
Business.MaineToday.com: Q: How did you get started? A: My friend Kelly L’Heureux was the former owner. She’s another soccer mom who lives in Falmouth, and had the business in her home and was selling it, so I bought it from her. She had bought it several years before, when it was the Poplar Ridge Cookie [...]
Brothers Create Profitable Biz
DailyBreeze.com: Hovering over the spinning lathe in their family’s Torrance garage, Cody and Chad Simon whittle away at the small block of wood. It only takes a few minutes before the sharp corners begin to disappear and the final form begins to take shape. They varnish it and slide metal pieces into place. Another one [...]
Coloradoan.com: When Tanner Highfill was growing up, he would fake being sick so he could stay home from school and watch the opening of the stock market. Since age 10, Megan Jansen yearned for independence and financial freedom. As an ambitious 12-year-old, Scott Mitchell needed a way to fund his hobby of restoring cars so [...]
Million Dollar Biz: The Great American Hanger Company
Entrepreneur: The fact that Devon Rifkin never attended college is just a tiny footnote in his success story. The fact that he has made millions selling hangers is slightly more unique. But for Rifkin, defying the standards means nothing if his business isn’t successful–or if his team isn’t sharing in the success. Says Rifkin, “To [...]
BusinessWeek: Whatever you decide to do, you need to make sure it doesn’t mess up your retirement plan. Pauline Muth of West Charlton, N.Y., was a junior high school science teacher who also loved shaping bonsai trees. About 17 years ago she registered her home as a nursery and started selling supplies to other bonsai [...]
Importance of Getting “Patent Pending”
Inventorspot: First, a patent pending (applied for and waiting for approval), consists of the patenting agent or attorney first doing a “patent search” to see if inventions of the same concept or design have already had patents applied for them. Also, keep in mind that once you have a patent pending, this can be noted [...]
The Huffington Post: Motherhood didn’t hit me right away. It was exhilarating yet not quite real when I felt the first kicks in my belly…exciting yet hazy during our monthly sonograms and birthing classes. Not even after delivery, as I stared at two tiny bassinets wondering how the heck I was supposed to feed two [...]
Ebay: Mommy’s Company.com has been mentioned by ABC News, seen in Simply Home Magazine, CleverParents.com, ConnectingMoms.com, and is a staple in the online mom world. The site is also linked on WomenEntrepreneur.com, a premier business website! Mommy’s Company has worked with everyone from Darla Shine of the Happy Housewives Club to Victoria Pericon, the owner [...]
Americus Times-Recorder: Ashley Hatcher never dreamed that her frustration of dishes sliding on dinner trays would lead her to be an inventor! While suffering from a migraine, her daughter brought some food to her on one of the staple “bamboo trays”. When she brought the tray to Hatcher, everything had spilled. The tray was falling [...]
Retired, Broke? Start A Business
Rhonda Abrams at Gannett News Service: Congratulations! You’ve finally retired and moved to the desert, beach, mountains, city or some other dream retirement location. Fortunately, you’ve saved up enough to buy a great retirement home. However, you still need – or want – to make money. But you certainly don’t want another job; you’ve had [...]
Million Dollar Biz: PopCap Games
Entrepreneur: When game designer Jason Kapalka first met John Vechey and Brian Fiete in 1997, the two 19-year-olds had just been wooed from Indiana to work at Kapalka’s former employer, a gaming company. “We hit it off really well,” says Kapalka, who was impressed by an online game the two teens had created. “We kept [...]
Inventor Tells How :-) Was Born
Philadelphia Inquirer: This year marks the 25th anniversary of the infamous sideways smiley emoticon, invented by Scott E. Fahlman, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University. Reporter Lara Fritzsche discovered why Fahlman is >:( about the newfangled knockoffs that his creation inspired. Q: You’re the inventor of “smiley faces,” which are used all over [...]
Mashable.com: Bang Ventures has launched “You Be the VC,” a new web site where entrepreneurs can submit their Web-based business ideas and the public can vote on the one’s they like best. Ultimately, the public will decide on the three ideas they like best, which Bang Ventures will then fund, in addition to providing programming [...]
News Blaze: Ever popular alligator embossed spike-heels, slick patent-leather Mary Janes, almond-shaped toe metalics, chunky-heeled ankle boots, we-want-them-all, and a pair of those new wedges too, all carefully arranged on the livingroom dining table this weekend. “Build a better mousetrap and they will come,” or in this case build a better show outlet, and hard [...]
Penny Auntie's New Owner Continues Tradition
Lower Hudson Online: The parents and children of Chappaqua know Penny Auntie 5&10 as a place where they can find fun and quirky toys and gifts. For the women who have owned the store during its nearly 30-year history, it’s a place where they could find a life that balances family and work. Cross River [...]
I didn’t know it, but Work at Home Chuck is a regular Squidoo wizard. His new lens, for Angel Food Ministries, is currently ranked #58 out of all lenses on Squidoo. Be sure to read Chuck’s other posts about Angel Food Ministries.
ManPower Blogs: In a highly unscientific and probably wildly inaccurate poll, we ranked the best workplace songs in the history of mankind based on input from HR audiences around the country. 5. Get a Job. We’re still analyzing the lyrics ”yip, yip, yip, yip, yip, yip, yip, yip, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, mum, get [...]
Small Biz To Spend $70 Billion Online By 2012
Inc.: As the number of small businesses continues to grow over the next five years, they will be spending more money online, new research shows. In a new report, “U.S. Online Small Business Market Category Forecast, 2007 to 2012,” New York-based JupiterResearch projects that total online spending by small businesses will exceed $70 billion by [...]
Million Dollar Biz: Sew What? Inc.
Entrepreneur: After immigrating to the U.S. at age 19, native Australian Megan Duckett found work as a technician for a concert production company–and started sewing in her spare time. Her first gig was sewing fabric coffin linings for a Halloween show. “I rented a [sewing machine] and lined 10 coffins,” recalls Megan Duckett. “[I discovered] [...]
I Run My Business From A Closet
FSB Magazine: Every morning I wake up at 4:30, brush my teeth, and head to the office wearing pajamas. I don’t travel far – my desk is in my bedroom’s walk-in closet. My husband, Tom, and I started our 12-employee firm, Atlantic Infra-red, in 2002 out of our home in Point Pleasant Beach, N.J. We [...]
New Way to Woo Customers? Birthday Presents
Inc.: Everyone likes presents on their birthday — including your customers. Creating a “birthday club” could ensure that you have many happy returning customers. Birthday Connections, a new service launched by Moving Targets, a Perkasie, Pa.-based direct-mail marketing company, allows small-business owners to create and send birthday offers based on specific demographics and geographic areas. [...]
Couple Takes A Chance, And Succeeds In Paint Business
The Murfreesboro Post: Danny and Rebecca Westergard have never been ones to take things slowly. When it is right, they know. “We don’t like to sit back and say, “What if?” she said. It doesn’t matter if the decision is about their relationship or the business they opened Aug. 1 The Westergards opened Barfield Paint [...]
Two WAHMs Flourish In Sioux City
Sioux City Journal: In a small red room tucked in the basement of her home, Emily Rohan fashions necklaces, bracelets, rings, earrings and brooches from sterling silver, teal and yellow turquoise, jade, carnelian and a host of other precious stones. On the other side of a black curtain, Lillie, 5, Isabel, 3 1/2, and Sophie, [...]
Entrepreneur Started Biz in College
Inc.: Alex Algard is a true entrepreneur. His companies – WhitePages.com and CarDomain.com – are born from his passions. Both are thriving businesses in Seattle. Both survived the dotcom bust – no small feat! As a Stanford University graduate student, Algard was frustrated by his inability to track down an old friend: he wasted time [...]
Entrepreneur: First, gourmet chocolate was all the rage. Recently, we told you about about gourmet marshmallows. And now, it’s all about premium sodas. The $15.6 billion soda industry is diversifying with beverages like Jones Soda Company’s Blue Bubble Gum Soda, Izze Beverages’ Sparkling Clementine and Cricket Green Tea Cola. Though these specialty sodas may take [...]
Million Dollar Biz: Bear Naked
Entrepreneur: Childhood friends Kelly Flatley and Brendan Synnott were in between jobs in 2002 when Flatley, ever the health nut, began making all-natural granola in her kitchen and enlisted Synnott to help. “The whole food chain [has become] so processed and filled with artificial ingredients,” says Synnott. “[To both of us], it just didn’t make [...]
BusinessWeek: So you’ve created a brilliant new product you know will fly off store shelves. Maybe you’re considering patenting it or building prototypes. But how do you sell it? The business of patenting, promoting, and marketing products by independent inventors is a $300 million industry, estimates Bonnie Griffin Kaake, executive director of the nonprofit United [...]
How Tiny Ideas Can Reach Millions
Guardian Unlimited: Blogger.com helped spark a revolution – and it still makes self-publishing quick and easy. Blogger was launched by Ev Williams of Pyra Labs in 1999, and bought by Google in 2003. Google eventually started to improve it, and a few months ago it finally moved to Google servers. New users can sign in [...]
Roseville Press Tribune: For more than 23 years, Darlene Leyva has been running her own businesses. After relocating from the Bay Area to Oak Street in Roseville, she’s thinking she’s hit the mark. Leyva runs Pin-up Girls Salon and Boutique with the help of her daughter Marisa, who grew up in her mom’s salons. Splashed [...]
San Antonio Native Creates A Booming Baby Business
MySA.com: San Antonio native Katy Mimari is proof that a good business idea, combined with lots of self-promotion, often leads to success. At the age of 25, she designed six diaper bags combining stripes and polka dots with non-baby colors of brown and black. She wanted to sell them across the country. Just three years [...]
Paradise Mom Opens One Heavenly Business
Paradise Post: Last December, local entrepreneur, Jennifer Chavez, a Paradise resident for 13 years, began One Heavenly Baby, an online business selling handcrafted baby products. Her Web site focuses on bibs and burp clothes in a variety of colors and patterns that she created. She got the idea to start crafting these products when, “I [...]
eBay’s IT is Now Shop Vicctoriously
BRANDWEEK “Shop victoriously” is eBay’s new mantra. As the holidays approach, the Web’s No. 1 retail site (with roughly 80 million unique visitors a month, per ComScore Media Metrix, Reston, Va.) is looking to drive home its new winning message. A massive marketing blitz, created by BBDO, New York, will proclaim “It’s better when [...]
His Soul Temporarily Was Bought On eBay
Faithnet.com Hemant Mehta was raised in the Jain faith (a religious tradition rooted in India), but became an atheist as a teen. Now in his twenties and a high school math teacher near Chicago, he is active in many groups that promote secularism. In early 2006, Mehta auctioned himself off on eBay to a Protestant minister, agreeing to attend a variety [...]
Ecommerce-guide.com The eBay Community Development team announced changes that will most likely please eBay members who are tired of multiple log-in screens as they move throughout the auction site. Soon they will be able to log in with their user ID and password and actually stay signed in as they use other areas of eBay, [...]
Entrepreneur: Making a million is a milestone–the defining moment of success for many entrepreneurs and an attainable goal for those tapped into today’s hottest trends. Entrepreneurs are keeping their fingers on the pulse of what’s hot in today’s marketplace. They are the trendsetters, the pioneers, the ones to watch as they lead the pack, followed [...]
Entrepreneur: The video-game and electronics industry has long been dominated by men. But according to a recent study done by advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, “lady geeks” are fed up with that notion. The study reported that 35 percent of female internet users would spend more on consumer electronics if retailers tried targeting them for [...]
American-Statesman: Bob Fabbio, one of Austin’s best-known entrepreneurs, is back in the startup game with a new company that provides routine medical care to people at home or at work. WhiteGlove House Call Health Inc. lets clients schedule visits from medical professionals between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. seven days a week. The company also [...]
Entrepreneur: It’s commonly said that business valuation is more art than science. If this is true, then the practice of valuing a startup business is squarely in the domain of the artist. Nevertheless, entrepreneurs need to put a value on their startups in order to raise money, and investors need to put a value on [...]
15 iGoogle Gadgets For Productivity
Web Worker Daily: While there are still many who love Netvibes, iGoogle has its share of fans in the start page world. And with more than 25,000 gadgets available for iGoogle, the array of choices is sometimes overwhelming. Choose wisely, and iGoogle can be a great tool for productive web work of any kind. 1. [...]
Free Ebook And Teleclass Offered To Help Mothers Create A Six Figure Work At Home (WAHM) Business
PRWeb: A free Ebook titled “Do You Have What It Takes To Be A 6-Figure Work At Home Mom?” is now available from 6 Figure Work At Home Mom, an Internet-based business committed to helping mothers successfully balance career and family. The Ebook was written by 6 Figure Work At Home Mom founder Debbie LaChusa [...]
Saint Petersburg Times: Dial up Continental Airlines to book a flight and you might end up talking to Marla Rothstein, shoeless and sans makeup, in one of the thousands of beige stucco houses in Pasco County’s Meadow Pointe development. That’s a good thing. Good for Marla, good for Continental and good for you, too. Airlines [...]
