Archive for April 2010
As proprietor of three home-run businesses — TLC Kennels, Ceres Greenhouses and Sophisticated Baby Gifts — Barbara Gile needs the space, reports The Ithaca Journal. “I opened the kennels 15 years ago,” she says. “It was just a temporary home for people’s pets if they were going on vacation, or couldn’t take care of them.” [...]
Student Entrepreneur Has Perfect Pitch
According to a story at Richmond Biz Sense, Tom Borwick won a $3,500 investment at an annual business pitch competition at the University of Richmond’s Robins School of Business. Borwick, 22, is a senior at UR and a bassoon player. A panel of eight judges selected Borwick’s concept – a Kindle-style tablet that its inventor [...]
Mompreneur Makes Breast Pumping Bras Stylish
As any parent knows, sometimes you need more than one hand to do everything you need to do when you have a baby in the home. If you’re a breastfeeding mom sometimes that extra hand can be hard to come by. Especially if you need to use a breast pump. After the birth of her [...]
Unpaid Internships May Be Illegal
With job openings scarce for young people, the number of unpaid internships has climbed in recent years, leading federal and state regulators to worry that more employers are illegally using such internships for free labor, reports The New York Times. Convinced that many unpaid internships violate minimum wage laws, officials in Oregon, California and other [...]
“Ask the Attorney” is a weekly VentureBeat feature and this week has some quick tips in connection with selling a venture: Be Careful with Private Equity Buyers. Private equity firms are in the business of buying and selling companies. Accordingly, they are extremely sophisticated and savvy and are often represented by large, aggressive law firms. [...]
Times may have changed but thanks to Joe Virgilio his Virgilio’s St. Joseph’s rolls have not. They continue to be one o the many breads made by his bakery that help drive their reputation, says the Gloucester Times. In recent years, the Virgilio brand has expanded beyond breads to pasta and pizza sauces, infused dipping [...]
Work/Life Balance Draws Mom To Business
Tracy Ryks was unsure of what to do. While she was pregnant she knew that she wanted to stay home with the baby once he was born. She also knew that she wasn’t ready to just give up her career either, says Agweek. “I started my first company when I was eight months pregnant,” she [...]
TV Unlocks Doors For Joinlox Inventor
Appearing on TV can change your life. While for some it isn’t necessarily for the good but for others, like Dean Cameron, it has rocketed them into success, says Sunshine Coast Daily. The Maleny inventor hit the headlines in 2008 when his Joinlox joining system was named the invention of the year by the ABC [...]
Poker Tactics That Apply To Startups
While the rules of poker are simple and the game itself is quite accessible, success typically requires more skill than luck. Venturebeat reports there’s a wisdom there that we can take from the game and apply to the startup life. Calculate the odds – Good poker players calculate two kinds of odds before playing: the [...]
For Entrepreneur, It’s All In The Cards
In 2004, the poker craze was at its peak. “You could not go into Walgreens without seeing poker chips everywhere.” Despite the proliferation of poker games at home, Steve Roelle also noticed a lack of poker decor, and began to formulate a plan for a new business, reports The Courier Press. In the beginning, Roelle [...]
The Resumator: Recruiting Made Simpler
For small businesses and startups, hiring is extra work, and no one’s expertise. Someone is usually “deputized” to manage the hiring process, and this person (the CEO, office manager, or “unlucky stiff”) usually has no formal experience in recruiting. As a result, the hiring practices used by these “deputized HR managers” are usually ad-hoc and [...]
Trendspotter Springwise reports that the average person uses between 2,400 and 3,000 paper towels each year just at work, so it’s no real surprise that more than 3,000 tons of paper towel waste are produced every day in the U.S. alone. Hoping to tame that mountain of methane-producing trash, PeopleTowels has developed a very simple [...]
Home Bizs Offer Refuge From Recession
The latest economic indicators for the first quarter of 2010 bring some hopeful tidings, but also some significant concerns. The U.S. unemployment rate is as high as it has been in 25 years, and there is continued concern about sizable job losses to come. The recession has been a source of severe stress for many [...]
Student Entrepreneurs Use Census To Plan Bizs
Bryan Nicholson moved his company from Cedar Rapids to Iowa City, largely based on census information, reports The Daily Iowan. The University of Iowa senior and senior franchise owner of the Iowa City branch of College Pro Painting, said key factors in the decision were household income and property values. As census day arrives, officials [...]
View Your Site On The iPad–Without An iPad
According to a story at AppScout, if you run a Web site, it’s important to make sure it looks as good as possible on as many platform as possible. Over the weekend, of course, Apple launched a little device it hopes will prove the next major platform for Internet exploration, an attempt to bridge the [...]
Episodic Deal May Monetize YouTube
In its fifth acquisition of 2010, Google has acquired a fledgling video Relevant Products/Services service that could offer some backup Relevant Products/Services to its YouTube property. The Internet giant snapped up Episodic for an undisclosed amount, reports TopTechNews. Google hasn’t officially announced the deal, but the San Francisco-based startup was so “thrilled” to join the [...]
Launched earlier this year, Supercool School is an education platform that lets anyone create and monetize an online school of their very own, reports trendspotter Springwise. For $15 per month, users of San Francisco-based Supercool School can create real-time classes and make them available to an unlimited number of students from all around the world. [...]
Entrepreneur VS The Skin Care Giants
After falling for the scents and smells of Thailand, Fadi Ghaby jumped at the opportunity to bring it all home, says Edmonton Journal. Ghaby is the owner of Harnn & Thann North America. The Thai-based, all-natural skin-care line enjoys huge success throughout Asia, Australia and Europe. Surprisingly, its North American headquarters is in Ottawa. The [...]
Self-Employed Find Workarounds To Healthcare
According to a story in Chicago Business, the smallest businesses have always been the least likely to pay for employee health insurance, and ever-increasing premium rates and the recession are prompting even more of them to drop out of the system. In 2001, 58% of firms with three to nine employees provided health coverage, according [...]
According to Hometownlife.com, Melissa Zoch is well on her way to mastering motherhood and the business world. The mother of three boys, including one set of twins, recently entered the home-based workforce, beginning her own business with aspirations of earning additional income for her family. “I knew I had to do something,” she said. “And [...]
Web Needn’t Be World Wide For Success
A new wave of startups, as well as giants such as Google and Yahoo, is trying to tap the multibillion-dollar potential of what is often called “the local Web.” reports The Indy Star. The local Web is rapidly evolving amid the converging forces of online social networking, location-savvy smart phones and an array of new [...]
Meet The Shopping Cart For Clothes
While the shopping cart might not have changed much over the years, Lee Heckendorn hopes to change that says NorthJersey.com. [He] has invented a cart that combines the standard basket on wheels with a rack for hanging clothes. His invention, called The Apparel Cart, is designed primarily to help women shopping in stores where they [...]
Helping Minipreneurs Sell Their Expertise
According to a story at Springwise, Traindom focuses on helping information entrepreneurs market their expertise. No programming or design skills are required to create an education-focused business with Traindom; rather, the site gives users everything they need, including an easy-to-use product creation interface, client management tools, payment systems and more. Content can be conveyed through [...]
$21 Million Program To Aid Small Biz
In March 2009, President Obama vowed to address the drought of bank lending to small companies and announced an initiative to use $15 billion from the federal bailout to unfreeze the markets that finance Small Business Administration loans. More than a year later, the program was finally launched — as a $21 million effort, reports [...]
It’s Never Been Cooler To Shop Consignment
If there is one thing The Great Recession has shown us, it is that we really can find the items we want for less. Due to a less flexible income many have come to love consignment shopping. Before it was cool there were women like Tracy True Dismukes who loved to shop in second hand [...]
Kristina Giedra always thought she’d become a music teacher, says the Glendale Heights Press. But things just didn’t work out that way. After receiving a green card to come to America a decade ago, Giedra landed a nanny job with a Naperville family and began taking college management and marketing courses. With her degree, she [...]
According to a story at USA TODAY, coaches aren’t the only ones making money off the rising tide of their salaries. Winthrop Intelligence is a year-old company that uses open-records requests to create a database of what every Division I head coach and assistant in every men’s and women’s sport at every public college is [...]
Marshmallow Entrepreneur And Preschooler
Believe it or not the real boss of Madyson’s Marshmallows is 4 year old Madyson Wetzel. While her parents do a majority of the business work it is Madyson who puts in the elbow grease, says KOMO News. What began as something Mom and Dad did for family and friends has bloomed into a home [...]
Board Games On iPad Are Going To Be Big
Mashable reports that if you’re a classic board game geek, you probably love the feeling of cards, dice or a chess board under your hand. But in all those situations when you don’t have the actual board — let’s say you’re going on a vacation, and you don’t want to carry the extra weight and [...]
Why Do People Become Social Entrepreneurs?
Defined as “individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems” by Ashoka.org, social entrepreneurship is on the rise. Small Business Trends takes a look at this trend and wonders, what makes it so popular? This rise in the popularity begs the question: why do people become social entrepreneurs? There are, no doubt, numerous [...]
Inc.com writes sure, it’s been mocked as a super-sized iPod or a laptop sans keyboard, but Apple’s iPad is also a brand new tablet platform with a diverse audience and few rivals. That means that programmers, merchants, designers, and just about anybody with an existing business is probably asking themselves, Is there a way my [...]
Freemium: Everyone’s Doing It, But How?
The Freemium Summit, an event focused on discussing the ever popular business model and how new companies can best take advantage of it, was held in San Francisco, and since then, interesting stats and bits of information have been popping up on blogs and news sites, reports ReadWriteWeb. New business models have been a hot [...]
Startups Are Using Social Media For Real Results
According to a story at Mashable, for startups, the amount of money you have to burn before you either need to break even or raise more capital is your runway. Extending the length of that runway is an art form that requires startup founders to learn how to squeeze maximum value out of every dollar [...]
ResearchBuzz has a story about a huge archive of Radio Shack catalogs online. Radio Shack has been in business since 1921, over 90 years. And for 65 of those years has produced an outstanding electronics and technology catalog, surpassing the catalog of all rival companies. Through the decades, this catalog expanded to contain a mix [...]
Paying Offline For Virtual Online Purchases
The latest example of the blending of offline and online worlds is Kwedit, a new payment service in the United States that enables consumers over the age of 13 to make cash payments for their online purchases at participating offline retail stores, reports trendspotter Springwise. Launched in February, Kwedit offers two payment models: Kwedit Direct [...]
Plenty Of Items Made In America
Marlene Alexander takes an interesting look at items “Made in the USA” over at WalletPop. If you’re not a regular dollar store shopper, you might be surprised to learn that there are many items in store that were not made in China. In one short visit, I found many products that were made in America, [...]
Jefferson Graham at USA TODAY takes a look at the new iPad.
eBay Inc. may be the biggest online clothing seller, but it’s still known for selling other people’s castoffs. Now it wants shoppers to think of it when looking for trendy duds like hipster jeans and red ballerina flats, reports The Associated Press. eBay will launch a new fashion microsite Monday. It’s the latest in a [...]
“Bun Lady” Shares Recipe To Her Success
Known to many as the “bun lady”, Cordia Harrington isn’t afraid of becoming the butt of any joke. If you need proof, the prosthetic behind attached to the back of her suit at the Women Entrepreneurs Inspire Conference on Tuesday says it all, reports NewsOK.com. “That’s how I got my nickname,” she exclaimed to erupting [...]
The Web Urbanist has put together an interesting collection of items made of duct tape. Pretty impressive. Photos by Web Urbanist.
According to David V. Cappillo, writing for Mass High Tech, there are 8 mistakes that many entrepreneurs make. If you’re not careful these mistakes could drain you of money, time or even kill your business. 1. Failing to pay attention to corporate formalities. 2. Complicating the formation process. 3. Failing to appropriately address founder equity. [...]
Self-Published E-Books On Apple’s iPad
According to a story at Digital Beat, big publishers are flocking to the iPad, readying to publish electronic versions of their bestselling books on Apple’s much-anticipated tablet device due to launch April 3. But smaller publishing houses are making the move, too, including self-publishing service Smashwords. Smashwords, a site where writers can publish their own [...]
The Rise Of Fleximoms In India
For career women that refuse to choose between their work and their families the new word is balance, says DNA India. They want to be around when their kids need them, and they also want meaningful careers. And now there’s finally some hope they can expect to have their cake and eat it too, as [...]
Gnome Moonlights On Chatroulette
When Mashable came across news that the official Travelocity gnome was using Chatroulette for business purposes they were a tad skeptical. The screenshots sent by Travelocity confirm that the gnome is lurking within Chatroulette’s mysterious corridors. His presence there is to motivate video chatters to step away from their webcams and take vacations. According to [...]
Crack Down On ‘Independent Contractors’
If your business uses independent contractors, get ready for new scrutiny. Hoping to boost tax revenue, the IRS and many state governments are cracking down on how companies classify their workers, reports CNNMoney. When employers report wages for independent contractors on IRS form 1099, rather than a W-2, they aren’t required to pay unemployment insurance, [...]
Colleges Give iPads To Incoming Students
According to a story at ReadWriteWeb, Seton Hill University plans to give every first year undergraduate student a 13″ MacBook and an iPad. Just last month, George Fox University in Oregon also announced that it plans to give its new students a choice between a MacBook or an iPad. The question, though, is if programs [...]
My Favorite Business Movie: Tucker: The Man and his Dream
Tucker: The Man and his Dream is my favorite business movie. The movie’s tagline: “When they tried to buy him, he refused. When they tried to bully him, he resisted. When they tried to break him, he became an American legend. The true story of Preston Tucker.” If his story doesn’t inspire you to build [...]
Steve Downing is “Grandpa”, as in Music with Grandpa, a new classical music education business opportunity. I recently had the opportunity to ask him a few questions. What is Music With Grandpa? I created the Music with Grandpa game in 2003 to help my granddaughters, of which I had four at the time. I still [...]
On Monday, we asked readers if they planned to buy an iPad which Apple will be releasing Saturday. 21 percent said Yes they planned to make a purchase. 52 percent said No, the iPad wasn’t for them and 28 percent said they would wait and see. Thanks to all who participated. It should be interesting [...]
New in the Directory This Week
One of the often overlooked sections of this website is our directory. Over 2300 different bizops, franchises, dealerships and online opportunities are listed there. Here are the new companies from this week: Business Opportunities United Shipping Solutions Franchises Café Jubilee Cool Cycles Ice Cream Fairway Divorce Solutions Lenard’s NakedPizza Pal4Pets Two Small Men With Big [...]
