Archive for July 2010
After selling mattresses for 38 years and founding an 80 store chain of mattress stores, Jerry Wilson knew a thing or two about mattresses. When he noticed a huge increase in the number of chemicals in the mattress he sold, Jerry Wilson thought he’d realized that there was a market for something different. After months [...]
David Nemetz and his high school buds grew up in Silicon Valley getting their sports info from ESPN.com. But the mainstream site was, well, mainstream. Where, they muttered, were the reports on mixed martial arts? So after college, the foursome pooled close to $100,000 from their families to hire software developers to create an “open-source” [...]
Bringing Life To Action Figures
Mike Bellon, founder of Action Sports Toys, LLC, was inspired while surfing to create a toy that would allow children to mimic his moves on the water, reports The Village News. “I was riding a wave at Mission Beach when I decided I wanted to be innovative. I looked at electronics and computers, but I [...]
Is there someplace you could put this pay-to-sit bench with coin operated retractable spikes? I don’t think it’ll be long before airports and malls have something like this. They already have something similar (but less spikey) to deter sleeping.
Disabled Adults Seek Their Own Businesses
David Shunkey is autistic and around the same time the recession hit he lost two jobs. Now he’s trying to launch his own business reports The Wall Street Journal. More mentally and physically challenged adults are looking to entrepreneurship as they get closed out of an exceptionally competitive job market, according to several organizations that [...]
Old Spice Guy Takes Over the Internet
It was the viral ad campaign you wished your viral ad campaign would look like. On the Air: Marrying Twitter, You Tube, a rising TV personality and a hot ad campaign all in one, Old Spice made a unique online splash this week by posting nearly 100 video shorts in one day and approximately double [...]
New University Patents Database
According to The Patent Librarian’s Notebook, FreePatentsOnline has partnered with Technology Transfer Tactics, a website for university tech transfer professionals, to provide a resource for searching university-owned patents. Data for about 150 universities (mostly American) is available. Clicking on a name of a university will retrieve a list of US patents and published applications assigned [...]
Automatic Waterer Keeps Fresh Water Flowing For Chickens
If you’ve ever left water out in the hot sun then you know exactly what it looks and smells like by the end of the day. Fresh won’t exactly describe what you’ll find. Put that same container of water into your chicken house and then see what also gets into it. It was during one [...]
The Manhole Cover Picker-Upper
According to Bloomberg Businessweek, opening manhole covers, which weigh up to 400 lbs., is difficult at best and dangerous at worst. Dave Roberts, 51, who spent 25 years lifting them while working for waste-water authorities in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, decided to find a better way. A perpetual tinkerer, Roberts designed a machine to remove the [...]
Looking for an inexpensive service franchise to run out of your home? Enjoy dealing with the public and working outdoors? In business since 1992, IronDrive Coatings provides quality installation of garage floor, driveway, walkway and pool deck coatings. The company’s innovative epoxy garage floor coating system is easy to apply and takes one third of [...]
One of the exciting things about running this blog is the number of interesting ideas I come across. One such great idea I just discovered is globe riding. One such company that offers a franchise business is ZORB. ZORB globe riding (generically known as globe riding) is the experience of rolling down a hill in [...]
Are you planning to attend the Blog World Expo? The expo runs from October 14th – 16th, 2010 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. I haven’t decided whether or not I’m going to attend this year, but if you are and would like to meet up, I might finalize my decision. [...]
Mobile Fingerprinters Fill Niche
The sour economy has taken its toll on most companies and their employees. Still, entrepreneurial ingenuity and following through on a simply good idea is one of the best ways for individuals to break out on their own to avoid budgetary woes presently faced by many large companies. According to The Press Democrat, Lynda and [...]
Why Personality Can’t Predict Success
Business Insider: What do entrepreneurs look like? Are they born or made? This is a hard question. I think the root cause of that difficulty is that we tend to conflate two different questions into one. First, what causes someone to attempt entrepreneurship instead of a more traditional career path? And second, what attributes make [...]
When Bibby Gignilliat started her first company, Gourmet Gatherings, she instinctively wanted to do it alone. Still, she had doubts. And so she paired up with a friend from school who seemed to have complementary skills. Later, the two took on another partner because she had business experience — and a Harvard MBA. And that’s [...]
The Do’s And Don’ts Of Running Multiple Bizs
According to Chicago Business, for most people, running just one business is challenge enough. But others find they’re capable of keeping multiple enterprises humming at the same time. Even so, experienced “multipreneurs” can stumble. Advice from local veterans: DON’T: Hang on to a business when it’s clearly failing, says Jay Goltz, founder and owner of [...]
The Mercury: Hill Church Notary, owned and operated by Christine Krause offers notarial services including affidavits, oaths, depositions and other legal documents. Motor vehicle notary services include title and plate transfers, temporary plates, title registration as well as driver license and permit services. Krause, a native of Birdsboro and a Daniel Boone graduate, received her [...]
Electrifying The Fishing Boat Biz
According to Bloomberg Businessweek, if more and more motorists are excited about electric cars, maybe fishermen are ready to trade their outboard motors for battery-powered boats. Frank Jones has wagered $500,000 that they are. His Carolina Electric Boats makes a two-seat boat that looks a bit like a rectangular plastic kiddie pool—its hull is recyclable [...]
Oklahoma’s Rural-preneurs Learn Best Way To Survive
Tom Walker of NewsOK was recently speaking with Becky McCray, an entrepreneur and author who is working on a book about small town entrepreneurship. “Every kind of business exists in rural and small town Oklahoma,” McCray says. “Ponca City has an attitude and openness to entrepreneurship and is known for recruiting entrepreneurs. Woodward, a town [...]
New Program Series Debuts Today
We’re adding a new program to our lineup, Inventor’s Journal. This week Rich Whittle interviews Steve Velte about his new magnetic game Jishaku.
Small Bizs Making Use Of Self Storage
According to Hawaii News Now, over the last few months, entrepreneurs all over the world have reported that they see no reason to pass up a business opportunity, or business opportunities, simply because they have no space in which to house a small business. More and more small business owners, especially those who just started [...]
Publix Joins The Lunchbox Wars
Look out Lunchables, Publix is getting into the kids meal business. The Tampa Tribune reports that with school set to start in a couple months, the Southeast’s leading grocery chain is planning to roll out a series of its own pre-packaged kids meals, but deli-made and designed to tuck neatly into kid’s lunchboxes. The move [...]
Ex-McDonald’s Execs Plan Healthy Eatery
MediaPost News: Right now, they’re calling it Stephanie’s after one of the principal’s daughters, but that may change before the first one opens next year with, possibly, herb gardens on the roof, grass parking lots, fresh flowers on tables and biodegradable cutlery to go with breakfast offerings like cinnamon steel-cut oats and lunch and dinner [...]
Homeless Kids Start Bike Delivery Biz
According to San Diego.com, just a few years ago, Abraham, Laura and Ruth Sanchez were homeless. They lived at the Rescue Mission downtown with their mother and other brothers and sisters. Abraham, Laura and Ruth wound up at The Monarch School, the largest school for homeless children in the country. While they were there, they [...]
Tennessee Is Open For Business
The Nashville Business Journal is reporting that the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development is now accepting entries into their “What Makes You an Entrepreneur” video competition. Entries will be accepted through Oct. 31 through the Tennessee Open for Business website, http://tnopenforbusiness.org. Finalists will be selected from five categories: Main Street/downtown; home-based; agri-business; arts [...]
According to Wired magazine, the technology behind this children’s toy is both simple and complex. Simple, in that an internal stylus is used, manipulated by turning horizontal and vertical knobs to “etch a sketch” onto a glass window coated with aluminum powder. Complex, because the Etch a Sketch employs a fairly sophisticated pulley system that [...]
The peace of an otherwise quiet summer weekend is often muddled by the sound of lawn mowers and leaf blowers. NPR reports that In Los Angeles’ business district, an old-fashioned method of ground control provides an alternative soundtrack — the munching of goats. In a steep hillside city park on Bunker Hill, right next to [...]
An ‘Evolv’ing Opportunity In Water
It might come out of the tap for free but not everyone is happy with the taste of the water they have at home. That is why so many people spend money to buy bottled water. Evolv is a new enhanced bottled water that recently came out last year. Their water isn’t like other bottled [...]
Build Your Own Google Android Apps
There are so many apps available for smart phones these days, it must be really easy to make them, right? According to USA TODAY, usually you need to have some sort of programming skills. But the folks at Google have come up with a way for anyone to create apps for its Android mobile operating [...]
Sadly in the world today there is a lot more employee fraud going around then there ever use to be. This is a result of a number of reasons such as poor economy, poor morals and just plain the way people turn out to be over the year’s. But many boss’ have a hard [...]
Advertising on Idle Slot Machines
Las Vegas based Reel-TV has developed technology that enables commercials and other marketing messages to appear on slot machine video screens while the machines are idle. The Las Vegas Sun has more.
According to Bloomberg Businessweek, Dan Reynolds didn’t set out to become an entrepreneur. Instead, the full-time firefighter and former commercial truck salesman from suburban Chicago wanted to hire on with a big crime-scene cleanup company. But when he was treated rudely during his interview in early 2007, he vowed to found his own company as [...]
Art Entrepreneur Supplies Unique Signs To The Image Conscious
According to The Commercial Appeal, Dan Oppenheimer is truly a renaissance man. He’s acquired companies, sold companies and invented companies — and most are still going strong. Through all his endeavors and adventures, there has been a consistent, creative impulse. “My mother was a portrait artist and my dad was in the savings and loan [...]
From behind home plate, Jason Klein and Casey White look proudly at the Reading Phillies’ flamethrower Phillippe Aumont. It’s not his high-priced arm they’re admiring, it’s what he’s wearing. “They’re the only team with pink on their uniforms,” White says. Bloomberg Businessweek reports that Klein and White, who are each 30 years old, are the [...]
For Multipreneurs, One Is Never Enough
Joe Dwyer had a simple formula that he used for success when he was launching his first business; work until you drop. That is exactly what he did reports Chicago Business. He often worked seven days a week, rolling off his chair to the cold office floor for a few hours’ sleep. That business took [...]
We’re hooked on fish tacos — and it’s about time. Only now is mass culture gobbling up fish tacos at a rate that is making them one of the restaurant industry’s top trends. Taco Bell, the Mexican fast food stalwart for decades, recently announced it will offer them in stores nationwide next year. But it [...]
Dr. Jeffrey R. Cornwall over at The Christian Science Monitor has been observing more and more business owners who, although their businesses have survived the economic downturn, seem to be losing heart. The stress and strain caused by these difficult times has worn on them. But doing business in today’s economy requires a steady hand, [...]
5 Reasons Entrepreneurs Are Taking The Plunge
Why are entrepreneurs starting new businesses in record numbers? The first chapter of Clate Mask’s new book, Conquer the Chaos, makes the case we’re in an “Entrepreneurial Revolution” and it’s happening due to five big reasons. 1. Corporate disillusionment. Downsizing, outsourcing overseas, pension scandals and general corporate irresponsibility have left employees disillusioned and embittered. 2. [...]
The TV Hat looks like some thing out of a “SNL” sketch, but it’s no joke. The cheesy As Seen on TV ad for the $30 hat — essentially a black curtain hanging from a baseball cap with a ludicrously long bill — has quickly become the hot new viral video, reports The New York [...]
Intuit Scouting For Startup Partners
VentureBeat reports that startups with business and financial tools should check their calendar for Aug. 16. That’s when Intuit, the maker of popular financial software like QuickBooks and Quicken, will be holding its second annual Entrepreneur Day, where it invites startups to its Mountain View, Calif., campus to meet with executives and discuss business partnerships. [...]
Chicago Tribune: At 22, Scott Skelly already has a national reputation in his field – corn. The recent college graduate has been creating corn mazes since he was an enterprising 9-year-old who persuaded his dad to let him cut a few paths with dead ends in a cornfield on the family’s 200-acre farm. His first [...]
Erasing Yourself From Internet Is Impossible
It’s been almost two decades since mainstream users began trekking into the library-slash-playground known as the World Wide Web. Now, several years into that excursion, many are taking a long hard look at the trail they’ve left behind. The San Francisco Chronicle asked is it even possible to exit the Internet? The short answer is [...]
While many start-up companies start locally and grow into international markets, a small start-up company called ZIPZ Shoes did just the opposite. Facing a tough U.S. economy, ZIPZ immediately focused their energy abroad to widen the sales area for product launch. This two-prong approach has really proved to be successful as their unique interchangeable shoe [...]
Mail Online: Many mothers struggle to produce enough breast milk to feed a growing baby. But when Toni Ebdon gave birth she found herself with so much she decided to bottle it up and sell it on the internet. Miss Ebdon got the idea when a friend laughed that she had enough breast milk to [...]
New Advertiser: Typing Bug Virtual Assistant Services
We’re happy to welcome Typing Bug Virtual Assistant Services onboard as new advertiser. They are promoting their mentoring program designed for new virtual assistants. Typing Bug Virtual Assistant Services offers a mentoring program designed for new virtual assistants. This 30-day unlimited program is offered via email and is completely self-paced. This doesn’t mean that you [...]
Student ingenuity at finding jobs has created some interesting enterprises tapping into the Hamilton market. The Hamilton Spectator reports that the 15 successful local candidates of the 2010 Ontario Summer Company program have businesses ranging from organic garlic growing to autism intervention for parents. Robin Hallett, a McMaster University PhD biochemistry student, had a vegetable [...]
Economic Slump Stirs Up Home Grown Opportunity
Los Angeles Times: For Marlene Baroli-Turati, life has become an obsession with sugar and fruit. After working two decades as a project manager for Boeing Co., she was laid off during a round of recession-fueled cutbacks in 2008. “I had always made jams and jellies as gifts,” said Baroli-Turati, 44, who lives in Lake Forest [...]
Shoppers Picky As They Head Back To Stores
CNNMoney says sales at major retailers rose for a 10th straight month in June, but mixed results reported Thursday signaled that consumers are still cautious. According to sales tracker Thomson Reuters, which looks at monthly sales for 28 leading chains such as Macy’s, Target, Costco and J.C. Penney, June same-store sales rose 3.1%. That was [...]
Is putting a sandwich in a can and calling it a “Candwich” the next can’t-miss billion-dollar idea? According to The New York Times, even if it is, investors in Utah who put $145 million in the hands of a money manager named Travis L. Wright will still have thinner wallets. A lawsuit by the federal [...]
New Service Saves Students from Ever Being Late Again
Class Texts is a service that delivers text notifications before class begins to help make sure that students are never tardy or miss class. I recently had the opportunity to ask the founder, Chad Aharon, a few questions about the business. What is Class Texts? Class Texts delivers text notifications before class begins making sure [...]
