Archive for August 2010
Poll Update: Most Popular Toy Ever Made
Firebox.com, an online toy and gizmo gift store, and toy news website Toyology.com just announced the results of their survey of over 3,000 adults aged 20 to 40 for their choice of most popular toy ever made. It looks like you guys are big Lego fans. And you are correct, Lego was selected as the [...]
New Bizop Classified Ads This Week
New listings from the last two weeks on the Business Opportunities Weblog Classifieds. A Monster Of An Opportunity, A Life Saving Cause Foreclosure Cleanup Contract Forms-free-bid Estimate Form-instant Download This Is A Real Business. On-demand Savings Is Easy! Independent Grave Care Specialists Needed Join Our Team Independent Grave Care Specialists Needed – Grave Groomers, Llc [...]
7th Annual West Coast Franchise Expo
The 7th Annual West Coast Franchise Expo is scheduled for November 5-7 at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, CA. This is the largest franchise event on the West Coast. The West Coast Franchise Expo brings together hundreds of the leading franchise companies along with thousands of candidates from California plus a dozen [...]
Inventor Legends: Edwin Perkins
Edwin Perkins had always enjoyed studying chemistry and inventing things. As a child he experimented with home-made concoctions such as flavoring extracts and perfumes in his mother’s kitchen. Meanwhile, his father opened a general store in town where the boy was introduced to new and exciting food products such as Jell-O and first got interested [...]
Entrepreneur Makes A Business Out Of School Lunch
Brian Busick is the founder and president of School House Grill, a company that delivers lunch to a variety of private schools. Before that, though, he dabbled in a few other businesses reports Thomas Heath from The Washington Post. Around 2004, he contacted Jerry’s Subs & Pizza, a Gaithersburg-based chain of restaurants, and eventually bought [...]
Sports Fan’s Biz Off To A Running Start
Ten-year-old Brady Miller couldn’t hit the ball right. So his dad, Rick Miller, made a training tool that gave him clues about how to swing the bat, reports the Dallas Morning News. Two years later, the RBI Pro Swing is manufactured in Irving, packaged in Fort Worth and sold in sports stores across the country. [...]
How Sweet The Sweets Business Can Be
After a career in the financial field, Korinne Seel found herself a stay-at-home mom with the itch to try something a little different. So she turned her hobby into a business. Korinne has always enjoyed entertaining people but her passion wasn’t in the cooking. No, she found her passion in the presentation of the food [...]
Twins Turn Invention Into A Booming Biz
According to The Peoria Times, it all started when twin brothers Joshua and Zachary Neyens were just 6 years old and playing in their garage with some stretchy fabric. Zach said, ‘Daddy, why don’t we buy some more fabric,’” Jay Neyens said. “I replied, ‘I think we are done buying fabric, we have a ton [...]
Website Offers Insight To Prosective MBA’s
John A. Byrne it using his bank of knowledge and research on schools to help potential MBA’s find the right school for them through his new website, Poets and Quants. His aim is to share with students a closer look at the various degree programs and to tell the truth about the facilities, their teaching [...]
Double-Dip Recession? Small Bizs Think So
According to The Orlando Sentinel, the Discover Small Business Watch in July found that 75 percent of small business owners surveyed believe it is likely or highly likely that the economy will slip into another recession before it fully recovers. A total of 58 percent of small business owners rated the economy as poor, up [...]
Poll: Most Popular Toy Ever Made
Firebox.com, an online toy and gizmo gift store, and toy news website Toyology.com just announced the results of their survey of over 3,000 adults aged 20 to 40 for their choice of most popular toy ever made. Can you guess which toy won? Barbie My Little Pony Nintendo Game Boy Lego Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles [...]
I’m Back from NYC. Thanks for all your help!
I’m back in the wilds of California after my week in New York City. I was there filming two parts of a documentary on small businesses for Yellow Book. The first part we filmed at Urban Martial Arts, a martial arts school in Brooklyn. The second was at Seal & Company, a children’s boutique store [...]
Unique products to inspire and amuse. Daddle Saddle. Ol’ Dad just wasn’t good enough. Squeez Bacon. Does it come with a nipple? Weird Luggage Stickers. Slap them on your buddie’s suitcase, then step back and watch the fun. 12 Beer Can Holster. Perfect for your hard-to-buy-for alcoholic friends. Photos by incrediblethings.com/toxel.com/inewidea.com/uniquedaily.com.
Entrepreneurs With A Higher Purpose
It’s not every day that an entrepreneur that spends his time bring electricity to remote parts of Africa can spend a year with two Silicon Valley financiers and a retired tech exec. Yet for the 8th year in a row, over 20 social entrepreneurs like that one have been invited to Santa Clara University’s Global [...]
Get Out Of The Office To Get Creative
Lisa Gundry, Professor of Management at the DePaul Center for Creativity & Innovation offers this tip to get creative. Are you planning a vacation, weekend getaway, or staycation this summer? As you think about what you might want to do or try, consider adding a visit to a business that you have always wanted to [...]
Advertising By Women Targeting Women
Ever since high school Cynthia Saatkamp has known what she wanted to do and that was advertising reports The Commercial Appeal. At first, she wanted to become a designer, but then she changed her mind. “I realized it was the psychology behind the creative that really made my heart sing and my wheels turn — [...]
See your dreams dashed to the ground is an excruciating experience – especially, when you dare to dream big. Lottery addicts go through it so often. The art pair Ghost of a Dream, however, takes the burden of discarded lottery tickets off your shoulders and transforms them into such stuff that you always wished to [...]
It all started when he was 14 years old. Using some pocket change Christian Owens launched a business. Just a few short years later, now at 16, he has made $1 mil through his business reports Mail Online. Branchr was a smash hit with internet sites, made a staggering £500,000 in its first year and [...]
Carrie Kirby over at Wisebread.com recently had the chance to hear four Top Rated Sellers, all people who make their living selling merchandise on eBay and even hire employees to help them do so, share their secrets. They block problem customers, and even shoppers who ask negative questions. Cindy Shebley: “I think that it’s the [...]
Truck Offers Mobile Bottling For DIY Brewers
For small brewers around the world, bottling a beer is something that must typically be done manually on a very small scale or—with commercial help—on a very large one. Enter Tom Wood’s, a British brewer that recently launched a mobile bottling operation in the form of a well-equipped truck that can drive to virtually any [...]
The New York Times reports that although women are still slightly in the minority among global Web users, they are closing ground with men and, once connected, spend about two more hours online a month on average. According to data from comScore, females exceed males particularly in communications, devoting about one-third of their online time [...]
Google’s Free Apps Clicks With Business Owners
Micaela Birmingham has gone from new mom to entrepreneur in less than a year. When she was given a stroller for her baby she was less than trilled with the lack of sun protection so she created her own and started selling it. Now this new business owner runs her entire business, CityMum, using free [...]
Designed by Bangkok advertising agency CreativeJuice for plastic model kit giant Tamiya, the letters in this card can be popped out and snapped together to build a robot, a plane, a boat, or a car. Editor’s note: Sure hope it comes with instructions. Via: Makezine.com Photo by Makezine.com.
Mac Genius Fixes Computers The Apple Store Won’t
What do you do when your iMac needs repairs but it is past its warranty date? If you’re in the Tampa area then you can take your computer to the Mac Genius, Steve Bush, reports Tampa Bay Online. “We fix Macs, that’s what we do,” said Steve Bush, Owner of Screwbox Solutions in downtown Tampa. [...]
Some investors looked askance at Geoff Cook’s choice to locate myYearbook, the social networking site he co-founded, in New Hope, Pennsylvania, Inc.com reports. Didn’t he know that New York, Boston, and the Valley were the places to be? Cook feels that there have been a number of advantages to running his 80-person start-up from a [...]
In honor of National Inventors’ Month, UncommonGoods is issuing a wide-open design challenge to find our next Uncommon Inventor or Designer. This contest is looking for a product with a spark of inventive genius, a flash of innovation and something that makes us say, Aha! Why didn’t we think of that? Oh, and did we [...]
Greeting Cards You Don’t Have To Whisper About
Have you ever tried to find the perfect greeting card, the one that would convey to the recipient exactly how you felt? No matter how many cards you may look through sometimes the right one just doesn’t seem to exist. Sheila Sylvestre of Whisper Greetings had a childhood dream. She was enamored with greeting cards [...]
THAT’S MY BUSINESS!: Kleenslate Concepts
In today’s vidcast, Rich Whittle talks with Julia Rhodes, who took her dry-erase marker eraser invention and turned it into a big business.
Entrepreneur Takes Advantage Of Melting Glaciers
Even as scientists and environmentalists fret over the continued melting of Greenland’s glaciers, at least one person has seen an opportunity for money to be made, reports Digital Journal. Iluliaq Original Water is melted glacier water, and is the brainchild of Julien Caquineau, who has spent three years in Greenland developing the idea. It comes [...]
University Of Pittsburgh Launches Center For Women In Business
Yesterday it was announced that the Institute for Entrepreneurial Excellence at University of Pittsburgh is launching the Center for Women in Business. They will be featuring programs that were previously a part of PowerLink. With this switch PowerLink will remain a nonprofit but it will become inactive reports the Pittsburgh Business Times. “Women start companies [...]
Patently Apple reports that on August 5, 2010, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that reveals various concepts behind a newly advanced Smart Bicycle System in development. The premise is rather like Apple’s Nike + iPod system for runners except for cyclists. While the system is for individuals, it’s [...]
Why spend a fortune for a dress you only intend to wear for a few months while you’re pregnant? Rather than buy and hang onto various dresses or maternity outfits one website has pregnant women considering rentals instead reports stltoday.com. It’s rare that most women of normal-size get more than a few wears out of [...]
The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread
In the early 20th century, people across the world cut their own bread, one slice at a time. But in 1902, a Missouri inventor named Otto Frederick Rohwedder couldn’t get his bread slices to fit inside the slots of his toaster. Thus began his 26-year quest to invent a bread-slicing machine. Although Rohwedder had a [...]
‘KickStart’ing Business For African Farmers
A non-profit is hoping to help fight poverty in Africa by helping the farmers grow better crops reports voanews.com. Through a program called KickStart, he sells, rather then gives, small pumps to poor farmers in an effort to encourage entrepreneurship. This water pump — called the Super Money Maker — is designed to make a [...]
Recession Cost Small Bizs $2 Trillion
Inc.com reports that a new study shows that less than one in 10 small businesses believe the recession is over. The Quarterly Economic Pulse Survey, conducted in July by financial services market research firm Barlow Research, reveals that 14 percent of small businesses are less than 50 percent confident they’ll still be in business by [...]
INVENTOR’S JOURNAL: Patent Basics
In this edition of Inventor’s Journal, Rich Whittle teams up with MIT Libraries to learn what a patent is and why patents can be important to your research. If you’re interested in viewing the rest of the video tutorials, use the links below. These videos were produced by MIT Libraries and we use them under [...]
Last Thursday, we first told you about 7-year-old entrepreneur Julie Murphy and how county health inspectors shut down her lemonade stand. After their public image soured, elected officials apologized for shutting down Julie’s lemonade stand because she didn’t possess the proper permit. According to The Oregonian, a local radio station and tire store set her [...]
It takes more than just ingenuity to get a product onto retailers’ shelves and into the homes of millions of American consumers. It takes money, marketing and distribution–and most inventors don’t have any of these things. Michael Weinstein is an entrepreneur and internet marketer who runs the Internet division of Lipenwald Inc., a 60-person direct-response [...]
Entrepreneur Enters The Flea Market Business
The next time you’re in Stafford, VA you might want to keep your eyes open for a new flea market that has just launched. Doug Shirley started the mostly open market last month on a piece of commercial property he owns reports Flea Market Zone. He also operates a pet salon, crab shack, and a [...]
According to a story in The Grand Rapids Press, young women shaking their pom-poms is a solid gold advertising strategy for a local precious metals buyer. But city officials say it’s against the rules — and creating a dangerous distraction for motorists. Great Lakes Gold Rush hires women 18 and older to wear thigh-high shorts [...]
The Rich Future Of Gourmet Chocolate
Nick Frappier hopes to see a day where people will finish off their meal with the perfect chocolate dessert. That day, he feels, will come but not just yet says Deseret News. “I believe it will happen in my lifetime, but I expect I’ll be ordering the fruit tart for a long time,” Frappier said [...]
It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which a business takes away a perk to increase sales, but many independent coffee houses have decided to stop offering free Wi-Fi, at least during certain days and hours, The Los Angeles Times reports. Although these coffee shops were some of the first retail businesses to offer free [...]
Perfect for coffee drinkers without pockets. The RuMe cuff is a great little multi-purpose product that takes care of both. Designed as a reusable sleeve for a coffee cup, it also features an additional zippered pocket that offers a safe place for cash, cards or keys. Wear it as a wristband on your way in [...]
Traditional advertising can no longer hold a candle to promotion via social media and aiming to make the value of such social endorsements explicit, Pay with a Tweet is a platform that lets content owners sell their goods in exchange for a single tweet rather than cash, reports trendspotter Springwise. Developed by Innovative Thunder, Pay [...]
I think it is safe to say that everyone has dealt with head lice at least once in their lives. Whether we had it when we were kids or our children came home from school with a bad case of these bugs. Either way, this is an experience that few of us would want to [...]
I tagged this post “advertising”, but it was because I couldn’t find the “creepy” tag. It’s a commercial for a British fruit juice and shows a man rearranging the pieces of his head like they’re parts of a Rubik’s Cube puzzle. It was made by the ad agency CHI & Partners and directed by Ulf [...]
According to a story in The New York Times, Jane Slupecki with the Connecticut Department of Agriculture, took a group of dairy farmers to a brainstorming dinner. She had a small grant to try to find possible solutions to a big, stinky problem: cow manure, tons of it. Cow poop is cow poop,” said Slupecki, [...]
Solar Panel Business Slowly Growing
Steve Johnson opened his business, Lightwave Solar Electric LLC, in 2006. He offers a full-service solar panel installation and he has been involved in some of the largest projects around Tennessee reports the Tennessean.com. The Nashville-based company, which also designs rooftop photovoltaic systems, posted $2.7 million in sales last year and expects to double that [...]
Entrepreneur Takes Stake In Own Invention
Bill Stevenson believes he has found a winner. In late March, Stevenson, 62, was awarded a U.S. utility patent for his SuperStake product, a stake-and-base support system to allow people to securely grow items such as tomato plants in planters, The News Journal reports. A good idea only comes along once or twice in a [...]
Tradeshow Helps Mompreneurs Connect With The Public
Sue Taylor and Monica Hornof have figured out the secret to balancing a career and raising a family so now they are sharing that information with other women. They are the hosts of the Ottawa West Mompreneur Tradeshow that starts on August 15th reports Kanata EMC. The show will take place from 11 a.m. to [...]
