Archive for the 'Profiles' Category
Real Estate Photography Specialists
Have you ever wondered who took the photos that you see of beautiful homes up for sale? It is said that a photo can speak a thousand words, and it has never been more true than when we look at a home listing. A bad photo will do nothing for the sale. However, a beautiful [...]
The talk of health care is in the air, and it is not about to go away. Thankfully, there are businesses stepping up to fill a need for affordable, convenient, high quality care. One of these businesses is Doctors Express. A doctors office might follow a strict schedule, but most of our needs do not. [...]
ECHOage Eco-Friendly Birthday Parties
If you’ve ever wanted to throw your child a party that would give back, ECOage is probably the service for you. The first step to an eco-friendly birthday party is to go paperless. This service helps you do that by offering a variety of unique, fun electronic invitations for you to choose from. Once everyone [...]
Ruth Haldeman moved to rural Hot Springs, Ark., in 2002 and promptly took in a couple of orphan chicks. She soon discovered chickens poop–a lot. According to Entrepreneur.com, in the interest of keeping her house relatively clean, Haldeman broke out her sewing machine and designed a roomy cloth diaper with a disposable liner. As time [...]
Batteries Plus Franchise Opportunity
Batteries Plus is a franchise that is dedicated to batteries of all kinds. Whether it is for a cellphone, laptop, or even a car, they pride themselves on having it available for customers. For as long as people will need batteries, there will be a need for this type of business. The first location was [...]
Slinky…Fun For A Girl Or A Boy
Who didn’t spend hours as a child sending a Slinky down the stairs? The metal toy has entertained kids and adults alike since it hit Gimbels department store shelves in November 1945. How much do you know about the helical spring toy? Luckily, Answers.com has the facts about everything, including the Slinky. 1. During the [...]
Machinist Turned (Legal) Moonshiner
When Lee Palleschi was a boy, his dad made wine in the basement. He loved to watch the stomping of the grapes and the sweet smell of the fermenting grapes. His father explained the entire winemaking process to him,but being a young boy, he was more interested in other things and didn’t grow up to [...]
Traditionally, companies like Google Adsense pay publishers more than thirty days after the’ve run their advertisements on the publisher’s site. Other ad networks can sometimes have as much as a 100 day lag between the time that they say you’ve earned money and when they send it. This delay can really hamper the growth of [...]
Karen Wildman and Lisa Holmes were constantly battling malfunctioning electronics due to moisture and water damage. The sisters set out to invent a solution. and they did! Their new product, Bheestie Bag, is designed to ‘dry out’ electronic devices: cell phones, iPods, etc. We previously mentioned them here. Here’s how it works. You simply take [...]
As the owners of Water Impressions found out, the bottle is worth more than the water: The company, originally called Tennessee Branch Water, started out as a five-gallon bottle and cooler service that they purchased from its retiring owner. The Grahams had been customers of the water service for several years. They decided to buy [...]
Starting from Scrap: My Favorite Business Book of 2010 (So Far)
If you enjoy the kinds of businesses we profile here on Business Opportunities Weblog, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that you’ll enjoy the book Starting from Scrap by Stephen Greer. In 1993 at the age of 24, American Stephen Greer gave up his steady back office job in Germany and moved to [...]
After Paul Sadowski’s wife died and he remarried, he and his new bride realized that they both had boxes and boxes of family photos. They agonized over how to display them, but every conventional method of storing and displaying photographs they tried left them with too many memories stored away in boxes. They decided that [...]
MakeMySummer.com: Summer Camp Jobs
MakeMySummer.com launched last year as a way for students from the UK to find jobs in American summer camps. I recently had the opportunity to ask the founded Jacqueline Cole some questions about her business. What is MakeMySummer.com? MakeMySummer.com is a website where students can gain information and inspiration about how they can spend their [...]
Giancarlo Massaro is a 20 year old college student and the founder of AnyLuckyDay.com. He has been promoting companies since January 2009. His initial idea was simple: he contacted companies to see if they would be interested in sponsoring a contest on his site. Unfortunately, being that his site was so new, no companies were [...]
Pez was invented in 1927 by Eduard Haas III, a Viennese food-products mogul. Small, rectangular and mint-flavored (the name is a contraction of pfefferminz, the German word for peppermint), the candy was marketed to adults as an alternative to smoking. Originally sold in tins, Pez was repackaged in the late 1940s in plain, long-stemmed dispensers [...]
12 Facts About Entrepreneurs That Will Surprise You
The Kauffman foundation for entrepreneurship released a report titled “The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur”. It’s based on a survey of 549 company founders across a variety of industries, reports OnStartUps.com. 1. The average and median age of company founders when they started their current companies was 40. 2. 95.1 percent of respondents themselves had earned [...]
Inventor Credited With 405 Patents
Inventors are made, not born, and anyone has the potential to come up with new ideas, said Jack Mandelman, a retired electrical engineer, in a story in The Times-News. He should know. Many people have never heard of the Flat Rock resident, but every time they turn on their computer or use a cell phone [...]
Becoming An Accidental Entrepreneur
Susan Baida at the Current Mom blog discusses her becoming an accidental entrepreneur. I wasn’t someone who always dreamed of being an entrepreneur. I was content in corporate America, building upon a 17-year career in brand marketing. I had an impressive resume including world-renowned companies such as Avon, Estee Lauder and Starwood Hotels. I enjoyed [...]
How Build-a-Bear Invented A Bear Market
Founder Maxine Clark tells Fortune Small Business how she built Build-a-Bear Workshop into a $468 million business. Early in my career, Stanley Goodman, who was then CEO of May, said something that has stuck with me: “Retailing is entertainment, and when customers have fun, they spend more money.” I wasn’t sure what I wanted to [...]
Business Week: 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 payback. His [...]
Jennifer Walzer Was Young, Fearless And Fed Up
Jennifer Walzer was one of more than 90,000 employees and referred to only as a number; never by name. She was feeling overlooked, overworked and underappreciated before starting the successful data storage company Backup My Info!in 2002 reports Entrepreneur. Walzer decided to take her first leap of faith and launch her first business in 1998. [...]
Declaration of (Financial) Independence
We’ve all heard of the man who bought a $4 painting at a garage sale, found an original copy of the Declaration of Independence inside, and sold it for $2.4 million. A once-in-a-lifetime story, right? Not so much, actually. Mental Floss reports that Michael Sparks was visiting a Nashville thrift store, where he bought a [...]
Reader’s Digest has an interesting profile and interview with the guy who parlayed a childhood fascination with computers into one of the nation’s most-visited news websites, Kevin Rose. Digg.com gets 35 million different visitors a month. One link from Digg’s home page can produce a tsunami of traffic that can turn a Web newcomer into [...]
What do you know about the toothpick industry? Here are a couple of links that might enlighten you: The Straight Dope: Toothpick manufacturers (most of them are in Maine) steam birch logs to make them easier to cut, then “veneer” them, which means they peel each log into a thin sheet, sort of like unrolling [...]
Business Week on the creation of IdeaPaint: Sometimes a product idea is as obvious as the wall right in front of you. In 2005, three Babson College undergrads were brainstorming on a whiteboard, but had to keep erasing proposals to make room for more. Then, recalls Jeff Avalon, one of them said, “Wouldn’t it be [...]
John Nese is the proprietor of Galcos Soda Pop Stop in LA. His father ran it as a grocery store, and when the time came for John to take charge, he decided to convert it into the ultimate soda-lovers destination.
Business Week: 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 heavy cast-iron [...]
Picking The Brain Of Bixi’s Inventor
The Gazette: Reclining in his Peel St. office in an ergonomic chair of his own design, wearing a sleek black golf shirt with matching rims and watchband – Michel Dallaire is Bixi personified. Smart, bold, elegant. And yet, says the Montreal industrial designer who dreamed up the Bixi system, he’s been wearing the same type [...]
$12 for a Chance at Minor Riches
USA Today: North Carolina gold tends to be small flakes. The largest found at the Cotton Patch since owner Jeff Pickett took over two years ago was 8 grams — about the size of your pinky nail. At current prices, that would be worth about $240. “Anything larger than that is a heart attack,” Burns [...]
Portrait Of An Entrepreneur: 40-Year-Old Family Man
Associated Press: What does an entrepreneur look like? A recent survey by the Kauffman Foundation, a pro-entrepreneur group, found that company founders, mostly in the technology sector, tended to be married, middle-class and middle-aged. • Family: Nearly 70 percent said they were married when they started the business. About 60 percent had at least one [...]
Mr. Fixit: What it Used to Be Like in Small Towns
photo credit: HVargas Des Moines Register: A typical morning for Larry Lyon includes a lot of phone calls. The owner of Mr. Fix It always has repairs to make, new jobs to examine, contractors to direct. The first calls on Thursday came to Lyon’s office, conveniently attached to his Waukee home. Lyon, a member of [...]
Mom Entrepreneurs Conceive, Give Birth To Fascinating Bizs
WRAL Local Tech Wire: Who would have ever thought that making a plaster cast of an expectant mother’s belly could be turned into a work of art, let alone a business? Leave it to a female entrepreneur to conceive the idea. Tisha DeShields of Atlanta is one of 200 working mothers who have built successful [...]
Etsy: Arts and Crafts are Big Business
Crains NY: As a high–school dropout who had gone on to attend half a dozen colleges before finally emerging from New York University with a major in the classics, Rob Kalin seemed to have few—if any—of the ingredients for entrepreneurial success. Instead, at the age of 25 he was just another aspiring furniture designer, working [...]
Fleece and Flannel Mean Comfort and Security
Fortune Small Business: When consumers get cold feet, what’s an entrepreneur to do? Sell them footed pajamas: a grown-up version of Dr. Denton’s kiddie sleepwear. Four years ago Valerie Johnson started Big Feet Pajama Co. from the basement of her Las Vegas home. The former stockbroker, who says she can’t even sew a straight seam, [...]
Find Your Loved Ones After a Disaster: WeAreSafeAndSound.com
Just in time for the start of hurricane season comes a new business called We Are Safe And Sound. It is a electronic lost and found bulletin board for families. Families pre-register for the site and receive a login ID, password and voicemail box number. If, unfortunately, they’re involved in a disaster like a hurricane, [...]
Accurate Leads For Your Company
photo credit: doug88888 I am not one who believes in buying peoples information in order to sell them on a service, I have always thought of that as an invasion of one’s privacy. However, I do realize that many businesses use this approach in order to up their sales. The only problem is that how [...]
From Mompreneur To Mompreneur: MaryPat Kavanagh Makes It Her Business To Help
LA Working Mom’s Examiner: MaryPat Kavanagh could be considered a Mompreneur Extraordinaire. She’s a mother of 4 girls, runs several businesses, and is an advocate for home-based business moms. She does admit that it hasn’t always been easy. Kavanagh, who has extensive experience in marketing and small business, has owned retail companies, restaurants and consulting [...]
Bad Economy: Start a Business, He Did!
photo credit: foundphotoslj The current economic situation is giving birth to new businesses everyday. One new small tutoring business is the brainchild of Indiana college student Matthew Fouts. Last year, we linked to a story about his business, but I thought I’d ask him the inspiration for starting his business. Dane: Matthew, why’d you start [...]
Healthy World Environmental is a turnkey moisture inspection and mold remediation business opportunity. Their process is safe for the environment.
Here’s a story real life company that’s doing the equivalent of selling ice to eskimos, selling bottled NYC municipal water to New Yorkers: Two teachers on their lunch break scanned a refrigerated shelf inside a Manhattan coffee shop lined with drink bottles: Naked Juice, Perrier, Smartwater, New York City tap water. “Tap water?” said Alison [...]
Greatest Inventors You’ve Never Heard Of
News-Journalonline.com: To be sure, Edison deserves the credit he has received, and then some. But there are other inventors whose contributions have done as much to advance society and deserve a place of honor — and not just the more well-known inventors and innovators like the Wright Brothers, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford or Samuel [...]
Easing Into Business Ownership
Thinking about starting your own business is both exciting and daunting, especially when the economy seems uncertain. But, if you have the option to ease into it, it could be a sound decision for your future. Franchises such as Snap-on Tools are creating opportunities that assist qualified candidates get their business up and rolling. Through [...]
A Women's Retreat That Promises A Short, Affordable Getaway? Sign Me Up!
Stress is no stranger to professional women. That is why it’s so important to step away from work and stress and take care of yourself. Women In Nature is a short affordable getaway aimed at professional women who need a break from the day to day stress of work and life. Based around wellness and [...]
Inventor Takes On The Fishing Lure, And Improves it
Emmett Stacy has always been innovative. When something needed done, he’d almost always find a way to do it. That’s because he is an inventor. He has successfully created the SureCatch lure line, the SureCatch combo rod, and the tri-way fish attractor. In the 3 years since he first started selling his fishing gear, Emmett [...]
Chicago Tribune: For 25 years, Bruce Lund and his small band of workers have been dreaming up toys that have thrilled kids around the globe — hydrogen-powered rockets, talking microscopes, and one of the company’s most successful toys, the T.M.X. Elmo Extra Special Edition — the fuzzy, red toy that collapses into fits of giggles [...]
It Took 5,127 Prototypes To Create Success
Digital Journal: To create a successful product, Sir James Dyson had to create 5,127 prototypes first. Add 14 years of debt and multiple lawsuits to evade and you get a best-seller in the U.S. and in Europe. It started in 1978, he got vexed with his vacuum cleaner breaking repeatedly, so he created the first [...]
From Hanging Out With A-List Stars To Working From Home
Not many women can say their story goes from the world of fame to staying home and running a small at-home business but Susan Pascal can. She has spent time around the likes of Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp, yet nothing was quite as rewarding for her as being home with her children. In 2001, [...]
At first shrinkwrapping might not seem like a very profitable business, until you consider where those services are used most. Shrinkwrapping has been used on boats, RV’s, industrial equipment, freight, and that’s only the beginning. It is an important tool that is utilized often, whether it is for shipping or storage. With at least 17 [...]
Self Improvement Rollout Shelves
Although the home improvement industry has felt the effects of a slumping economy, some improvements are necessary and help keep this industry in business. One thing that people tend to enjoy are inexpensive ways to make their day-to-day life easier. Shelf Improvement Rollout Shelves offer a way for those in the home improvement industry a [...]
Although they are admittedly a Direct Sales business opportunity, Green Irene is not another Avon or Tupperware business. Known as Eco-Consultants, these men and women offer their services to people that are interested in conserving energy within their home. The $99 Green Home Makeover is their main product. It is a consultation which takes 60-90 [...]
