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My Biz: MagnoGrip

According to a story in BusinessWeek, Andre Woolery had already done a lot–starting an IT company, opening a Caribbean restaurant, and enrolling at Stanford University’s business school–before he started MagnoGrip in Menlo Park, Calif. Woolery, 32, who was born and raised in Jamaica, got the idea for his latest venture in 2005 after he helped

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My Biz: The Comfort Company

Renee Wood says she’s used to weeping at work. She runs an online bereavement-gift outfit, Comfort Co., from suburban Geneva and gets calls all day from people who want to buy something special for someone who has just lost a loved one, reports BusinessWeek. Compassion comes naturally to Wood–she was a social worker in a

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My Biz: Little Pim

Her father, renowned linguist Dr. Paul Pimsleur, was the brains behind a language learning system that bears his last name. So when Julia Pimsleur Levine, then a documentary filmmaker, wanted to teach her first son how to speak French, she was understandably picky. According to BusinessWeek, audio learning materials for myriad languages based on her

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My Biz: Harrison Harmonicas

The harmonica may seem as American as the blues. But for years, virtually every harmonica in the U.S. was made somewhere else, with Germany’s Hohner accounting for most of them. Musicians now have a homegrown alternative reports BusinessWeek. On Feb. 1, Harrison Harmonicas shipped its first batch of products from a workshop in a business

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My Biz: YoYo Lip Gloss

BusinessWeek reports that Angie Onassis Parlionas admits she was “obsessed with lip gloss as a kid.” But between softball games and wrestling matches, she often ended up having to buy yet another tube after losing the one she had been using. Today’s generation of girls can be flighty, and it won’t cost them. Parlionas, 31,

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My Biz: Beer Chips

When Brett Stern sees a problem, he fixes it. A lifelong tinkerer, the 50-year-old inventor used his expertise in industrial design to market snack foods, so says BusinessWeek. Unable to find a beer-flavored potato chip, Stern whipped up his own batch. Within two years, he was shipping packages of aptly named Beer Chips, which retail

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