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Business Opportunities Weblog

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Facelift Bungee: The Temporary Mini Facelift

Posted: 17 May 2012 04:30 AM PDT

WXYZ:

She looked into what a mini-facelift would cost. The $5,000 price tag eliminated that idea.

"I went home and got my makeup mirror, and I just couldn't stop thinking. I just wished there was a way that I could look like this, affordably," said Aschauer.

So Kimberly invented a way.

She fastened a piece of elastic between two small combs. She attached the combs to small braids on both sides of her face. Magically…without surgery…her face lifted.

"Right before my very eyes when I was looking in the mirror, I watched ten years come off my face!"

She called the invention "Facelift Bungee." She came up with a clever way to market it – in a jar usually reserved for wrinkle creams.

The Handwork Studio: Camp For Crafty Kids

Posted: 17 May 2012 03:30 AM PDT

PR Newswire:

Thirteen years ago, mother of two Laura Kelly stood in the doorway of a kindergarten class and watched as a group of three-, four- and five-year-olds baked bread and hand-sewed little animals. Kelly was prospecting schools for her own children, and to a mother who was nervous about choosing the right one, “this felt like love.” Completely entranced by the idea that kids would sit quietly and joyfully working on these kinds of projects, Kelly reminisces, “It just felt warm, loving and safe.” At that moment, she knew this is what all kids should be doing. “When I saw the pride in their faces and how patiently they worked on their projects, I knew I wanted this for my kids.”

Kelly was determined to bring the warm, caring environment she saw that day in the classroom to her new business, which she named The Handwork Studio. After two years of teaching classes at her kitchen table, she took a chance and opened a storefront in Narberth, PA in 2003 and in 2005 incorporated summer camp into the curriculum, all while balancing motherhood and her own family life with her budding business. Almost ten years after opening her first location, Kelly has expanded the Handwork Studio to 21 camp locations across the country, making certain each of these locations has been built around her original vision of a warm, safe and educational environment for children. “To me what we do has always been about the psyche of the child,” explains Kelly, “and teaching crafts is really just a medium to do that. I wanted the kids to come to a place that felt safe for them to explore their creativity, a place where they would feel proud of their work, where they could make mistakes and have fun and over time and with practice would get better and learn more and more skills as they got older.”

What Brushing Your Teeth Tells You About Federal Grant Funding

Posted: 16 May 2012 02:59 PM PDT

The following is a guest post by Kevin Bowen.

Sonicare

To understand how federal technology grants can improve the bottom line of a small business, we need to revisit ancient times – those days when primitive technology still forced sleepy people to move one hand when brushing their teeth.

It was a barbaric era. The nation's computer users were still oppressed by floppy disks. And the Internet had not yet eliminated our need for memory. It was also an era of rampant gingivitis and tooth decay.

Where people saw rotting teeth, the federal government saw a market to advance technology, make money and improve lives. When the company GemTech applied for a grant from the Small Business Innovation Research program, it received a $50,000 grant in 1990 and a $500,000 grant in 1992 for a "sonic toothbrush." The result was the device that so many people use today – a stronger, cleaner toothbrush.

Thanks to an influx of federal research dollars, we entered an era of whiter teeth and happier dentists. Even happier were the company owners. The company changed its name to Optiva in 1995 and was later sold to Phillips. Sales have reached 1.5 million worldwide, while the company now has a $300 million value and more than 500 employees.

Collaboration and public-private partnerships are a current trend in business and government circles. Small companies that offer innovative technological solutions can seek federal grant funding under the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer program. STTR in particular looks to support collaboration with government or university researchers to commercialize technological discoveries. Here are four reasons that an innovative small business should consider collaboration:

Uncle Sam Funds It – The federal government funds innovative technological companies through its SBIR program and business-academia collaborative research through its STTR program, run through the Small Business Administration. These programs issued $172.8 million in 2011 and have issued more than $2 billion in past years.

States Fund It – Following the lead of the federal government, some states have developed their own programs for business-academia collaboration. For instance in 2005, Texas developed the Emerging Technology Fund. The program makes state funding available to companies working with academic research institutions to develop technology that can be commercialized. Through 2011, ETF reported investing $163.9 million in 133 high-tech companies.

Loosening Rules – An October 2011 Presidential memorandum instructs federal departments to increase the pace of technology transfer of federal patents to the private sector. One result is the December 2011 decision by the U.S. Department of Energy to create a pilot program to give businesses and entrepreneurs greater access to its unlicensed patents, including the ones owned by its system of national laboratories.

Gold in Them There Hills – Companies have had success bringing cutting-edge products to market using federal funds. Products include a GPS system that helps position satellites. SBIR/STTR products include the sonic toothbrush, a GPS system that helps position satellites, and many high-tech projects.

These federal avenues might be unfamiliar to some small business owners. However, if you have the talent for technological innovation, the government is likely looking for you.

Kevin Bowen is a writer working with OppMetrix, based in Dallas, Texas. The OppMetrix smart software solution connects users to federal contracts, federal grants, private grants, federal agency procurement forecasts, and market intelligence and analytics. The system delivers the right federal opportunities to large enterprises, small businesses, non-profits, local and state governments, foundations, non-profits, universities, hospitals, medical facilities, research institutions, and other organizations.

How to Attract New Customers (and Keep Old Ones)

Posted: 16 May 2012 02:46 PM PDT

With 21,000+ blog posts on this site, weird posts from the past sometimes suddenly attract a lot of attention. This old post) of Angela’s from 2008 most be even more relevant today than when it was first published.

6 Ways To Attract Customers And Keep Them Coming Back

No matter what area of business you are in, if you don't have customers than your business will eventually fail. That's why it is so important to present yourself and your product in a way which will not only attract the demographic you seek, but inspire them to come back again.

Here are 6 examples of things you can do to ensure you will not only attract new customers, but create a regular customer base.

Honda Invents Segway Replacement

Posted: 16 May 2012 02:41 PM PDT

Honda People Mover

LA Times:

On Tuesday, Honda announced its new Uni-Cub, a personal mobility device that lets you glide around the office or the aquarium perched comfortably on what looks like a trash compactor on wheels.
Like the Segway, the Uni-Cub allows the rider to control it simply by shifting her weight forward, backward or side to side.

Unlike the Segway, it is small enough to be used indoors.

Who’d ride this thing? Video below.

Dog Custody Battles are Big Biz

Posted: 16 May 2012 02:31 PM PDT

Puggle

The Week: “Breaking up is hard to do. And for Craig Dershowitz, it’s getting awfully expensive. The 34-year-old New Yorker’s ex-girlfriend, Sarah Brega, took their dog, Knuckles, when she moved to California after their split, and he’s suing to get the puggle — half pug, half beagle — back. So far, he has spent $60,000 on the cross-country legal fight.”

Photo by Rick’s Photography/ShutterStock.

Today in Entrepreneurial History: May 16

Posted: 16 May 2012 12:25 PM PDT

On this day in 1843, the first major wagon train heading for the Pacific Northwest sets out on the Oregon Trail with one thousand pioneers from Elm Grove, Missouri.

The Oregon Trail is a 2,000-mile (3,200 km) historic east-west wagon route and emigrant trail that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon and locations in between. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail spanned part of the future state of Kansas and nearly all of what are now the states of Nebraska and Wyoming. The western half of the trail spanned most of the future states of Idaho and Oregon.

The beginnings of the Oregon Trail were laid by fur trappers and traders from about 1811 to 1840 and were only passable on foot or by horseback. By 1836, when the first migrant wagon train was organized in Independence, Missouri, a wagon trail had been cleared to Fort Hall, Idaho. Wagon trails were cleared further and further west, eventually reaching all the way to the Willamette Valley in Oregon. What became called the Oregon Trail was complete even as improved roads, “cutouts”, ferries and bridges made the trip faster and safer almost every year. From various “jumping off points” in Missouri, Iowa or Nebraska Territory, the routes converged along the lower Platte River Valley near Fort Kearny, Nebraska Territory and led to rich farmlands west of the Rocky Mountains.

From the early to mid 1830s and particularly through the epoch years 1846–1869 the Oregon Trail and its many offshoots were used by about 400,000 settlers, ranchers, farmers, miners, and businessmen and their families.

Smallest Robot Hopes To Join Indian Army

Posted: 16 May 2012 04:30 AM PDT

A young man in India has created a robot that’s already made its way into record books. How he hopes to enlist it in the army, reports Bangalore Mirror.

Shirur, who completed his engineering from Basaveshwara Engineering College, Bagalkot, has developed a 61mm x 54mm x 51mm robot that is so tiny that it's bound to go unnoticed by enemies.

It is meant for surveillance and destruction of the enemy through remote control.

Shirur, who was at Sahyadri College of Engineering to participate in Srishti 2012, a state-level project exhibition and competition, told Bangalore Mirror: "Cameras fixed in the robot can send audio and video signals from a particular spot to the servers and one can operate it from remote places.

It can also function as an explosive when enemies lift it off the ground."

Photo by Crystal

The Man Who Created Nachos

Posted: 16 May 2012 04:00 AM PDT

The Huffington Post:

During World War II, wives of American military officers who lived at the Eagle Pass. Texas. base would often venture over the Rio Grande River to the nearby Mexican town of Piedras Negras. On one of these excursions, a group of women stopped at the Victory Club, a popular restaurant, for a bite to eat. And while happy to receive business, the maitre d’ who greeted the women, Ignacio Anaya, found himself in a bit of a predicament:

He couldn't locate the cook. Not wanting to turn away the patrons, he put on his chef's hat. He looked around the kitchen and threw together what he had, which according to “The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink” consisted of neat canapes of tortilla chips, cheese, and jalapeno peppers.”

Ignacio was often called Nacho for short, and the dish was named after him. Nachos continued to gain popularity for the next 20 years, but really took off thanks to a man by the name of Frank Liberto, who began to sell them as stadium food at Arlington Stadium (home of baseball's Texas Rangers at the time). Liberto made one major tweak to Anaya’s nachos:

…because real cheese didn't have a great shelf life (and melting it would require an oven or broiler), Liberto devised a fast food form of Anaya's masterpiece that was part cheese and part secret ingredients. The new sauce didn't need to be heated and, when it came to shelf life, it could likely survive a nuclear blast.

And so the nacho was born, with a missing chef to thank for it.

Photo by Luca