Jack Whelan is the co-founder of Alpha1Watch in Boston. Alpha1Watch is a year-old company that supplies institutional investors with research on high-tech stocks. Antique phonographs are a passion of ...Whelan's that started about 15 years ago when he found an old turntable that had belonged to his grandfather and fixed it with the spring from a ballpoint pen. Since then Whelan has filled the corners, shelves, and cabinets of his home with his collection of some 80 working phonographs, many of them made by the Edison Speaking Phonograph Co., which Thomas Edison created in 1878, or the Victor Talking Machine Co., which was renamed RCA Victor when RCA bought it in 1929. Whelan finds phonographs at flea markets (usually under the table, because people don't know what they are, he says), collectors' shows, country auctions, and even in the trash, from which he rescued a cracked mahogany horn - now worth $2,000, thanks to a repair he managed with glue and rope.
At City Fresh Foods, CEO Glynn Lloyd likes to hire from the neighborhood. And because the 12-year-old food-service company is headquartered in Boston's polyglot Dorchester neighborhood, Lloyd's ...payroll resembles a mini-United Nations. He has come up with an ad hoc series of practices and processes that are achieving the aim of ensuring that employees from so many different cultures work side by side productively. The highest hurdle, of course, has been communication. At monthly companywide meetings, meanwhile, multilingual employees volunteer to serve as translators. City Fresh also counts on numbers to serve as a universal language. Lloyd goes to such lengths not just to ease communication but also because it is good for his customers.
For You? Our Special Price Hyatt, Joshua
FSB : fortune small business,
03/2006, Letnik:
16, Številka:
2
Magazine Article
The movement to customized pricing is showing up more and taking more insidious forms. Scott Henderson, founder of ProTrain and True North Career Services, said that prices of the company's services ...vary based on how many one-on-one sessions a customer wants rather than the quality of the advice given. But he does not rule out someday charging according to an advisor's experience. Pay rock-bottom, and you will presumably get a coach who tells you to stay where you are, even if you are unemployed. Last month Green Hills, a supermarket in Syracuse, NY, started using biometric technology to deliver discount coupons. Sounds okay, except that many of the people have bad associations with fingerprinting -- being born, say, or pleading out on a grand theft auto rap.
Stuck on You Hyatt, Joshua
FSB : fortune small business,
12/2005, Letnik:
15, Številka:
10
Magazine Article
StarChase fires sticky projectiles at other cars from air-powered launchers mounted on police cruisers. The racquetball-sized missiles are actually GPS modules equipped with wireless modems. Once a ...vehicle is tagged, a dispatcher can track its whereabouts on any computer with Net access. Hugh Bridges, the one who came up with the concept for StarChase said that they are hoping that because of StarChase, people's lives will not be at risk if an idiot decides to steal a car or take off after being stopped for a traffic violation. StarChase applications abound in the exciting field of inventory management. Tag office supplies to find out who keeps filching those Wall Walkers that were bought to relieve executive stress.
This Time, It's Personal Hyatt, Joshua
FSB : fortune small business,
11/2005, Letnik:
15, Številka:
9
Magazine Article
X-treme Customization is everywhere. Not long ago cellphone users were satisfied with proclaiming their questionable uniqueness by downloading musical ringtones from their favorite pop artists. Now, ..."it is not enough to choose a ringtone," says Harmony Line CEO Richard Resnick. A person has got to make his own. Before the Industrial Revolution, everything was custom-built and expensive. In the 1980s plummeting technology costs and the Internet gave people "mass customization," spawning made-to-order jeans and pick-your-parts PCs. For every customization skeptic, there are ten evangelists such as Ben Serotta, whose Saratoga Springs, NY, company, Serotta Competition Bicycles, makes customized bikes.
Just Asking Hyatt, Joshua
FSB : fortune small business,
10/2005, Letnik:
15, Številka:
8
Magazine Article
Questioning, as wise entrepreneurs know, often yields rewards. So great is humanity's hunger for questions that there now seems to be growing market in providing them. Entrepreneur Maura Cassidy's ...business, Go Ask Anyone, makes "conversation cards" with banter-building questions printed on them. Lately Cassidy has been approached by giant companies, including a lingerie chain and a greeting-card maker, interested in having her design custom decks for their customers. She also been asked about producing cards for dysfunctional families, blended families, and an X-rated version. The cards could help determined business builders focus on the questions that matter.
Return of the Middle Man Hyatt, Joshua
FSB : fortune small business,
09/2005, Letnik:
15, Številka:
7
Magazine Article
Experts proclaimed that the age of disintermediation, wherein middlemen would be squashed like squirrels in summertime, had entered. Yet there now seems to be a broader "middle class" of ...entrepreneurs than before. There are go-between businesses now wedged between you and your friends, you and your flab, and you and your life's mission. Surely the great business builders in this age of anti-disintermediation will be those who boldly refuse to underestimate anyone's ability to pass work off to someone else. The business to get into is any kind of personalized handholding.
