What libation do you toast with on New Year’s Eve?
I’m pretty traditional (boring) when it comes to cocktails. A cold, domestic beer usually does the trick. But in the past few weeks, I’ve sampled both a Lime Rickey and a Tsingtao beer — for business purposes. Really.
The Lime Rickey was a tasty tie-in at the launch party for Cleveland startup LimeRibbon.
The young company hopes to exploit two increasingly expanding markets: online shopping and social media. Online spending for Black Friday, for example, was up 11 percent this year over 2008 with $595 million in Internet sales, according to ComScore. Meanwhile, there are 350 million active Facebook users, with 50 percent logging on every day.
How’s LimeRibbon work?
You create a gift list — and, yes, it appears as a lime green ribbon — by browsing popular retailers on the LimeRibbon site. Then you can post your wish list ribbon on friend’s and family’s Facebook or Twitter pages, where they can view it. You can also show off what you bought through the site and see what others are purchasing.
Sure, the idea isn’t exactly new; Amazon just celebrated the 10th anniversary of its Wish List feature and Zappos lets you put your favorites in a “closet” to be shared with friends. But whereas Amazon and Zappos are closed networks, LimeRibbon wants to include as many retailers as possible, says co-founder Michael DeAloia.
And LimeRibbon is packaged in an interesting way. The best thing is “its simplicity and style,” says co-founder George Nemeth. “Reducing clutter is increasingly important when vying for people’s attention.”
That’s something the Cleveland Cavaliers don’t have to worry about right now. But the Cavs, much like they did in the offseason by trading for Shaquille O’Neal, haven’t stood idly by as some other team cruises down the lane for a slam dunk.
In December, the team announced an agreement making Tsingtao (pronounced CHING dow) the exclusive Chinese beer of Quicken Loans Arena. (And, yes, there was Tsingtao beer at the press conference.)
At first glance, this doesn’t seem like a big deal.
Was there really much competition to become the exclusive Chinese beer at The Q? Probably not. But it is a “throw the hammer down” reminder (as Austin Carr might say) that we operate in a global economy, even if your business is hoops.
This season, 34 Cavs games will be televised in China, where more than 300 million people play basketball. The worldwide economy is real, and smart businesses like the Cavaliers are taking a global approach.
This reinforces the recommendations of serial entrepreneur Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande, who spoke recently at Case Western Reserve University. Deshpande has made billions creating, running and selling tech companies.
His first entrepreneurial venture netted a whopping $26.95. Since then, he has had numerous successes, including the 1997 sale of Cascade to Ascend Communications for $3.7 billion.
Deshpande, who was born in India, made me wonder about the inordinate number of successful tech companies (Intel, Sun, Google, Yahoo, eBay) created by immigrants.
So I asked him why. What are we missing? “Everyone in Cleveland should go to Bangalore,” he said immediately. “If you go from Bangalore to here, you see all the advantages.”
It’s true. Many of us have been so comfortable, even in relatively bad economic times, we plod along blind to our opportunities and advantages. Two recent books could help open our eyes.
“My love affair with Cleveland didn’t occur until I left,” says immigration attorney Richard Herman for
Immigrant, Inc., which he wrote with
The Plain Dealer’s Robert Smith. Herman moved to Moscow in the early ’90s and, when he returned, “saw the abundance in Cleveland and the huge opportunities and assets.”
Similarly, immigration attorney Margaret W. Wong’s new book
The Immigrant’s Way lists 22 success tactics gleaned from her life and work.
“Children belong in schools,” she writes. “Education is their way toward greatness.” Too many natives see it as unnecessary or a chore, and it’s hurting us.
This is not to say we should migrate to India or Russia. It’s a reminder of the opportunities we have here.
That’s something LimeRibbon’s DeAloia certainly won’t forget. He says he is most proud that the company is a “pure Cleveland company” with the board, developers, marketers and investors all being Clevelanders. “You
can do it in Cleveland,” he says.
I’ll drink to that.
Buy Dan Hanson (hanson@inside-business.com) a drink, and he’ll tell you about the thousands of international visitors to his clevelandpeople.com Web site who ask about coming to Cleveland. Immigration truly is the sincerest form of flattery.