August 2009

Summer Blockbusters
Windows Home Server is hot. Not in a Megan Fox Hollywood-is-your-CGI-oyster sort of way, but in a geeky, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen summer-blockbuster way. Besides, if you’re looking for a place to store your entire Megan Fox catalogue (so your friends don’t see yourHope & Faith box set sitting on a shelf), Windows Home Server is for you. Don’t let the “server” part scare you away —it’s not like you’re dealing with Decepticons here. If you have mo...

Demonstrating
Mark Saffran had no illusions about his company’s product. Plenty of hospital medication management systems were already on the market when MDG Medical showed up with its version of the software. Its competition was robust, established companies. The Beachwood-based startup was small in comparison. “We were coming in as a new company with very little money and very little staffing,” says Saffran, MDG’s president and CEO. “It just took us time to prove our concept and to pro...

Growth & Sustainability
Somewhere in the business plan for the muffin shop Harvey Nelson helped start, there was mention of eventually moving into selling its batter wholesale. Eventually — at least by Main Street Gourmet’s calendar — turned out to be six months later, as batches went out the back door to culinary clients who didn’t want to start from scratch with their muffins. Less than two years later, Nelson and his co-chief executive officer, Steve Marks, pondered whether to shed their Akron retail...

Incubating
John Griffin, director of the technology and innovation division at the Ohio Department of Development, has seen plenty of startup casualties. “I’d like to say that I always know a good idea when I see one because I’m so intuitively smart,” he says. “But something you might think is fantastic could have a fatal flaw.” A few years ago, the Department of Development started to fund a local company heading into its incubating stage with a deep brain stimulation device fo...

Market Entry
It wasn’t supposed to be a product. But the ugly, cool and quirky application that Lance Healy and his business partner, Jim Walborn, had cobbled together to use at their construction materials brokerage company in the mid-1990s had generated plenty of notice from customers. The shipping equivalent of Travelocity, it could find multiple freight quotes for construction orders — such as getting 75 toilets delivered to a hotel two weeks before its grand opening. Customers loved it, Healy says. ...

The Entrepeneur's Toolkit - 2009 Edition
What Kind of Startup Are You? You Inc. — it has a nice ring to it. But whether your business is going to cure a disease or just provide a great sandwich on a busy street corner, it’s going to take more than gum and a shoestring to get from brilliant idea to generating revenue. Along the way, you’ll face many tests: funding, product development, marketing, growth. This isn’t like high school — there’s no graduation, no grading scale that says you’re ready to move...

Art of Business
Oh, Rose Corrick thought about quitting. Like the time she had to convert her driveway into a makeshift workshop to paint 35 yards of fabric. And the time she sold $8,000 worth of clothing at a craft fair but came out $6,000 in the hole. But her struggles have lifted her basement business Art of Cloth to approaching a half-million dollars in sales and placed her clothing line of hand-dyed t-shirts and jersey separates in more than 400 stores nationwide. “I didn’t hav...

Life Lessons From Alan Spitzer
The Spitzer family has been in business for more than 100 years, first as a hardware store, then selling automobiles. This summer, Chrysler announced seven of the eight Spitzer dealerships in Northeast Ohio can no longer operate as Chrysler dealers, making the auto group the most affected in the United States. Spitzer is fighting the decision. My dad thought kindergarten was a waste of time. He took me down to our one dealership in Elyria. I was 5. He put me to work for the body shop manager. I can reme...

Shooting the Breeze
Pearl Road Auto Parts and Wrecking in Cleveland and Eagle Creek Wholesale in Mantua have their obvious differences. One recycles carbon-emitting cars into ball bearings, and the other grows oxygen-producing plants for gardeners. But both share a common love for green — the sustainability movement and the color of money. Taking advantage of state and federal grants, these companies have both erected wind turbines to help power their operations, with an expected return on their investmen...

We Were Watching
We pointed at Melanie Shakarian as “one to watch” in May 2005. Before she joined the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, the nonprofit was pulling in $73,000 from fundraising each year. She had a lofty goal to raise $400,000 that year. Now you can look back on those numbers as the bad old days. Last year, Shakarian, Legal Aid’s director of development, oversaw $1.1 million in private philanthropic donations. Fundraising revenue now comprises 12 percent of the budget, up from 1 percent when...

Wisdom
Paul Dolan, president of the Cleveland Indians “It’s important to know a particular field well. Once you feel comfortable and you see an opportunity, seize it. Have confidence in your knowledge and the opportunity and you can make a difference.”

How to... Mentally Prepare to Start Your Own Business
Entrepreneurship can be a wonderful way to build wealth and do something you love without answering to somebody else. But you have to be mentally ready to take the leap. Conduct an honest self-analysis to determine if you are fit for the challenge of entrepreneurship — and being truthful with yourself is key. An entrepreneur must be realistic about the financial risks that come with owning a business. If the thought of losing $20,000 is devastating, then owning a business is probably not right for...

Paradigm Shift
Gene Groys was hosting a dinner party at his Moreland Hills home in 2006 when StaffKnex was conceived. “You know,” said a friend who ran a nursing home, “I think I have the next great idea for you.” Nursing homes — as well as many other businesses, of course — rely on shift workers. When they call off, it takes time to find a replacement. Typically, it’s either an administrato...