January 12, 2009
For decades, Cody's Books was a Berkeley (Calif.) institution with an international reputation as a modern-day agora. From the start, the independent bookstore was ...
November 21, 2008
Nicole DeBoom (BusinessWeek SmallBiz, 4/16/08) watched online sales at her women's sportswear company drop 25% in early November—a sign that buyers were pulling ...
November 18, 2008
A little over five years ago, Michael Ball looked at his then-girlfriend's expensive jeans and decided he could design a much better pair himself. Not long after, ...
November 7, 2008
Whether you're unloading collectibles from your attic or taking your thriving brick-and-mortar store online, there's a surfeit of Internet marketplaces where you can ...
October 21, 2008
Nelson Villanova doesn't need to watch the stock market indexes, the TED spread, or gross domestic product to gauge the health of the economy. He just has to look ...
October 7, 2008
Life is not a zero-sum game. O.K., maybe in politics it is. If your candidate wins, the other guy loses. That's one reason why political advertising tends to get ...
September 23, 2008
Call it a customer service Christmas. Consumers are expected to rein in spending this year, and the retail climate favors big-box stores that can offer bargains. But ...
September 12, 2008
Marketing is an investment, not an expense. You've heard that before, of course. But it's one thing to invest in marketing when times are good, and quite another to ...
August 22, 2008
Ask Dan McDonald about millennials—those elusive 12- to 26-year-olds raised among text messages and Twitter—and he'll chuckle emphatically. "They're the ...
August 15, 2008
If you run a consumer business, chances are pretty good a few of your customers are posting their opinions about it on the dozen or so Web sites that review local ...
August 8, 2008
Last month, Batman: The Dark Knight put up the biggest opening-weekend box office numbers in history. That certainly was no surprise, given the overwhelming hype that ...
July 28, 2008
As barriers to the design and photography industries fall, the professionals are getting nervous. Independent graphic designers and commercial photographers, as well ...
July 18, 2008
In July 2004, Kinley Pon was throwing his annual block party at his El Paso (Tex.) coffee shop, Kinley's House, on the same day that a Starbucks (SBUX) across the ...
July 11, 2008
Unpredictable. Slow. Bleak. Grim. Gloomy. All words that have been used to describe the economic outlook for the balance of 2008—and depending upon who you talk ...
July 7, 2008
I've always enjoyed shrimp, but it has been a year since I've grilled it, ordered it in a restaurant, or sampled it as a party hors d'oeuvre. Last June, the U.S. Food ...
June 5, 2008
As they waited in line outside Cinema Village, the art house theater in downtown Manhattan, Carol Frohlinger and Lindsey Pollak didn't know they were part of the ...
May 30, 2008
Earlier this year, a large sign appeared in Beverly Hills that read: "Coming Spring 2008 Wolfgang's Steakhouse." For most of the denizens of the gilded Los Angeles ...
May 16, 2008
Forget the elevator pitch. Forget the press release. Forget the PowerPoint deck. If you were making a "Twitpitch" about your business, it would be over by now. A what?...
May 9, 2008
Human beings are social creatures. We need interaction with one another. It's the way we're made. When we meet someone new, we tend either to be drawn to them or to be...
April 21, 2008
Josh Madell needs to invent a new business model, and soon. The 37-year-old co-owner of Other Music, a New York retailer specializing in obscure CDs and vinyl, has ...
April 14, 2008
The economic news has not been good of late, and that may lead you to believe you should find a way to lower your prices. After all, consumers will be looking for ways...
April 11, 2008
Nearly 10 years ago a Japanese real estate developer paid $51.3 million at auction for Pablo Picasso's "Pierrette's Wedding." The buyer, Tomonori Tsurumaki bid by ...
March 21, 2008
Anjula Acharia-Bath made sure she was in the right place at the right time. The co-founder and CEO of online entertainment portal DesiHits had heard nothing but no ...
March 7, 2008
In 2004, Oprah Winfrey made a big splash when she gave away a new car to every member of her studio audience. You probably have some memory of that event and the ...
February 11, 2008
When Alden Kellogg discovered a glitch on Wesabe, he went to the personal finance tracker's home page, looking for a tech support number or e-mail. Instead, he found a...