Green shoots…

A SNOWBOARDING entrepreneur is already eyeing up a second shop less than a month after his first opened for business.

Ricki Hutchinson, 25, has been viewing premises in Sunderland to add to the new North State Snowboarding shop he’s just started at Whickham Thorns Outdoor Activity Centre in Gateshead.

Mr Hutchinson, who worked all over Europe as a snowboarding instructor before returning to his native North East to open his own business, has big ideas for his winter sports enterprise.

“Snowboarding is getting really popular,” he said.

“The shop sells all the equipment, clothes and the snowboards. We have been selling stuff and trying to get more involved with the clubs and the little snow slopes that open in the winter, like Allenheads at Hexham, with free lessons.”

He offers instruction and the shop sells specialist clothing and snowboarding equipment.

“It caters for people who go skiing as well. It’s the same clothes,” said Mr Hutchinson.

“We’ve just been looking at another shop as well to get more customers at a more mainstream site.”

He is considering Wearside after finding out about a scheme to help new retail businesses move into Sunderland.

“It’s a struggle to get suitable premises for new businesses,” said Mr Hutchinson, who received Business Link money towards his website but was unable to find grants towards taking on retail premises or employing staff.

Sunderland is also in his sights because, like Gateshead, the local council is currently mulling the idea of building a snow dome, which would provide indoor facilities for winter sports.

“Snow domes open all year round,” said Mr Hutchinson.

“The closest is in Leeds. I frequently go down on a weekly basis. Literally a third of the people there are from Newcastle and Gateshead. It’s crazy.”

Retailers will be delighting in the fact that something wicked this way comes at Halloween, as it will signal almost a decade of growth in sales for the period.

In fact, the date has been gaining in so much popularity in the UK that it is expected to be worth an estimated £235m to the retail sector this year, according to independent retail analysts Planet Retail.

The phenomenal growth in sales of fancy dress, treats, tricks and dressings for the home mean that the season now is third only to Christmas and Easter.

Emma Angel has run her family’s retail operation for the last 14 years and has been best placed to see the change in fortunes of the ghoulish festival.

“It was kind of crazy last year, I’ve been doing this for 14 years and it’s just grown and grown,” she says.

Murderous make-up

The hive of activity that is Angels’ retail store attests to the fact. Spread over three floors, the store is crammed with outfits - both to buy and hire - as well as the extra accessories needed to spruce up the attire.

The suitably gruesome Dr Death is even on hand to dole out make-up tips to create the right effect, be it a slashed throat or a bullet wound.

“Last year we were mobbed. People were queuing round both corners of the building and we had four security guards for the crowds. We’ll be having five this year and we’re expecting it to be bigger,” Ms Angel adds.

And Angels, one of the country’s biggest independent fancy dress retailers, is well placed to talk about the growth in the business.

Ms Angel has been working at the store in London’s Shaftesbury Avenue for almost 15 years and during that time, she has seen a distinct change in trends, from hire to retail.

She was the first in the group to bring in clip-on fangs, selling out of the first 50 sets she ordered in. Angels now sells more than 2,000 sets of the gnashers in store and a further 1,000 to 1,300 online.

She was also the first to revolutionise the retail side of the business, bringing in 30 pre-packed costumes eight years ago - 15 for men and 15 for women.

They sold out, the range expanded and the store also opened up online. As Ms Angel says, the rest is history.

How’s tricks?

The changes at the London store also show just how much the Halloween market has changed in the past decade.

Years ago, consumers were happy to buy a simple mask and make their own costumes, simply heading to the shops to stock up on treats to hand out to visitors.

Now you can head to almost any store on the High Street and grab outfits, accessories and even bags for children to collect their booty in as they head door-to-door; a development that makes it scarily simple, and cheap, to make the most of the night.

Even Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Marks & Spencer have launched extensive promotions for the occasion - starting as cheap as £3.50 for a natty little spider handbag.

As well as the increasing availability of cheap goodies, Planet Retail cites a further two trends in the market.

This year, 31 October falls on a weekend, allowing revellers to make the most of the night.

According to Jacqui Parr, editor of Party Party Magazine, many industry insiders were afraid that after a record year last year - with sales up almost 80% across the board - sales would suffer this year.

“People generally were saying that because it was a Friday and the credit crunch was just starting to hit that they were afraid 2008 was a freak blip,” she says.

“But this year, retailers and suppliers are saying it’s even better than last year. Independent retailers are expecting a bumper year.”

Familiar haunts

Angels also points to the trend in consumers looking for “inexpensive socialising at home”.

“Halloween is big, it’s an escape. You can do it at home, not a bar or a club is needed and its very kid-oriented. It’s taken over from Bonfire Night, firework parties in the garden are seen as dangerous now. People can do apple-bobbing and so on at home, it’s a family fun time of year,” adds Ms Angel.

According to Tarlok Teji, head of retail at Deloitte, “in-tertainment” is becoming a key trend in the UK, as families and friends get together for a cheaper night of fun at home.

“There’s also so much doom and gloom in the media that people do occasionally want to dress up and have a party,” he adds.

But he adds that retailers have become “fairly smart about celebrations”, and not just Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day.

“They make any excuse they can find to sell products and put them in front of consumers, Halloween is just another example.”

Yet the festivities in the UK are nowhere near the terrifying scale seen in the US.

In 2008, Halloween was worth a dizzying $55.7bn, according to the National Retail Federation, with the average American spending $66.45, up from $64.82 a year earlier.

However, the recession is expected to make an impact this year, with the NRF predicting Americans will spend 15% less this year - an average of $56.31 per person - with overall Halloween sales expected to drop to $4.75bn.

Sales gruesome

While the UK appears to have picked up the US’s lead on the scary celebrations, the economic impact is very different.

Smiffys, which supplies retailers, says that over the past three months, it has sold just under 124,000 costumes - or 206 an hour.

At Angels, like-for-like sales are already up 7% on 2008 and the big day has not even arrived.

Last year, the group raked in about £1.5m during the period, adding that around a third of its annual sales fell during the period.

In fact, 31 October has gained so much in popularity that Angels is now scarily busy in the run-up to the big day.

“Halloween used to last four days - now it’s a 10-day window. We work 12 hours straight,” says Ms Angel.

“The shop is open 10am to 7pm, staff redress the floor order and tidy first thing in the morning, they get in at 9am to dress and restock, we close the queue at 7pm, then don’t shut until the last customer is served.”

All Angels has to do now is wait to see whether the big day was as “thrilling” as they hoped.

In September 2007, Ben Huh, the founder of Pet Holdings Inc., bought icanhascheezburger.com, a website featuring funny pictures of cats with misspelled captions (an internet meme known as a LOLcat). Since then, life has been good. In addition to icanhascheezburger.com, his company now owns a number of highly trafficked sites like failblog.org and punditkitchen.com, boasting network-wide totals of 170 million page views a month and annual revenue in the millions.

As you might expect from a guy who saw opportunity in a URL that’s virtually impossible to spell, he has a nontraditional view of how to run a business. Entrepreneur chatted with him about success, humor and the meaning of his cheeseburger hat.You have a degree in journalism from Northwestern University–what made you stray from that career path?
I wanted to be a journalist all my life. But then I found out how much it paid. And it was 1999, and they were handing out signing bonuses to college kids to go work at dotcoms. So I sold out. Absolutely.

Did you pick up much about being an entrepreneur while working for tech startups?
Well, I can’t say I learned anything related to the content I handle now. That part probably came more from me just liking things on the internet and goofing around, which I guess is not how people usually consider starting a startup.

But I learned how to keep costs low and make sure that whatever commitment you make to employees, you keep–fundamental rules that I think people overlook. No matter how strange or ridiculous a business looks, those fundamentals still need to be there.

If you were talking to someone who hasn’t seen any of your sites, what would you tell him that Pet Holdings does?
Pet Holdings basically makes people happy for five minutes every day. That’s really all we want to do. It’s a simple-sounding goal, but to be consistently funny day in and day out for five minutes (which is the average attention span of a blog reader) is actually very difficult to do.

Is there a strategy in how you choose which sites to buy?
We’re interested in stuff that has longevity and has the ability to gain new audiences. So it can’t be too specific. So even though icanhascheezburger is relatively old in the world of internet memes, we don’t know if it will die down. It seems to me that if the content is good enough, it will survive and grow.

But we’re just having fun [laughs]. It’s not very entrepreneury or businessy, but we’ve always been very much counterculture when it comes to marketing.

You don’t have a business plan.
No, not exactly. We have a good time and we think if we enjoy something, other people will, too. It’s counterintuitive, but we don’t actually plan anything beyond 30 days. We tell ourselves we’re here to be flexible and to be nimble, and not necessarily to stick to a master plan.

So advertisers “get” this?
I think more and more people are getting it. What’s more surprising is that smaller companies have gotten it. We have a ton of small and midsize businesses that come back and advertise month after month. We are just now starting to see more pick-up from bigger businesses. They’re just slower to move because they have that corporate mentality.

In some ways, it sounds almost too good to be true. You saw something you liked on the internet, and then you bought it, and it became this huge phenomenon. Was it really that easy?
Uh, yes. I don’t know how else to put it [laughs]. We bought something, and then that month it sort of skyrocketed, and we got another website and the month we bought it, it started skyrocketing, and so on and so forth. Luck had a lot to do with it.

That’s nice. Most people probably don’t have such a good time while they’re making money.
That’s kind of the ridiculous part about this whole business, where I think no one else knows what the hell is going on. It’s kind of a corner of the internet that people don’t consider as a serious business, but it is very serious. This is new media in a very real sense.

Tell me about the day-to-day at the office.
The entire network is driven by user-generated content. It’s user-sourced and user-filtered, and we basically moderate it. We have 600 square feet of office space, and there are a lot of people in here writing code, doing [paperwork]–it’s very much like an internet startup operation.

Are you hiring?
Yes. We’ve recently hired people, and we’re continuing to hire people. We have 11 full-time employees including myself, and the other part of the team is a handful of full-time contractors.

But when we were starting this thing, people asked who was going to run it, and I said, “I will, and my wife.” And they said, “You’re crazy.” And I said, “Yes.”

How do you find employees?
They come to us. You have to do something sort of oddball for us to notice you or say something interesting. But what we’re looking for doesn’t show up in a resume, and most people who have “it” are people who don’t have jobs or can’t really hold one down.

But you welcome them.
And we welcome them.

So part of your success is because you’re not one of those people you want to hire.
Yes. Some people will say I’m the indicator of what’s going to go mainstream. By the time I find something funny, it’s a little too late in terms of hipster cred.

When I find it, the rest of the world is going to find it. But there’s a roomful of people here who are a lot hipper than I am. So they lead me. They’ll say, “You don’t understand. This is really funny.” And I’m like, “OK. We’ll see.”

So you aren’t just being modest when you tell people you aren’t on the cutting edge of humor.
No. Seriously, I’ve never gotten a LOLcat on the homepage of my own damn site. My internet browsing history looks like any other corporate American schlep’s.

Is a picture of a cat with misspelled captions inherently funny?
It is. Humans like to ascribe emotions to animals, and cats have faces that emote really well. We’ve done it for a long time.

Actually, the first LOLcat was created more than 100 years ago. We found a postcard this company was selling back in the 1800s with a picture of a cat dressed up in a high chair, looking up and asking “WHERE IS MY DINNER” in all caps. I kid you not. We haven’t come that far in 100 years. I was like, “Oh my God, if you just added a [misspelled word] somewhere, we’d have an actual LOLcat.” But the prototype was pretty darn close to what it is today.

Paul Krugman, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences last year, used a LOLcat in his blog for The New York Times. What does that make him in your eyes?
It makes him supercool. You’d be surprised who enjoys this. We have a pretty large following at The New York Times, apparently.

We were highlighted as one of the more interesting influential sites on the internet by their tech guy, David Pogue. I need to find that article and frame it. [pause] Oh hold on, here it is. Pogue calls us an “important internet culture website.”

Do you agree?
I totally agree, but I can’t believe he said that about us. That’s awesome! [silence] I’m sorry, I’m busy printing this right now [laughs]. I’m sorry, I know this is not how they tell you to behave in an interview.

That’s all right. I’ve seen some interviews of you wearing a cheeseburger hat, and I meant to ask you if it means something.
No [laughs]. It was a gift. It was given to me by one of the founders of icanhascheezburger, who got it from someone else–maybe his mother.

I just thought maybe you wore it when you were in boss mode.
Ha, I should. I should threaten people when I wear it so they associate the hat with bad news. Whenever I’m wearing it, I’ll yell at someone so they say, “God, no, he’s wearing the hat!”

Do you have any parting thoughts?
We’d like to continue to do what we do–build bigger communities and just kind of evangelize the idea that the user is great at creating excellent content. The market is far more efficient than any one company will ever be. We’ve applied that theory to economics, but we haven’t applied that theory to content. And I think that actually needs to change.  

A success story, an industry leader, a young entrepreneur, a man who has reached and surpassed new heights of commercial and fianacial success, just a fraction of classifications used to describe Daymond John, CEO and founder of multi-million dollar fashion empire FUBU The Collection. Daymond possesses the capability knowledge, insight and approachable demeanor which allow him to successfully achieve any goals set forth before him, as well as nurture others to do the same.

Changing fashion and the face of American business with FUBU was only the beginning. What started initially with unbridled perserverance and a dream of catering to a market otherwise ignored, quickly transformed into a business venture, and eventual enterprise, worthy of the multitude of accolades and awards it has received. Some such prestigious awards: Brandweek Marketer of the Year (1999), Advertising Age Marketing 1000 Award presented to Daymond for outstanding ad campaign (1999), NAACP Entrepreneurs of the Year award (1999), Crain’s Business of Forty Under Forty Award presented to Daymond (2002) and Ernst & Young New York Entrepreneur of the Year award (2003).

http://www.daymondjohn.com

http://www.fubu.com/

It comes down to basic skills our moms and dads taught us. Show up early, work hard, be disciplined - Robert Herjavec

That’s how Robert Herjavec overcame the odds and became a multi-millionaire. His current wealth is a far cry from his youth. As the son of Croatian immigrants, he grew up poor. But his family’s lack of money was the driving force behind Herjavec’s desire to become an entrepreneur and control his own destiny. “It was about getting away from where my family was. I imagined how much better it would be if we had money.”

Hard work and good instincts paid off for Herjavec in the early 1990s. As the dot-com craze emerged, Herjavec had a feeling technology would be the road to success. After waiting tables at an upscale restaurant by day, he spent much of his evenings working on his technology idea. Thus, his first technology company, BRAK Systems, was born and quickly became the leading provider of Internet security software in Canada.

By 2000, BRAK Systems was worth over $100 million when Herjavec sold it to AT&T. He could have lived a life of leisure after the sale, but instead became vice president of Ramp Networks, where he was instrumental in its $225 million sale to Nokia.

The self-made millionaire is not resting on his laurels. Since 2003, he serves as cofounder and CEO of Toronto-based The Herjavec Group, the largest privately owned IT network security and infrastructure integration company in Canada. He works hard and plays hard, hobnobbing with the rich and famous and enjoying his collection of luxury cars.

So why didn’t Herjavec take the easy road and retire early with his millions? His response reflects the strong values of his upbringing. “If you keep doing stuff purely for the money, one day you’ll hit the end of the road.”

As he focuses on the expansion of his company, Herjavec is a firm believer that sales and professionalism are two key components to acquiring new customers and retaining existing ones. “Unless 90% of your sales are recurring, service-contract revenue, everything you do has to be driven by sales, from answering the phone, to having professional salespeople, to forecasting, to training.”

As one of the venture capitalist on the popular Canadian television series Dragon’s Den, Herjavec offers encouraging words to contestants seeking to put their business idea into motion.

“Some people need good advice more than they need money. If you keep doing stuff you love to do, the money will follow.”

http://www.herjavecgroup.com

CEO of TVGoods.com, LLC and co-founder of OmniReliant Holdings, Inc. is widely acknowledged as the pioneer and principal architect of the “infomercial” industry. This year (2009) marks the 25th year since Harrington produced the industry’s first infomercial; with milestones of over 500 product launches resulting in sales of over $ 4 billion worldwide, 20 products reaching individual sales of over $100 million, creating dozens of millionaires.

Harrington’s first company Quantum International started in the mid-80’s, merged into National Media (1991); that grew into $500 million in annual sales with distribution in over 100 countries in 20 languages. Additional entrepreneurial startups included ventures with HSN, Inc. (HSN Direct) and Reliant International; selling the latter to the Koo banking family of Taiwan (2006). That same year Harrington co-founded TVGoods.com and Omni Reliant Holdings raising over $17 million in equity investment capital from a NY hedge fund. The firm recently purchased the controlling stake in Tampa Bay’s premiere production facility, OmniComm Studios, Harrington’s present office location; a 33,000 s f film studio on 5.4 acres, Clearwater, Florida.

With this amazing success, it’s interesting to note that Kevin is not immune to burdening challenges during his lifetime of being an infomercial pioneer. His company has been chronicled with a case study at Harvard/MIT called “The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise of Quantum International“, where students have been taught for over 12 years what it means to be a grass-roots entrepreneur in a fiercely competitive industry, featuring the life of Kevin Harrington, with all its ups and downs, and how he has always landed on his feet.

Harrington is proud to have founded two of the most important global networking associations in the market place, the Entrepreneur’s Organization (E.O.) and the Electronic Retailing Association (ERA).

I would like to write about an inspiring woman; Barbara Corcoran.  She is the former founder of the Corcoran Group, the largest real estate agency in New York City.

She is one of the most admirable people in the real estate industry not only because of her achievements but also because of her great attitude towards life.

What makes here life story so inspiring was how she was able to rise above her misfortunes and use her failures to become one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the US.  It gives a glimmer of hope to those who are having a bad start in their entrepreneurial life

Barbara Corcoran was a straight D student in high school and college.  She had twenty jobs by the time she turned twenty-three.  Her last job before she entered the world of real estate was a waitress.

She started a tiny real estate company in New York from a start-up capital of $1,000. It was not even her own money but a loan from her boyfriend.  Over the next twenty-five years, she was able to parlay that $1,000 loan into a $5 Billion real estate business. What makes it even extraordinary is how she describes her initial success as a result of “failing well”. 

In 1990, she had a brilliant idea of putting her company’s property inventory into a video.  She hoped that the clients will take the video from their office and watch it at home.  She believed in it so much that she invested $78,000; her company’s entire profit for that year.  However, the project was a flop. 

But, that did not discourage her from making a turn around.  To save face to her 150 sales people at that time, she told them that it was just the first phase.  The second phase,  would be to venture into internet technology.  It did not take on right away which she considers an advantage.  Since no one was checking out their website, they had the opportunity to try different technology applications.  They were able to test drive which worked and which didn’t. In due time, her company was able to have a perfect strategy that gave it a head start in the early adaptation of the real estate industry to technology. Corcoran.com emerged from being one of the first real estate websites to “an award-winning industry resource, attracting over two million visitors per month and producing more sales than any other website in residential real estate.” In 2001, she sold the company for $66 Million.

According to Barbara Corcoran, 9 out of 10 ideas she tries, fail. However, she was great at getting back up and trying again. In fact, she advised that you get a lot of creative ideas when you are not afraid to fail.  Her achievements and projects proved her point.  You can get to know her more in BarbaraCorcoran.com

A FAMILY run toy company has moved into bigger premises for the second time to accommodate its growing business.

Internet and mail order firm Toys Direct has left its base in Stokesley for a new 46,000 sq ft warehouse on Thornaby’s Teesside Industrial Estate.

The family run firm is owned by the Parrish family, original owners of the Romer Parrish toy store on Middlesbrough’s Linthorpe Road.

They ship toys and playtime favourites all over the world from their Teesside base - and business is growing.

“We were operating out of four units at Stokesley and needed somewhere bigger,” said assistant manager James Parrish.

“This warehouse has 46,000 sq ft and is a lot bigger and better. “We’ve also taken on two extra staff members to help with packing orders and labelling.”

Biggest sellers, he says, are children’s favourites including Playmobil and Thomas the Tank Engine and orders go out to families in the UK, Europe and worldwide daily.

“A lot of business goes to the UK but we ship all over Europe and all over the world,” added James.

Toys Direct started in 1995 when James’ parents Brian and Linda launched the mail order business from their Nunthorpe home. It launched on the internet three years later and they moved stock to a 5,000 sq ft warehouse in Stokesley in 2003 as the business grew.

The Parrish family has been in the toy business for 40 years.

Dropbox

Every start-up founder uses free or inexpensive online resources to get his or her company launched. Chadd Bennett of RetroRazor, a Seattle-based company that sells old-fashioned safety razors, provided us with a list of the tools he found to be the most helpful. First up, he recommends a CRM application. “Until recently, we used a Google spreadsheet to keep track of the retailers buying our razors,” Bennett says. “But we just started using a program called Zoho CRM. I chose it because up to three people on each account can use it for free. Plus, it’s established enough that I don’t think it’s going to disappear. We only use it for our retail clients, not for individual customers, because we have hundreds of them and it would take too long to enter their information into the database.”

“Dropbox is a virtual hard drive, but it doesn’t just store your files; it syncs them as well,” Bennett says. “I use it to send files to my video producer. After he edits the video, he saves it to Dropbox and the new version is automatically saved on my computer. Dropbox is free for the first two gigabytes. Now that we’re doing a lot of video editing I’m going up to the paid version, which is 50 gigabytes for $99 a year.”

http://www.getdropbox.com/

ITV has sold Friends Reunited for £25m four years after buying it for £120m.

The buyer is Brightsolid Limited, which is owned by DC Thomson, Dundee-based publisher of comics such as the Beano.

The announcement came with the release of half-year results, which were hit by the worst decline in UK television advertising on record.

ITV made a pre-tax loss of £105m in the period. There was no more information given on the recruitment of a new chief executive to replace Michael Grade.

Mr Grade is due to stand down by the end of 2009, following a regulatory review.

The £105m loss compares with a £1.5bn loss in the same period of 2008, although last year’s figure was hit by a £1.6bn charge, reducing the value of investments made in 2000 and 2004.

ITV’s advertising revenues fell by 15%, which was slightly better than the 17% fall in the overall market.

Its chief operating officer, John Cresswell, told the BBC that advertising revenues were improving.

“We’re down 15% in the first half and in the third quarter the decline is still pretty tough at -12%,” he said.

But September for us is at -7% so the direction of travel is good.”

The broadcaster’s pension fund deficit had ballooned to £538m by 30 June, compared with £178m at the end of 2008.

ITV is in the middle of a cost-cutting programme, which aims to deliver savings of £155m this year and £285m a year by 2011.

Spare bedroom

ITV paid an initial £120m for the Friends Reunited website in 2005, but was due to pay an additional sum of up to £55m this year depending on the performance of the site.

The company buying it, Brightsolid, already owns findmypast.com, which operates the official 1901 and 1911 census websites.

Friends Reunited was launched in July 2000 from the spare bedroom of Steve and Julie Pankhurst’s home in North London.

Its model of helping people to find old friends from their old schools, colleges or clubs attracted millions of users to the site.

But more recently, it has been overtaken by social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.