In the News

The entrepreneur concierge is at your beck and call, and you don't have to leave your doorstep.

Excerpt:

"...The size and the ambition of the delivery outfits varies. The investment can be as small as $500 for website and a bicycle to $650,000 to buy a retail operation and upgrade it....

?Young entrepreneurs are only as limited as their creativity," said Michael Bernacchi, professor of marketing at the University of Detroit Mercy who applauds the low-investment strategy of some home delivery firms.

The age-old business quest, Bernacchi said, is finding a new niche.

Philko has owned Town Tub Coin Laundry since 2005 and invested $260,000 in the business, including flat screen televisions, broadband cable for Internet and high-speed dryers. He experimented with marketing efforts — free pizza attracted the same people each week — until he found that picking up and delivering laundry generated the best results for getting more customers.

"When there is a lice outbreak at a school, parents call us. We'll wash on hot and use a special detergent to make sure the lice are killed. Then disinfect our machines. Parents appreciate our fast response and efficiency," said Philko."

More here.

Forget the garage, we want a Human Hoist for the living room!

Excerpt:

"The newest episode of "Invention USA" will bring exposure to Clarkston cousins and their new invention — the Human Hoist.

Called "the ultimate power shop chair," Eric Brittingham and Kevin Ferguson devised the Human Hoist to improve efficiency and the health of anyone working in an automotive shop.

"For me, the Human Hoist really became a necessity" while working as a body shop technician, Brittingham said.

"Everybody who works on concrete is constantly crouching and bending over, kneeling or rolling on the ground," he said. "People are wearing out their knees and hips, so (the Human Hoist) is the office chair for the shop."

More on this lounger here.

Quicken Loans CEO Dan Gilbert, who moved his firm and thousands of jobs from the suburbs to Detroit, is on the national radar as the most potent new force behind the rehabbing of lower Woodward Ave. into a place you wanna be, 24/7.

Excerpt:

"Down at street level, [Quicken Loans] Chief Executive Dan Gilbert is already seeking to piece together that vision, buying up real estate along Woodward Avenue, the city's main commercial corridor, and cultivating a new crop of businesses in an attempt to create a self-sustaining mix of residential and commercial development...

Real-estate analysts say they are seeing a ripple effect from Mr. Gilbert's spree, as lower vacancy rates and rising rents draw other investors off the sidelines.

Lansing, Mich., developer Richard Karp beat more than two dozen competitors to rehabilitate three buildings around downtown's Capitol Park, a $90 million project set to begin this summer. "Gilbert's investment in downtown added to our level of comfort," Mr. Karp said."

Read more here.

Detroit and its burbs are hot properties compared to the rest of the country. A national home price index reports Detroit area homes appreciating at the third-highest pace in the nation, year-to-year.

Excerpt:

"The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index rose 5.5% in November compared with the same month a year ago. That’s the largest year-over-year gain in six years.

All but one of the cities in the index posted annual gains. The largest gains were in Phoenix, where prices jumped nearly 23%. It was followed by San Francisco, where prices rose 12.7%, and Detroit, where prices increased 11.9%."

Read more here.

The now nationally-recognized Urbanwood Project is making building blocks from the wreckage of the emerald ash borer disease that took out much of metro Detroit's leaf canopy.

Excerpt:

"...So far as we know, this cooperative of partners working together and selling urban wood is the only one of its kind in the country," Jessica Simons, Natural Resources Specialist at the Southeast Michigan Resource Conservation and Development Council, told Earth911...

Urbanites (and suburbanites) may not think of themselves as living in forests, but there are actually large numbers of trees within cities. Before Urbanwood came together, Jessica Simons' organization wanted to learn just how many.

"We wanted to find out 'Where is the wood going? Is any being reused? How much wood is there in southeast Michigan?' So we commissioned a couple of different studies using USDA funds," Simons said. The studies concluded there were 73.5 million board feet of wood from dead and dying trees in the area, enough to build 5,600 average sized homes."

More on this project here.

PBS show Under the Radar Michigan jumps on a cool biz, Troy's AirTime Trampoline & Game Park. If you didn't catch the show last week, the vid will be up soon.

According to its website, AirTime Trampoline & Game Park has 31,000 square feet of wall-to-wall trampolines and games like trampoline Dodgeball, slam dunk basketball, foam pits and open jump areas divided by age.

Watch for the episode here.

After going through the big cut in funding for film incentives a couple of years back, Michigan has redoubled its efforts to score film productions again. From Sundance, Michigan's new film office director talks with the Detroit Free Press.

Excerpt:

Q: What are you hearing from people in the film industry in general about Michigan?

A: I think there is still some confusion about the status of our program, especially with people who are not in Michigan. Everyone seems to be very pleased that we have $58 million (in incentives for fiscal 2013). ... I haven't heard any negativity. I think people are anxious to hear about what kind of projects we'll be able to help support.

More here.

Again, Michigan's travel and tourism website is tops in the nation. As the economy improves, hopefully those visits are translating from virtual to actual.

Excerpt:

"The state of Michigan’s official travel and tourism website,  michigan.org, is once again the most visited state tourism website in the country.  The site attracted more visits than any other state tourism website for the sixth year in a row, according to the independent online measurement company Experian Hitwise.

With nearly 1 million more visits than the number two state tourism website, Florida, michigan.org received 7.1 percent of the overall market share of visits to state tourism sites...

...Pure Michigan also holds the number one state tourism spot on  Instagram  with more than 15,000 followers and more than 115,000 photos using the #PureMichigan hashtag since its launch in July."

More here.

We Want Green Too, a non-profit that's aligning un-or under-employed Detroiters with sustainable jobs in their own communities, is an inspiring story. Could this be replicated in other southeast Michigan communities?

Excerpt:

"Detroit entrepreneurs are learning to rely on each other, finding the seeds of a new economy in resources discarded by corporate America.

When pieced together, these projects aren't merely aimed at figuring out ways for people to make a living; they're about neighbors helping neighbors to build new lives. The city is becoming a place, in certain pockets, where citizenship isn't defined by voting and paying taxes. It's thought of more broadly—creative collaboration to create new ways of living out of necessity."

More here.

The Troy-based Kresge Foundation is betting large on Detroit's future with a $150 million investment over the next few years. Will other foundations and government programs follow suit?

Excerpt:

"One of the nation’s largest foundations will spend $150 million over the next five years to implement a new land-use plan in an attempt to revitalize this ailing industrial city...

The new philanthropic investment—about $120 million in new funding beyond previously announced programs—is a sign that the foundation based in Troy, Mich., just north of Detroit, and its leader, Rip Rapson, are doubling down on the future of the city despite its chronic fiscal woes."

Read more here.

It was the lucky few who partook at the pre-North American International Auto Show dinner event personally catered by Wolfgang Puck last weekend. Interestingly enough, Puck says this auto show is probably the best one in North America – and it's the only one he attends.

Read and watch the video here.

Looks like the moving vans are heading into, or at least staying parked, in Michigan. For the first time in seven years, Michigan has gained population.

Excerpt:

"The Census Bureau released state population estimates for 2012 (July 1, 2012) and Michigan is shown as gaining population between 2011 and 2012 – up 6,559 persons or 0.1 percent. While this pales when compared to Texas's gain of 427,400 residents (#1 in number gained) or North Dakota's 2.17 percent increase (#1 in percentage gain), it does mark the first time that Michigan has experienced a year-to-year increase in population since 2004-2005."

Read more here.

Using the term "hard-hit" to describe Detroit's economy is old, old news, as evidenced by the legions of Detroiters making a second start in life.

Excerpt:

"In Michigan, there were 632,618 solo-preneurs in 2009, the latest year for which census data are available. That's up 14% from 555,736 solo-preneurs in 2002. And according to YourEconomy.org, 37% of all Michigan businesses in 2009 were run by one person."

Read more here.