Right after I graduated college, I started investing in the stock market. I’ve more than doubled my money since then, which means that I made some pretty good decisions. One stock that I was considering at the time was CWTR. It was around $45 back then, and I thought that I had a few good reasons to believe that the stock would go up from there. Luckily, I didn’t buy. The stock is now at less than $4 per share–and that’s after a 4 for 1 reverse stock split. I’m glad that I avoided that -98% return on investment. While Coldwater Creek, which is based in Sandpoint, ID (with a design center New York, NY), has certainly struggled over the past 6 years, that doesn’t mean that you should overlook the potential opportunity. The multi-channel “specialty retailer of women’s apparel, jewelry and accessories” started as a one-room mail order business. They obviously had an amazing growth period that took them to going public, and now it’s time for them to get back on track.
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It’s moving day for me. I’m staying in the same neighborhood, but I still had to pack up my entire apartment and load it into a moving truck. It was kind of a pain, but hiring good movers is one of the best investments you can make. If only I had a travel vest from SCOTTEVEST–I could have stuffed everything in there, walked down the street, and done it all myself. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but you really can fit a ton of stuff in SCOTTEVEST products. The company is based in Ketchum, ID and was started by Scott Jordan to create gadget-holding alternatives for man-purses–or even worse, fanny packs. It all started with vests, but now SCOTTEVEST offers a wide line of clothing that makes traveling with lots of stuff easy.
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If you’ve been reading for a while, you may have noticed that I go on a lot of fishing trips. The problem is that any time my Dad and I go somewhere, he tries to turn it into an annual trip (it’s not actually a problem at all). As long as there’s Wi-Fi so that I can get some work in while I’m not fishing, then I’m pretty much set. This week I’m writing from the Gaspé Peninsula in Quebec, where I’m salmon fishing. I spend most of the day on the river, and one of my most essential pieces of equipment is probably something that you wouldn’t suspect. Polarized sunglasses are invaluable for fishing. Not only do they help you see through the glare and under the water, but they also protect your eyes from both the sun and stray hooks. Smith Optics makes some of the absolute best sunglasses for fishing on the market. They’re based in Ketchum, ID, and they have about 300 employees.
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sports
Yesterday we talked about social media marketing. Today we’re going to dive into local business marketing. I’m far more excited by the latter–maybe it’s because there’s something that I love about small businesses or maybe it’s because the payoff from local marketing seems like it can come much more quickly. We’ve seen a variety of companies including Groupon, SinglePlatform, and BrandMuscle that have developed products and services to help local businesses market themselves, and today we’re going to look at a company that has taken a slightly different approach to local marketing. Balihoo is based in Boise, ID, and they are “the premier provider of Local Marketing Automation technology and services to national brands with local marketing needs.” In other words they help big companies with lots of locations tailor their marketing efforts to specific locales.
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Does anyone else find it vexing that gyms get completely packed in the first few weeks of January? I have a lot of respect for people who use the new year to motivate themselves into getting in shape, and I’m certainly approaching my workouts with more energy than I was in December, but I hate the crowds. Last month I mentioned that I was reading Tim Ferriss’ new book, The 4-Hour Body
. I recently finished it, and it has encouraged me to try some new things at the gym. One of the suggestions that I’m excited to try is “kettlebell swings.” They were a bit hard to understand until I saw a video of how to do them in one of Tim’s blog posts. The video was hosted on BodyBuilding.com, and when I went to check the site out I saw a link to a Careers section at the bottom of the page. I started looking around, and I learned that the Boise, ID based company is the most visited bodybuilding and fitness site in the world, the #1 sports nutrition e-commerce site, one of the top 500 e-commerce sites in America, and a former Inc. 500 company. I knew that online fitness could be big business, but I had no idea that BodyBuilding.com owned such a dominant place in the market.
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