When I take the dog for a walk, I need my keys, wallet, phone, and treats. That’s a lot of stuff to stuff in my pockets, and I’m NOT going to start wearing cargo pants. We’re not that far from a day where the phone and the treats will be all I need to get me by, and August is a company that is doing it’s part to take the keys out of the equation. They’re based i San Francisco, CA, and they’ve developed a “safe, simple, and social way to manage your home’s lock.” Smart locks are going to be a thing, and August seems to be one of the first companies to get the product right for the average consumer.
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One of the most amazing things about the surge in popularity of crowdfunding is that it has allowed many businesses to get off the ground with zero inventory. Instead of having to guess at how many of something you should make, they can pre-sell the product and it deliver it at some undetermined date in the future. While this is totally awesome for those who are able to take advantage of it, the large majority of businesses still have to hold inventory if they ever want to sell anything. The goal is to get “the right product in the right place at the right time at the right price,” but that often doesn’t go as planned. Optoro offers a fix. They are a Washington, DC based company that “unleashes hidden revenue for retailers and creates value for shoppers” by helping businesses with “reverse logistics.”
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Becoming a new parent is hard no matter what your situation (at least that’s what I hear), but it’s typically much harder for someone living in poverty. While finances are a big part of it, there are all kinds of factors that make having a new baby especially daunting for low-income parents. Room to Grow is a New York, NY based non-profit that aims “to enrich the lives of babies born into poverty throughout their critical first three years of development.” They start their work before the baby is born and continue through the first three years with the hope that a solid foundation will prevent the child from facing many of the challenges that typically affect a kid growing up in poverty.
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There’s an episode of Saved by the Bell where Zack Morris convinces Mr. Tuttle (the head of the teacher’s union) that Mr. Belding called him a “spineless jellyfish.” That’s a pretty big insult to someone who is in charge of negotiating against you. Our spines are both metaphorically and anatomically an essential part of our being. That’s why the thought of a spinal injury is absolutely terrifying for most people. Luckily, we as a society have made a ton of progress treating spinal issues. Whether it’s an injury, disease, or deformity, K2M is one of the companies leading the innovation. They are based in Leesburg, VA, and they “deliver and develop technological innovations which enable surgeons to more effectively treat the world’s most complex spinal disorders.”
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I’ve been married nearly 9 months now. Slowly more and more people are asking, “When are you going to have kids?” Getting a puppy deflected a little bit of attention, but it’s only going to gain in intensity. If we do eventually give into the pressure, we’ll face a time in our lives that makes preparing for a puppy seem like nothing. That’s why it should be no surprise that the expecting parent market is absolutely huge. In fact, Destination Maternity Corporation, which is based in Philadelphia, PA, does $500 million in annual sales as “the world’s leading maternity apparel retailer.” Yes, a single company (albeit with quite a few brands) can generate half a billion dollars in revenue selling clothes for pregnant women.
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When you get engaged, everybody tells you how much fun registry shopping is. I’m still waiting for the fun part. Just kidding. The fun part was doing our Amazon Registry, which had all of the cool kitchen gadgets that I wanted. When someone bought us something on that, I got really excited. I was a little bit less excited about our registries at Simon Pearce, Bloomingdale’s, and Restoration Hardware. I’m very grateful to everyone who bought us a gift from those registries, but a blowtorch is way better than a water pitcher in my book. Now let’s go back to that last place we registered: Restoration Hardware. That ended up being our least popular registry (in terms of % completed), which is surprising when you consider that the Corte Madera, CA “home furnishings retailer” made the Inc. 5000 with 91% three-year growth to $1.2 billion in revenue. While that growth rate is lower than what we’re accustomed to, we can make an excuse for a company that passed the billion dollar mark (and is no longer eligible for the list now that they have IPOed).
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When I proposed to Amy, I had no doubt that she was going to say yes–even if I did it with a Ring Pop. Still, I thought it was only right to follow tradition and plunk down a bunch of money on a diamond. While some people see such an expenditure as wasteful, others just don’t like what a diamond means. They want a more socially conscious option. The good new for those people is that ethically produced diamonds do exist, and Brilliant Earth is a company that is hoping to make them the norm. Brilliant Earth is based in San Francisco, CA, and they are “the leading supplier of conflict free diamond jewelry.” It all started with two Stanford students, one of whom was about to get engaged. She wanted a ring that represented her values but was still something that she wanted to wear for the rest of her life. She and her fiancé struggled to find what they were looking for, and as a result Brilliant Earth was started to make the process easier for other couples looking for the same thing.
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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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I have a favorite shirt. It doesn’t quite fit anymore, and I’m sad about it. When I first bought it, it was just barely long enough. With each wash it seems to shrink a tiny bit, and now it’s at the point where any upward arm movement temporarily turns it into a belly shirt. Nobody needs to see that. The shirt is a purple (I’d call it pink) Cotton Reverse Seam Shirt by Steven Alan, and I bought it on Gilt. The best thing about it is that people always tell me that I have my shirt inside out, and I get to exclaim, “Haven’t you ever heard of reverse seams?” It’s the small things in life. The Reverse Seam Shirt is Steven Alan’s signature, and it’s part of the reason why the New York, NY based designer and retailer has been able to grow “a loyal following for [its] unique brand of casual, smart, self-assured essentials for both men and women.”
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One Day One Job is hiring a paid intern/part-timer to work on a few Marketing projects. If you’re interested, e-mail me at willy@onedayonejob.com outlining one idea for how you can help grow the site (including your résumé won’t hurt). Check out our past job posting for more background info.
Yesterday we looked at a chain of sandwich shops that started from a modest single location. Today we’re going to look at “a neighborhood boutique” that opened in 1935 and has grown to more than 1,000 locations across 37 states. The company is Rainbow Shops, and oddly enough, I’ve never heard of them. That’s not a bad thing considering that females are their target market and I don’t spend a lot of time in shopping malls. The Brooklyn, NY based retailer offers an “assortment of clothing for juniors, plus sizes, and children, as well as an extensive shoe collection.”
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Before I discovered Bonobos, I used to actually buy clothes in retail stores. I guess you could say my style was preppy (and probably still is) considering the fact that I haven’t owned a pair of jeans since 7th grade. Back when I was still buying clothes in stores, J. Crew was the definition of preppy (barring Brooks Brothers of course), so that’s where I shopped. They seem to be making their image more “hipster” these days, but I’ll guess that’s based more on a change in fashion than a change in their target demographics. Anyway, J. Crew is a New York, NY based company that started with a catalog in 1983 and opened their first store in 1989. They’ve grown into an amazingly recognizable brand, and recently they’ve started growing another brand called Madewell.
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In a place like New York City, it’s nearly impossible to build something without tearing something else down. That means that a lot of still useful stuff is sent off to the dump while new construction material is shipped in from afar. This is not only wasteful, but it’s also terrible for the environment. Build It Green! NYC is a New York, NY based non-profit that is “working towards reducing the amount of unnecessary construction and demolition (C&D) waste clogging our landfills.” They do this through two stores that make Build It Green! NYC “New York City’s only non-profit retail outlet for salvaged and surplus building materials.”
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A lot of companies that we feature are doing something innovative–they’re changing the way things work, and that can provide an amazing learning opportunity for a college student. But sometimes you can learn more from companies that do it the old fashioned way. I hate to say negative things about a company, but when I see the stuff that AmeriMark sells, I think thrift store. They position themselves as offering “a vast selection of quality, value-priced, brand-name merchandise,” so it’s really not far off. They sell “women’s apparel, shoes, jewelry, cosmetics, fragrances and health-related merchandise” along with a lot of As Seen on TV products. Maybe I’m wrong, but this stuff doesn’t sell itself (though they do seem to put a really strong emphasis on quality). And that’s why I think Middleburg Heights, OH (Cleveland) based AmeriMark is so interesting. They know how to sell this stuff. They’ve been doing it since 1969, and they’ve used the same approach across both new and old mediums.
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Furniture shopping brings out the worst in me. I tend to revert back to my childhood when my sister and I would team up (by fighting of course) to make our parents miserable so that we could leave the furniture store sooner. Luckily, my fiancée loves going furniture shopping with me. She’s found that if she creates conditions for success (making sure that I’m in a good mood and have recently had a meal), I can actually act like a human being at places like Crate and Barrel. In case you’ve never been to a Crate and Barrel, it’s a giant furniture and housewares store that is essentially my worst nightmare. It all started with one store in downtown Chicago, but now Crate and Barrel is headquartered in Northbrook, IL and has more than 170 stores including CB2 and The Land of Nod locations.
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One of the coolest things about the time that we live in is that the barrier to starting a business is essentially nonexistent. You can test your ideas on someone else’s platform, and if it works, then you build your own. Nasty Gal is a perfect example of this. The Los Angeles, CA based company began in 2006 when Sophia Amoruso “started an eBay store selling a highly curated selection of vintage pieces.” After finding success on eBay and validating the business, she started her own site where she could control the entire customer experience (and not pay eBay’s crazy fees). A lot of Nasty Gal’s stuff is pretty far out there–their home page has a huge picture of studded platforms that look like a medieval torture device–but it’s hard to argue with a brand that has nearly a quarter million Facebook likes.
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It’s probably a little late to be planning a New Year’s Eve party, but I guess for a lot of people all it takes is a trip to the liquor store to prepare. But if you really want to do New Year’s Eve right, you need party hats, noisemakers, those popper thingies, and all kinds of other novelties. One of the best places to get those is Oriental Trading, an Omaha, NE based “direct merchant of value–priced party supplies, arts and crafts, toys and novelties, and a leading provider of school supplies and affordable home décor and giftware.” I remember getting their catalogs as a kid and thinking how awesome it would be to have not one stupid plastic toy, but a 1000-count tub of them. Oriental Trading has been around since 1932, and they’ve been able to stay competitive by quickly adapting to the changing ways people buy stuff.
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I’m a fly fisherman, so I occasionally get frustrated with living in downtown Chicago. There just aren’t many opportunities to go fishing without a decent drive, and winter seems to last forever (it’s supposed to be spring now, and it’s not). To get through the coldest months I’ll often visit fishing stores, look at websites, and read through catalogs. It’s not much, but it’s enough to get me through the winter. Cabela’s is a company that gets a lot of people through the winter. The company is based in Sidney, NE, and they’re the “largest mail-order, retail and Internet outdoor outfitter in the world.” It all started in 1961 with a tiny classified ad that Dick Cabela placed in a newspaper because he wanted to sell some fishing flies that he purchased while visiting Chicago for a furniture show (since Nebraska is even less of a fly fishing destination than Chicago is). Despite a lackluster response to the original ad, Dick Cabela kept trying. The company grew organically, and now Cabela’s is dominating three major retail channels. The truly amazing part of the story is that Cabela’s has been able to maintain their commitment to customer service throughout all of the growth. I’m not a big customer (I try to support local shops), but I have quite a few friends who are extremely loyal Cabela’s customers because of the quality of products and service.
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I’m a big fan of buying stuff online, so I’m shocked when some of my friends tell me that they still buy everything at real brick and mortar stores. It’s so old fashioned. It used to be just books and electronics, but over the past years I’ve even started buying clothes and even shoes online. Companies like Bonobos and Gilt Groupe make online clothes shopping super easy, but they’re relative newcomers compared to Bluefly, which was was founded in 1998 in New York City. They’ve made a name for themselves by offering high end fashion brands at great values, and they’re as much a fashion company as they are an e-commerce company. Bluefly is pretty small—under 100 employees—considering that the company’s stock is publicly traded on the NASDAQ, but that’s not surprising considering that they made it through the late 90s and early 2000s.
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When I think of outfitters, I think of an adventure. I think of a business that is going to prepare me to fishing, hunting, canoeing, horseback riding, camping, or something along those lines. Apparently my definition is accurate, but the broader definition of an outfitter, at least according to Wikipedia, is “a shop or person that sells men’s clothes.” I guess that makes Bonobos and Gilt Groupe my two favorite “outfitters.” It also means that Pittsburgh, PA based American Eagle Outfitters was accurately named, at least until they started selling women’s and children’s clothing in addition to their men’s line. Maybe that’s why use see them using AE much more often than AEO. I’m sure you recognize the clothes, and you probably have seen one of American Eagle Outfitters 950+ stores in the last shopping mall that you visited. Their brand is all over the place, so it’s hard to miss.
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