If an experience is described as being transactional, you’d think that the parties involved are acting without emotion. Yet when we buy stuff, we go through a range of emotions. It may be frustration at having to spend money, anger at poor customer service, or euphoria from finally buying that thing that you saved up for. Companies want to know what their customers are feeling, and Kanjoya is a company that lets them do that. They’re based in San Francisco, CA, and they transform “emotional insights into remarkable customer experiences” by analyzing unstructured data in real time. By linking emotion to behavior, Kanjoya is able help their clients drive better outcomes.
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I had 20/12 vision up until Junior year of high school. Then it all fell apart and I couldn’t read the blackboard. I was in denial for a while, but it became quite obvious that I… I needed glasses. Although glasses certainly weren’t cool at the time, I was more concerned with having to wear something on my face all of the time. That’s why I opted for contacts. Today it seems that people who don’t even need vision correction are wearing glasses, and that is making a lot of fashion brands want to enter the eyewear category. eponym is a company that allows them to do that quickly and easily. They are based in Brooklyn, NY, and they “help the world’s most exciting brands create and distribute their own eyewear.”
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New York City is the ultimate place to go shopping, but it can be extremely intimidating. Not only is hard to know where to go to find what you want (or get a deal), but a lot of the higher end stores can have attitude. If you want to take shopping in NYC seriously, you need professional help. That’s what Fashion Update offers. They’re a New York, NY based company that offers tours that will help you “find designer name merchandise for less than a fraction of the retail cost.” There’s also, apparently, a magazine with the same name that helps you track down bargains and an attached PR firm called In Your Face PR. To me the fashion tours are the most interesting business.
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We’re right in the thick of graduation season, wedding season is just picking up steam, and Father’s Day is just around the corner. Chances are that you’ll be buying someone a gift in the next few weeks. Hopefully you’ll find something perfectly personal for your grad, Dad, or favorite couple, but in the event that you don’t, you can still offer something personalized. That’s what Things Remembered specializes in. The Highland Heights, OH based company is “the nation’s largest and most prominent retailer of personalized gifts.” If it can be engraved, Things Remembered probably sells it (they also do some embroidery).
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I’m not sure that I’d call myself brand conscious as much as I’d call myself brand loyal. With clothing I try to find a brand that matches my personal style and fits well. For a while Vince had some great sweaters that I really liked, so I bought two more after my first and kept an eye on the brand. I never ended up buying anything else from the New York, NY based company, but they seem to have grown a lot in popularity over the past few years. They started out in Los Angeles in 2002 with “a highly-edited collection of women’s knits and cashmere sweaters,” but today they offer a “collection of iconic essentials that women and men would want to wear every day.”
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Many of America’s great apparel brands started out by catering to a specific sporting lifestyle. Some, like Filson and Orvis, have largely stayed true to their roots. While others, like Abercrombie & Fitch, have moved far away from the brands that they once were. Lands’ End got its start as a yachting supply company in Chicago, but today it is based in Dodgeville, WI and is “an international apparel brand synonymous with timeless American style.” The company is certainly still inspired by its nautical heritage, but they definitely had to broaden their horizons a bit to get where they now are–generating well over $1 billion in revenue annually.
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I’m up in Michigan trying to get my fix of spring fly fishing. Now is the time of year when everyone is gearing up and buying new stuff. Usually it’s the latest, greatest technology that gets people to break out their wallets, but I’m also seeing a lot of people buying bamboo rods and other more traditional stuff. One brand that definitely falls on the traditional side is Filson. The older guys (that’s most of them) up here love it, but I’m also seeing it get popular with a younger, slightly hipsterish crowd. The Seattle, WA based company is “renowned for making products in the USA from fabrics such as heavyweight Tin Cloth and warm Mackinaw Wool.” Whether it’s workwear, hunting gear, or fishing gear, if it’s made by Filson, it’s going to last.
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The average supermarket is a pretty uninspiring place. It’s filled mostly with packaged, processed foods, and even the good stuff around the perimeter isn’t all that attractive. That’s why more and more specialty and gourmet grocery stores are popping up across the country. Here in Chicago we’re seeing a lot of Whole Foods and Mariano’s locations pop up, but we also got a special treat with an Eataly outpost. They are a New York, NY and Chicago, IL based gourmet Italian marketplace inspired by the famous chef Mario Batali. Their motto is: “We cook what we sell, and we sell what we cook.” It’s still a grocery store, but it’s also way more than that. Eataly is the kind of place that treats food how it should be treated.
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I kind of think of Easter as a spring version of Thanksgiving. Though one holiday is religious and the other isn’t, they both have similar themes and, in my family at least, similar celebrations. Thanksgiving is about celebrating the season past, while Easter is about being hopeful for the coming season. Both have significant agricultural undertones, and that’s why I think we should take a look at Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture today. They are a Pocantico Hills, NY based non-profit that is not only hopeful for the coming growing season but also for the future of agriculture. That’s why they “are working to improve the way America eats and farms.”
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I barely shop in retail stores any more because I know that I can almost always find a better price online. Retailers have realized this and started getting much more aggressive about pricing merchandise competitively. The problem is that few people are willing to drive from store to store just to save a few bucks. That’s why you should do a little pre-shopping on Find&Save, a site run by Wanderful Media. The former seems to be the sole product of the latter at this point; however, the Los Gatos, CA based Wanderful Media is aiming “to transform the $4 billion business of traditional advertising circulars through digital innovation – just as joint media ventures such as CareerBuilder and Cars.com strengthened the industry’s position through the use of new technology.”
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St. Patrick’s Day is one of my least favorite holidays. It didn’t used to be, but after moving to Chicago and being inconvenienced by all of the idiots “celebrating,” I’ve lost my patience. However, you have to think the inconvenience is worth it for local businesses–all of the people who are partying are also spending money on drinks, food, and taxis. Maybe these merchants can make up for the headaches of serving these revelers by using Clover. They are a Mountain View, CA based company that replaces the “cash register, payment terminal, receipt printer, and barcode scanner with an all-in-one solution.” They also have a name that made them exceedingly appropriate to feature today.
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I’ve always been an animal lover, but it’s turned up a few notches since Garçon came into my life. It’s amazing how much happiness a pet can bring to people, and it’s amazing what a good home can do for a pet. Unfortunately, 3-4 million animals are euthanized every year in the U.S. Found Animals is a Los Angeles, CA based nonprofit that is dedicated to changing this. The organization’s goal is to “find the big ideas that advance the safety of animals in our homes, our shelters, and everywhere in between.”
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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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Chocolate and Valentine’s Day are the perfect couple. Whether you’re looking for a gift for your sweetheart or a way to stop feeling lonely, chocolate is the answer. And if we’re talking about chocolate and romance, it’s hard to think of a more romantic chocolatier than Godiva–I mean their logo is a naked lady on a horse. While the company originated in Belgium nearly 90 years ago, it is now headquartered in New York, NY and does all of its U.S. production in Reading, PA. They’ve also opened close to 300 retail locations across the country.
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I am an outdoorsman. I fish, I hunt, and try to spend as much time in the wilderness as I can. Ok, that’s not completely true. I tend to stay in hotels/motels on my fishing trips, but I know a lot of people prefer to camp on those kinds of trips. It always seemed to me like a lot of work and equipment for a little more time outdoors; however, for many camping is the main event. In my mind that means sleeping in a tent, but I guess it can also mean sleeping in an RV. The people who prefer the latter definition are likely customers of Camping World. The Bowling Green, KY based company is “the camping and recreational vehicle enthusiast’s one-stop-shop for everything they need to enjoy living in and traveling in their RV.” Camping may be in the name, but it seems to be all about the RV lifestyle.
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There are generally two ways to market to people. You can build your own audience, or you can rent somebody else’s audience. That’s why a lot of companies are built around building audiences to rent to other businesses. FierceMarkets is a perfect example. They are a Washington, DC based company that specializes in business-to-business media, publications, and marketing. The end goal is to “connect companies with the right audience and ensure each campaign generates the highest possible return on investment.”
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Last week we talked about brand experiences. They can happen at any scale, but typically bigger brands want to create bigger experiences. The battle for mindshare is only getting fiercer, and that means companies are going all out to get people to pay attention to them. TV, radio, and online are great channels, but it’s hard to beat in person. That’s exactly what Sparks specializes in. They are a Philadelphia, PA based agency that “creates dyanmic brand experiences anywhere in the world a customer engages with your brand.” They’re operating at the highest level and working with the biggest brands–names like Google, LG, the New York Times, Motorola, Dropbox, and HP.
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Last year I got married at the Chicago Botanic Garden. I’ve never been much of a plant person, but it was truly a perfect setting. I’m just amazed that they can grow such a diverse array of beautiful plants in this climate–especially with the winter we’re having this year. If I was opening such a garden, I’d want to do so in a more moderate climate like San Francisco’s. John McLaren was the landscape gardener who was Golden Gate Park’s superintendent for 56 years. He picked a place for a future botanical garden that had “a variety of soil and exposure, sloping, dry and sunny hillsides, sheltered spots and rich, low or marshy land.” The San Francisco Botanical Garden finally got the necessary funding in 1926, and in 1954 the Strybing Arboretum Society was founded to support the garden and its programs. Today the organization is known as the San Francisco Botanical Garden Society, and it supports “55 acres of both landscaped gardens and open spaces, showcasing over 8,000 different kinds of plants from around the world.”
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On my last day of vacation I got blasted in the face with a volleyball. It didn’t break my sunglasses, but it really hurt. My nose is still sore, but it only left a tiny red mark across the bridge of my nose. I wouldn’t have minded a black eye, but I know some people care a bit more about how their faces look. They’re more likely than I am to purchase products from Benefit Cosmetics, a company that got its start when twin sisters moved to San Francisco, CA and opened a beauty boutique. One of their first products, Benetint, was developed to help an exotic dancer “enhance her nipples.” That’s certainly one of the more interesting stories I’ve heard about how a company got its start.
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I got my wife an Airport Express for Christmas. I’m not the typical male idiot portrayed on many American sitcoms–it was a good gift idea. The whole point was that I could hook up our wireless network to the fifteen-year-old wired speaker system that came with our apartment. The speakers were working when I started (I had the radio playing in all of the rooms), but after three hours of frustration, I ended up with the music from my iPhone playing in one room, and no music whatsoever in any of the other rooms. I’m going to have to find a way to fix this, and I think Sonos might be the answer. They are a Santa Barbara, CA and Cambridge, MA based company that set out in 2002 “to reinvent home audio for the digital age.” Their products certainly look a lot better than the circa 1997 sound system that my landlord left behind.
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Despite moving in 5 months ago, I still haven’t put up most of the framed pictures and art that we have in our apartment. It’s a ridiculously easy task, but for some reason it’s always the last thing that I want to do. In other words, don’t give us art for Christmas! However, if you have friends or family who know exactly where to put every new piece on their walls, then you may want to buy them a gift from Art.com. The company is based in Emeryville, CA, and it “is a leading authority in wall décor and the world’s largest online retailer of posters, prints, and framed art.” Every single person has his or her own taste in art, and Art.com allows each of them to find the kinds of pieces that appeal to them.
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I grew up in Fairfield County, Connecticut. If it’s not the preppiest place on earth, it’s pretty close. And in case that wasn’t enough, I went to a private school where wearing a blazer was required. I thought that wearing pink pants and pants with little animals on them was totally normal. Working for Orvis in Vermont for a few summers only reinforced that feeling (and gave me a sweet discount on buying more of said merchandise). It wasn’t until I moved to Chicago that I started to tone it down a bit (I still don’t own a pair of jeans though). But what if you wanted to go the opposite direction? What if you moved from Chicago to Connecticut and wanted to fit in? You’d have to shop at Lilly Pulitzer. They are a King of Prussia, PA based fashion brand and retailer (with dozens of locations across the country) that is known for its over the top, colorful prints.
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When I was a kid trick-or-treating was a failure if I didn’t reach double digits. I’m not talking about pieces of candy. I’m talking pounds. I laughed at the kids with the jack-o-lantern candy basket. Amateurs. Any real kid would use a backpack, an oversized pillowcase, or–better yet–both. There’s nothing better than getting home, pouring all your candy on the floor, and looking at the majesty of it all. It’s hard to recreate that feeling as an adult, but I kind of get it when I walk into Dylan’s Candy Bar. They are a New York, NY based retailer (with stores in Miami Beach and LA as well) that has merged “the worlds of art, fashion and pop culture with candy” to build “the world’s largest confectionary emporium and lifestyle brand.” Oddly enough, they don’t seem to dedicate much attention to Halloween, but I guess you don’t have to when your brand is all candy all the time.
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Despite the fact that I haven’t shaved in over 7 years, I won’t be winning a facial hair competition any time soon. That’s because I use a beard trimmer to maintain that “I shaved 4 days ago” look. I don’t plan on ever going back to shaving with a razor, but if I do I’ll consider Harry’s. They’re a New York, NY based company that was started “out of respect for quality craftsmanship, simple design, modern convenience and most importantly for guys who know they shouldn’t have to overpay for a great shave.” Back in my shaving days, the choice was to use Gilette’s latest “development” or to use some cheap alternative that would irritate my face even more (like the free razor that I got as a freshman in college). I believed the marketing hype and went with the expensive option, even though it still didn’t give me a great shave.
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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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This is my favorite part of the year when it comes to One Day One Job because all of those annoying kids finally go back to school. Just kidding. I actually love late August for a completely different reason: the Inc. 5000 is released. In case you aren’t familiar with it, it’s a ranking of the 5,000 fastest growing privately held companies in the United States. The metric that they use is three-year revenue growth, and that makes the list an amazing tool for finding up and coming companies with great career opportunities. This year Fuhu came in at #1 on the list with 42,148% three-year growth to $117.9 million in revenue. The El Segundo, CA based company that aims to be “the leading designer, seller and innovator of ‘thoughtful’ consumer products and services for children.” When you make stuff that kids like, parents empty their pockets.
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When I was growing up, I was anything but a youth against establishment. My school had a dress code, and I’m not sure that I ever violated it (ok, I may have forgotten to wear a belt once or twice). Even outside of school, I wore the same khaki pants that I had to wear at school (but with sneakers and a t-shirt of course)–I think I outgrew my last pair of jeans in 7th grade. It shouldn’t be a surprise that I’ve never owned anything from Volcom. In case you’re not familiar with the brand, they’re a San Clemente, CA based “designer, marketer and distributor of premium quality young men’s and young women’s clothing, accessories and related products.” The company was founded in 1991, and came out of Orange County boardsports culture.
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When I first heard Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop,” I knew it was going to be a massive hit (it probably already was, and I was just late). I’m no pop music genius, but how can a song with such a ridiculous beat and hilarious lyrics not succeed? While I don’t know this for sure, I have to imagine the song, which ended up at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, has to have meaningfully improved the thrift store business. Now I had always associated thrift stores with non-profits, but today I learned that isn’t always the case. Take Savers for example. They’re a Bellevue, WA based chain of retail locations that aims to “provide [their] customers with the best selection and shopping experience of any thrift store in the world.” They might even be the stores that Macklemore shops in, considering that he’s from Seattle.
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Cupcakes are supposed to be a miniature version of cake–a more reasonable and practical dessert. Yet as they moved from grade school birthday celebrations to being a culinary trend, they seemed to get bigger and more unhealthy–with some even pushing towards 1,000 calories. Tons of businesses popped up and seemed to offer more and more decadent cupcakes, and then the bubble burst. So how did one cupcake company continue to grow despite tons of competition and fading interest from consumers? By offering mini cupcakes that won’t instantly make your pants feel tighter. Baked By Melissa is a New York, NY based company that was started with “the idea that people should be able to taste more flavors without that post-dessert guilt trip.” Three cupcakes from Baked By Melissa add up to 140 calories. It’s still not health food, but it’s a reminder of what cupcakes were originally meant to be.
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While I really enjoy reading about entrepreneurs’ personal journeys, I don’t take much interest in their personal lives unless it’s especially relevant to the business’ story. A divorce would typically be completely irrelevant in one of these posts, but today’s it worth talking about. You’ve probably heard of Tory Burch, an extremely successful fashion brand named after its founder (who is now a billionaire). Tory Burch, the person, got divorced from J. Christopher Burch in 2006. After the divorce, Chris Burch decided to start a chain of retail stores called C. Wonder. His ex-wife obviously left a lasting impression, since it’s widely cited that New York, NY based C. Wonder has taken a lot of inspiration from Tory Burch’s designs, while selling the “preppy” goods at a much lower price. There were a few lawsuits and some bad blood, but all seems to be settled now.
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