April 2009

The Pink Slip Economy
They wait in the rain outside an Independence hotel. They are your friends and neighbors, your spouses, your siblings, your children. They are about 7,500 people competing for 1,000 jobs at a fair, the entrance to which is at least two hours’ wait away. They are out of work, victims of an economy sliding past sluggish and toward hellish, of billions of wallets snapping shut worldwide. It is not the end of the world, but it is the end of a world where finances once ran fast and swift. For now, ther...

Tweet Me Right
I confess: I’ve been “tweeting” with my “friends.”   No, that isn’t what got Michael Phelps in trouble. Tweets are messages sent on the social network Twitter, and contacts on Facebook are called friends. It may not sound businesslike, but social networks can be important business tools — or wastes of time. Or worse. Social networks can improve your brand, increase your visibility, boost your professional stature and provide tools to reach and to learn from...

Thunder's Road
Inside a 75,000-square-foot warehouse near the Akron-Canton Airport, the post-lunchtime rush is in full gear. Electric-powered forklifts busily crisscross paths, picking up pallets from 48 bays on one side of the building and methodically stacking them into 53-foot tractor-trailers parked on the opposite side. It’s a practice known as “cross-docking” — an ultraefficient way to move products along the supply chain. The pallets carry soup, cereal, tortilla chips, toothpaste, plasma...

Cut the Cuts
It has been fascinating to watch America’s workplaces adjust to the recession. Some organizations reacted without much thought and started slicing jobs back in October. Others laid off workers after seeing drops in their business. There are even profitable organizations cutting jobs, using the economy as an excuse to “clean house.” Layoffs make the news, but what often goes unreported are the other approaches good organizations use to reduce costs and improve productivity in goodandbad...

Creative Class
You’re bombarded with ads: TV, radio, Web. It’s a nonstop assault. Yet how many of those spots stick with you? Not many. “A lot of forces need to come together to do great creative work,” says Mike Hudock, creative director at advertising agency Point to Point in Beachwood. At the American Advertising Federation’s Cleveland ADDY Awards in February, Point to Point took home five gold medals, including Best of Show for a series of United Way posters. “Good work doesn...

What's In A Name
GrindHouse Corp. Jetton Freeman, 30 Promoter/Artist Incorporated January 2009 Cleveland Not your routine job Life in general is a grind, according to Jetton Freeman, CEO of GrindHouse Corp., even when working as a promoter and agent in the music industry he loves. “Its just an everyday thing, everyone’s grinding in some type of way,” he says. “It is just hard working.” House music “It’s like the studio,” Freeman says. “So we incorporated it: GrindHou...

Spine Signaling
A patient suffering from low back pain stands in front of a doctor wearing what looks like a heating pad dotted with dozens of deep-penetrating electrodes. The device is hooked to a computer. After a few seconds, the screen comes to life.   On top of the skeletal background of a lower back, colors begin to appear. There is green, yellow, maybe some red. The latter indicates something wrong with the lower back. The patient goes through this scan nine times — sometimes standing upright, other t...

Cash Flow
Like many small Northeast Ohio businesses, the Rutledge Group has been cutting costs to make it through the economic recession. After years of double-digit growth, the independent insurance company has seen business fall by 7 percent so far this year as customers drop their auto, home or health insurance policies to save precious dollars. “When customers stop paying their insurance premiums, it impacts our cash flow,” says Deborah Rutledge, chief operating officer. “That forced us to g...

Greenbacks for Growth
Space is cramped at Kalt Manufacturing. The North Ridgeville manufacturer squeezed a semitruck-size horizontal boring mill, which produces gear boxes for wind turbines, into its 43,000-square-foot facility last June.   But that’s good news for Kalt. Business has been on the rise since the precision machining and engineering company branched out from supplying the auto industry to alternative energy three years ago. Alternative energy now makes up 35 percent of its sales. “The way orders...