PORTLAND, Maine (April 12, 2012)- iBec Creative announces the hiring of Cyndy Chaney as a new Web Developer for the [...]
PODIUM–Jean Hoffman
[caption id="attachment_14778" align="alignright" width="562" caption="Portrait by Irvin Serrano"][/caption] Anything But Generic With her latest venture—the generic pet meds company Putney—Jean Hoffman is doing what she always does: quietly, brilliantly, doggedly transforming the marketplace. When Putney, a Portland-based generic pet meds company founded in 2006, released news that it had attracted $21 million in investment capital—a very large wad here in Maine—it didn’t get a lot of column inches in statewide press. Perhaps the achievement seemed natural, given the size of the market. Over 60% of U.S. households have at least one cat or dog, and spent about $48 billion on these companion animals in ...
PRIVATE TOUR–MPBN
[caption id="attachment_14787" align="alignright" width="562" caption="Daniel Lambert/MPBN photo"][/caption] Ready & Able Maine Public Broadcasting Network has the staff, gear, and mandate to reach every corner of Maine with news, culture, discourse, emergency alerts, and Big Bird, too. Irwin Gratz gets out of bed at an hour when most roosters are still snoring, and drives to the Maine Public Broadcasting Network’s Portland studio in the dark, arriving just after four in the morning. Legend has it that he stores a cot somewhere in the building in case a snowstorm threatens to keep him from his thousands of listeners who begin their day with his popular ...
VANTAGE POINT–Hoddy Hildreth
[caption id="attachment_14825" align="alignright" width="562" caption="Photo by Mark Wellman"][/caption] Environmentalist #1 Horace “Hoddy” Hildreth Jr. has given considerable time and money to environmental causes over the years. But the laws he wrote in the 1960s remain his most powerful contributions In the classic book The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, Al Ries and Jack Trout teach that “it’s better to be first than it is to be better.” In his work championing Maine’s environment, Hoddy Hildreth has managed to be both. An attorney who hated every minute of law school, Hildreth practiced during Maine’s environmental Wild West, when paper companies were polluting rivers and developers ...
ROUNDTABLE–Business Turnaround
[caption id="attachment_14791" align="alignright" width="562" caption="Illustration by M. Scott Ricketts"][/caption] Is Your Business in Trouble? If your expenses are higher than your revenues, then your company is not well. Jacques Santucci, Mary Weickert, Dan Walsh, and James Ebbert offer potent medicine, though it may be hard to swallow. In 2006, a mere 1,250 businesses filed bankruptcy in Maine. Since then, bankruptcies have more than doubled, with an all-time high, so far, of 4,100 in 2010. That’s a lot of Alka-Seltzer. Some economists say having some businesses close is ultimately good for the marketplace. It’s a way of correcting excesses, thinning the herd, a pecuniary version ...
