Row House Soaps, which sells natural herbal soaps, opened on E. Main street downtown, according to the local Monroe Ward blog. The owners, Michael and Sharon Walsh had been making soaps in their Arizona home for years before moving to Richmond and hitting the festival circuit. In response to the many requests from their customers… Read more »
Aaron Kremer
Aaron Kremer is the founder of Richmond BizSense. Email him at aaron@richmondbizsense.com.
Will car-sharing work in Richmond?
If you’re looking to take a Zipcar on a test drive for yourself, you’ll have to leave Richmond’s city limits, In fact, the closest locations to Richmond are in Washington, D.C. and Chapel Hill, N.C. The company, which is not yet profitable, is adding new customers at a 4% or 5% monthly clip, mostly because… Read more »
Coming spring 09: Boulevard Movie Theater
A new movie theater on North Boulevard in Richmond will be showing flicks in early 2009, according to a mondo banner that went up this week. Bow Tie Partners, the NY-based developer, is calling the project Boulevard Square. The theater is slated to be called Movieland. It will be the only theater in the City… Read more »
Lumber Layoffs
Roper Brothers Lumber has laid off dozens of workers due to a slowdown in the housing sector. The Petersburg-based company, which had operations around Virginia and North Carolina, closed a plant in Raleigh, let go of around 22 workers at a Newport News Truss plant, and cut the size of the workforce at showrooms in… Read more »
Do looks matter in business?
The golfer Fuzzy Zoeller used to say that you gotta look good to feel good. There might be some truth in that. And it might also be smart business advice. There’s an interesting dialogue on the Freakonomics Blog about how appearance affects careers. BizSense has wanted to investigate this issue for months. One source told… Read more »
Richmond Starbucks Safe…for now
Starbucks won’t close many of its Richmond locations, if any, according to several local employees who asked that their names not be used because they are not allowed to speak on behalf of the company. ast week, BizSense reported that Starbucks announced plans to close 600 stores and cut 12,000 jobs.
Auction-rate insecurity: Local investors and businesses still waiting to get money
Some local businesses and individuals are still trying to get their money out of auction-rate securities – bond funds that were thought to be as accessible as savings accounts but became frozen. BizSense reported in April that investors with Wachovia Securities, Davenport & Co. and Charles Schwab could not get money from mutual funds that… Read more »
Open the press release floodgates
You’re about to read a sentence no newspaper/magazine has ever written. Please send us your press releases. That’s not a typo. We’re not off our meds. We just launched a local PR Newswire. Now Richmond businesses can post news about themselves on the BizSense’s Rich Wire. Big companies already pay to run their press releases… Read more »
The business media can build, and it can destroy
The media sword can cut both ways. In May I wrote about how Richmond-based job board Snagajob.com owes much of its success to its media strategy, and the mainstream media that made such a strategy possible. The company positioned founder and President Sean Boyer as an expert on hourly jobs (wouldn’t an expert on hourly… Read more »
Business called Schwing
I saw a construction vehicle from Schwing Concrete on the road. Things must have gotten tough after Wayne’s World.
