When I was at my local Shop Rite last week, I noticed Foxon Park soda. It looked old fashioned, all natural and authentic, not like your usual store brand or cheap rip-off brand. I wondered what Foxon was. It turns out it's a small Connecticut creator and bottler of soda that's been around for 80 years.
http://foxonpark.com/cart.php?m=splash
You can order the soda online or even visit the bottler. An article appeared this weekend in the New York Times that mentioned Foxon Park and several other old fashioned soda makers in Connecticut. In some, you can even go and make your own soda. You can have a kids' party at Avery's where kids make up their own from the ingredients available.
More and more people are buying soda from small businesses like this because consumers want to buy locally. I think this is great. A few years ago, when I was teaching business plan writing, I had a student who was going to open a fruit and tea drink company in Fiji in order to compete with Coke. These soft drink bottlers make me think of her. It takes a lot of work to run a company like this, especially fighting for shelf space and share of mind against the big guys like Coke and Pepsi.
Here's a list of the companies mentioned in the Times: Avery's Beverages, Castle Beverages, Foxon Park, Hosmer Mountain Bottling Company.
It's great to see small businesses doing well in this very tough economy.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Friday, July 2, 2010
The Crazies - Worth Seeing
I normally don't write movie reviews. But I've decided to write reviews of DVDs, books and music from time to time because we all need a little entertainment in our lives. And all creative endeavors are like small businesses, requiring creativity, management, financing, a great team and marketing. So here goes:
The Crazies
My heart was thumping as I watched the action in The Crazies unfold. Although marketed as a horror movie, Breck Eisner’s remake of the 1973 George Romero film struck me as more of an intelligent thriller with some bloody scenes.
What makes this movie particularly good is how it takes the point of
view of the protagonists, a local sheriff David Dutton and his doctor wife, played by Timothy Olyphant and Radha Mitchell, as they are confronted by more and more of their friends and neighbors strangely changing into vengeful, unstoppable killers.
They, along with the deputy and his girlfriend, slowly realize that they seem to be immune to the epidemic which is taking over the good people of Ogden Marsh, Iowa. At the same time, they find they are also cut off from communicating with the world beyond its borders. Soon, they’re not just running from the local population, which is becoming steadily more crazy and murderous, but also from government troops who have moved in to quarantine the town and annihilate all the infected residents. It turns out that a military plane crash unleashed a bio weapon into the town’s water supply, and the government has to stop its spread and the knowledge of the catastrophe. The premise of a U.S.-made bio weapon getting loose, its devastating effects on the humans living there and the government’s heavy-handed response all seem plausible, when you think of recent environmental disasters.
I thought Eisner directed his characters and action well and developed high tension with some really cringe-inducing scenes and surprises. The acting was much better than a typical horror film. I particularly liked how the film’s creators interspersed calm, personal sequences, like the sheriff waking up with his wife in their peaceful house, summer breezes blowing the curtains, with sudden scenes of violence. The scenes of
surprising or unrelenting attacks truly had me gasping and tensing up far more than I do in most movies. I had actually thought this kind of movie making was dead, but I’m glad to see it isn’t.
I also really liked how the production design (art direction) aided in creating the bucolic feel of the Iowa prairie, in contrast to the bloody mayhem and military response. And I enjoyed the percussive score written by Mark Isham. Isham created music that sounded at times like the bells of a railroad crossing. I loved that because it evoked the image of fast-moving, unstoppable danger. He also wrote lovely melodies for the calmer, more personal parts of the film, again, helping to create more suspense and a sense of dread.
If you missed The Crazies when it was out in theaters, get the DVD now and treat yourself to a good, scary evening.
The Crazies
My heart was thumping as I watched the action in The Crazies unfold. Although marketed as a horror movie, Breck Eisner’s remake of the 1973 George Romero film struck me as more of an intelligent thriller with some bloody scenes.
What makes this movie particularly good is how it takes the point of
view of the protagonists, a local sheriff David Dutton and his doctor wife, played by Timothy Olyphant and Radha Mitchell, as they are confronted by more and more of their friends and neighbors strangely changing into vengeful, unstoppable killers.
They, along with the deputy and his girlfriend, slowly realize that they seem to be immune to the epidemic which is taking over the good people of Ogden Marsh, Iowa. At the same time, they find they are also cut off from communicating with the world beyond its borders. Soon, they’re not just running from the local population, which is becoming steadily more crazy and murderous, but also from government troops who have moved in to quarantine the town and annihilate all the infected residents. It turns out that a military plane crash unleashed a bio weapon into the town’s water supply, and the government has to stop its spread and the knowledge of the catastrophe. The premise of a U.S.-made bio weapon getting loose, its devastating effects on the humans living there and the government’s heavy-handed response all seem plausible, when you think of recent environmental disasters.
I thought Eisner directed his characters and action well and developed high tension with some really cringe-inducing scenes and surprises. The acting was much better than a typical horror film. I particularly liked how the film’s creators interspersed calm, personal sequences, like the sheriff waking up with his wife in their peaceful house, summer breezes blowing the curtains, with sudden scenes of violence. The scenes of
surprising or unrelenting attacks truly had me gasping and tensing up far more than I do in most movies. I had actually thought this kind of movie making was dead, but I’m glad to see it isn’t.
I also really liked how the production design (art direction) aided in creating the bucolic feel of the Iowa prairie, in contrast to the bloody mayhem and military response. And I enjoyed the percussive score written by Mark Isham. Isham created music that sounded at times like the bells of a railroad crossing. I loved that because it evoked the image of fast-moving, unstoppable danger. He also wrote lovely melodies for the calmer, more personal parts of the film, again, helping to create more suspense and a sense of dread.
If you missed The Crazies when it was out in theaters, get the DVD now and treat yourself to a good, scary evening.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Higher One Goes Public
Several years ago I heard the founders of Higher One speak at a Connecticut Venture Group meeting for entrepreneurs. I was really impressed. So imagine my excitement when I read that they had taken their company public! Very few companies are going public, which is one reason venture capital is so hard to come by right now.
Higher One is a service that works with the burser's office of a college to handle all the student-related monetary transactions -- financial aid, student meal plan cards, etc. It helps the college take in and disburse money more efficiently.
I was doing the college tours at the time I heard the presentation, so I understood its value to students immediately. It made perfect sense for a student to have just one card -- their college ID card -- that would double as a debit card, enabling them to pay tuition, purchase food and books, keep track of financial aide, etc. The founders were all students at Yale who saw the need and went about trying to fill it. The founders, Sean Glass, Mark Volchek and Miles Lasater were very smart in how they went about building their company and raising money. They were also lucky because they had good contacts in the investment banking and private equity world. (One reason it's so hard to get into a university like Yale.) The young men set out not just to raise revenue, but also to generate a profit. In the go-go dot-com years, what they were doing was highly unusual, as most companies and investors didn't care about profit. But they researched the market and tweaked their business plan until they arrived with a viable company.
It's been a long haul.
But now, their profit-orientation has paid off. I hope the stock does well.
See article in NY Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/business/economy/25ipo.html
Company site:
http://www.higherone.com/
Higher One is a service that works with the burser's office of a college to handle all the student-related monetary transactions -- financial aid, student meal plan cards, etc. It helps the college take in and disburse money more efficiently.
I was doing the college tours at the time I heard the presentation, so I understood its value to students immediately. It made perfect sense for a student to have just one card -- their college ID card -- that would double as a debit card, enabling them to pay tuition, purchase food and books, keep track of financial aide, etc. The founders were all students at Yale who saw the need and went about trying to fill it. The founders, Sean Glass, Mark Volchek and Miles Lasater were very smart in how they went about building their company and raising money. They were also lucky because they had good contacts in the investment banking and private equity world. (One reason it's so hard to get into a university like Yale.) The young men set out not just to raise revenue, but also to generate a profit. In the go-go dot-com years, what they were doing was highly unusual, as most companies and investors didn't care about profit. But they researched the market and tweaked their business plan until they arrived with a viable company.
It's been a long haul.
But now, their profit-orientation has paid off. I hope the stock does well.
See article in NY Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/business/economy/25ipo.html
Company site:
http://www.higherone.com/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)