Or did the short term loan really go away with all this turbulens? I’m just amazed how such a business model can work in the long run. It’s obvious that it works very good, the companies are making tons of money and as far as I know, not many has gone bankrupt. All the bigger ones are still there, way better then on the bank-side. Quite fun as they traditional banks has always looked down on these companies. Sources: Short Term Loan & short term cash loans.
What do you think?
After all the bad it has done to the consumer, corporate America and to the country in general, some analyst are pointing to the good that this economic turmoil is leaving in its wake.
The days of bumming around the office with little to do and having more time chatting with your officemates are over. Businesses large and small are now pretty much aware that productivity can be optimized if you really need to as what the economic recession has brought us to do.
Less workforce, lower operating costs, lower payroll, and smaller office space giving business the same products and services.
You have the tools, the internet, email, fax, the laptop and even Cell phones to keep you working while on the road and at home – all these is re-inventing the way business is thriving. If corporate America survives this economic glut, it has a very good lesson it won’t ever forget – when push comes to shove, you can do more with less.
A research study conducted by computer giant IBM taken from 2,400 respondents reveals a stark trend that may soon drastically alter the way businesses get their products advertised.
The forecast hinges on three major trends.
First is the fact that consumers are increasingly gaining more control with marketing messages they come across, interacting and filtering them out in most cases.
Second, creativity gets democratized with peer=sharing sites like Facebook, YouTube and other social networking sites where amateurs can create their own ads to make advertising agencies a dinosaur.
Lastly, with Pay-Per-Click online advertising, there’s more measurability and results-orientation in advertising giving traditional advertising media in TV more pressure to show its usefulness.
As this seems inevitable, the study suggests a re-thing of advertising strategies with a more personalized and customized to specific market groups, like holding contests or sponsorships of localized events.
The challenge really is how you would make consumers notice your ads with so many other ads compete for their attention is increasingly smaller time windows and attention spans. Think about it.
There are no age barriers for the entrepreneur of the 21st century. Businesses can start to thrive while you’re in the campus. Think Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. Think real-estate brokerage firm Hodara Real Estate and its student founder Alex Hodara. And they’re getting younger. Think T.O. Student Tutoring and Matt Rhodes who founded it while still in high school.
It’s often the case that school career centers focus on getting their students to land decent jobs in corporate America. These days, you now have entrepreneurship centers along with career centers that help a small but growing number of students take their first steps to starting their own businesses.
The Miami University’s Toppel Career Center has done this with its Launch Pad that started in September 2008 and has seen 20 new companies launched by its students. Not bad, maybe other universities can follow suit to identify budding new entrepreneurs among their students.
I’ve always wondered when the snail mail traditional post office will end in the age of the internet and emails. Perhaps not very soon as there is the dreaded paper trail that needs to get placed from time to time. But if upstart Zumbox can have its way, that too will end.
Zumbox is making a new mailing technology that creates a computer inbox, or Zumbox, corresponding to street addresses throughout the nation. People and companies need not bother with email addresses as a street address is enough to deliver electronically any kind of mail. Imagine the savings on postage stamps.
Presumably, there’d be a Zumbox website where just clicking your address shows all your incoming mails that you can download. Neat, right? Wait till the US Postal Office get their hands on the technology and you could be slapped with access fees every time you log onto the site equal to a postage stamp cost. What do you think?
Watching the HBO documentary Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags retelling the rise of New York’s garment industry at the hands of entrepreneurial Italian and Jewish immigrant workers during the turn of the 20th century, one can’t help but wonder what tomorrow might look like with the current realities in Corporate America.
Outsourcing jobs to cheap labor overseas has never been more appealing to many industries struggling to keep profits up. These are usually unskilled jobs that help build middle –class America to comfortable economic levels starting in the 50s up late 90s. This is now pretty much in danger of getting eroded with outsourcing and factory closures and relocation to cheaper, non-unionized locales, here and abroad.
There are some encouraging developments though. You have American Apparel making clothes right here and becoming a commercial success amidst a flood of cheap imported clothes from China, Brazil and Southeast Asia.
It looks like we’re seeing a resurgence of entrepreneurs that’s reviving the “Made In the USA” consciousness a relevant message to present and future businessmen. Let’s hope this becomes a trend and not just a one-time fluke.
