Small Business Resources from OPEN
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Lemonade Maker: James Young, Digital Prospector
Profiles of people who are seeing opportunity in a pile of economic lemons.
James Young
East Hampton, N.Y.
Before recession: Commercial real estate broker
Now: Co-founder of Rosehip Partners, a Hamptons real estate business
In the Hamptons, one of the most privileged parts of the country, the real estate boom is firmly at an end. The number of sales was down 40 percent in 2008. Prices are being slashed on multi-million-dollar mansions. Lavish spec houses sit empty.
It would seem like the worst possible time to start a real estate company. But last summer, James Young and Joe Kazickas founded Rosehip Partners, an agency that covers the east end of Long Island, from West Hampton to Montauk. In September, as the recession was gathering speed, they unveiled their website, HamptonsRentals.com.
Signs of the Recession: A Retail Rant
“I just felt I’d had it and I wanted to say my piece,” says Rita Brookoff, owner of Legacy NYC, a designer clothing boutique in SoHo in New York City. “I’m trying to fight back. I’m sick of the doom and gloom. I know the stock market is down, but we don’t have to be.”
Signs of the Recession: Candy Crunch
Here’s one fresh perspective on this economy, spotted at the Austin, Texas, farmer’s market:
Chocolatier Tom Pedersen is founder of Cocoa Puro and producer of chocolate-covered cocoa beans, one of the most addictive sweet snacks ever bagged. Despite that, his business has taken a hit. “It seems everyone thinks the world is coming to an end so there’s no point in buying chocolate,” Petersen says. “I’d think the opposite would be true.”
Retooling: Flex Time
We don’t envy anybody in the recruiting business right now, but we think Jeff Lundwall and JD Rehm have a good plan for the recession.
When they started media search firm Mercury Group a few short years ago, they established three lines of business: executive recruiting, sales training (they’re two former ad sales execs) and career counseling. While the executive search business took off and Mercury established a foothold with major publishing firms, those “value add” lines took a backseat.
Lemonade Maker: Chris Hand, Personal Marketer
Profiles of people who turn economic lemons into lemonade.
This week’s Lemonade Maker: Chris Hand
Location: Upper West Side, New York City
Before recession: Running a visual communications agency and recruiting marketing executives.
Now: Building CareerHandlers, a personal marketing agency designed to help job seekers launch professional campaigns.
Retooling: “Hibernate” Your Business
For a lot of companies, it’s going to be a long, cold winter — even as that winter turns to spring, summer, fall and back again. Instead of toughing it out with bridge-loan band-aids, fancy resource footwork or repeated promises to customers, one company bowed out without bowing out. In the CEO’s term, it went into “hibernation.”
In a story by Rafe Needleman on Cnet, Big Moving Picture CEO David Knight laid out his predicament and his strategy: His company, which affixes cameras to military aircraft during air shows and displays the live feed on large screens to audiences on the ground, was about to launch last fall. When the market fell precipitously in September, he put things on hold.
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