My Business BlogThe leading business search engine and business directory
US personal income up 0.5 percent in December, consumer spending flat
WASHINGTON — US personal incomes picked up during December but Americans chose to increase savings instead of spending, according to official data Monday, showing a caution that will likely keep the economy in a slow-growth mode in 2012.
Personal income grew 0.5 percent compared to the prior month, after rising 0.1 percent in November, the Commerce Department said. Spending was flat after moving up just 0.1 percent the month before.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires expected spending to grow by 0.1 percent and income to jump 0.4 percent last month.
Memphis mayor launches new initiative to help small businesses
The mayor of Memphis has a new plan to streamline city government and boost entrepreneurship.
Speaking to more than 100 minority and women business owners and executives Wednesday, A C Wharton introduced his administration’s Memphis Office of Resources and Enterprise (MORE) initiative, a new effort to make it easier for small businesses to bid on, and win, local government contracts.
Previously, Wharton said, the city had no centralized system to assist entrepreneurs with issues such as how to obtain business licenses or how to bid on city contracts, or even how to grow their companies.
But with the MORE program, under the direction of Alandas Dobbins, small-business owners will be able to contact one person, who in turn will offer assistance and referrals to the appropriate resource.
Dobbins, who previously served as president of management consulting and systems integration and installation firm Nsight Communication, reports directly to the mayor, a practice Wharton said will boost efficiency.
“It’s not business as usual.
Shopping on Boxing Day – only for Boots
Here’s something that passed me by as I was tucking into my turkey – the biggest e-shopping day of the year doesn’t come in the run up to Christmas. It actually falls – according to Experian Hitwise on Boxing Day. Now if you really look into the data you can see that what Experian Hitwise measure is visits rather than actual purchases. They’re claiming that ecommerce was at its peak on Boxing Day on the basis of the fact that there were 96m visits by UK visitors to shopping sites spending a total of 13m hours doing so.
I wasn’t convinced, I knew lots of people who’d been making purchases in the run up to Christmas, but I didn’t know anyone who was buying something on Boxing Day. So I thought I’d take a look at our data and they tell a rather different story. Far from being the biggest shopping day, as claimed by Experian/Hitwise, in fact sales on Boxing Day were the lowest of any Monday throughout the entire holiday season. Sal
O’Leary downplays Ryanair profits
Chief executive Michael O’Leary downplayed the figures — saying they compared to a bad corresponding weather-hampered quarter in the preceding year, which had resulted in a third quarter net loss of €10.3m — but still said that the company should come close to recording record profits for the year to the end of March. Indeed, on the back of the latest figures, Ryanair has — for the second consecutive quarter — increased its full-year net profit guidance by 10%; saying the final figure should amount to €480m and not the previously anticipated €440m.
During the three months to the end of December, Ryanair’s passenger numbers dipped by 2% to 16.7 million. However, after-tax profits amounted to €14.9m and basic earnings per share came to 1.02c.
Those last two figures were up from a net loss of €10.3m and a loss per share of 0.69c for the same quarter last year. Quarterly revenues, m
The Courage of One’s Creative Convictions
When I think of the wondrous entrepreneurs that I’ve had the great fortune to know personally over the years, Mr. Marty Tibbitts truly stands out.
Marty, as the Founder and CEO of the Boss family of businesses, headquartered in St. Claire Shores, Michigan, has both built and acquired an impressive array of companies - ranging from telecommunications to security software, to web services and analytics, to digital media.
When I think of Marty, above all else I am inspired by his beautiful entrepreneurial mind.
Extremely well-read and with an array of personal, athletic, and intellectual passions and experiences, Marty is the master of the “non-obvious.”
He is able to connect the strategic dots between market and competitive trends with a creativity and panache that flows from a lifelong passion for the game of “business chess.”
This ability to visualize the impact of small moves here and there – like securing an incremental input cost advantage – and then translating that advantage slowly but surely into an unassailable competitive position – well this is an essential quality of great business strategy and one that Marty possesses in buckets.
As a successful entrepreneur, however, Marty’s skills go well beyond simply being a great strategist.
He also has great heaping platefuls of business guts.
Unlike far too many educated at America’s most prestigious universities (and Marty is a proud Stanford Cardinal), Marty’s career has been defined by the paths not taken.
No law school or business school. No
Recent SCTCC grads’ solar specialty brings brighter futures
The panel of reflectors in back of Scott Randalls house is 12 feet high and 40 feet long. Its rotated monthly to get just the right angle to the sun which on a recent clear day glinted off the dozens of photovoltaic cells.
Randall believes the future is just as bright for his new vocation in solar energy. He and his friend and business associate Jack Kluempke are recent graduates of an energy technical specialist program at St. Cloud Technical & Community College. Both have launched ventures they say have given new life to their careers.
Randall, 50, was a cabinet maker who needed to look for a different line of work because of a back injury. A visit to the Minnesota WorkForce Center identified his interest in energy, but it wasnt until he installed his own solar system that he knew the path he wanted to follow.
SOPA Blackout Strike Already Started; Why Major Sites and Blogs are Going Black in Support
If you haven’t heard about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) so far you are bound to notice today when you are unable to get to many of your favorite sites from Wikipedia to Reddit to WordPress to Mozilla to Craigslist.
SOPA LOSING SUPPORT VIDEO
Do not fall for the red herring that these bills – both SOPA (in the House) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) (in the Senate) are ONLY about stopping “renegade pirate sites”.
ANY site could be taken down!
MUST READ post: Click Image for MPAA Rant against SOPA Blackout
SOPA and PIPA are NOT only a threat to big sites. See this
Apple announce record sales of iPhones and iPads
Record sales of iPhones and iPads resulted in record profits at Apple in the final quarter of 2011, the first since the death of its co-founder, Steve Jobs.
Apple more than doubled its profits: to $13.06bn (£8.35bn), compared with $6bn for the same quarter in 2010. The result easily beat analysts’ forecasts, taking pressure off the chief executive, Tim Cook, handpicked by Jobs as his successor. Last October Apple shares recorded their biggest single-day dollar drop after iPhone sales missed their forecast.
Cook said he was “thrilled” the company sold a record 37.04m iPhones in the final quarter of 2011, a 128% rise on a year ago. “We could have sold more if we’d had more supply,” he said. The recently launched iPhone 4S proved to be the company’s best seller in the quarter. “We could not be happier,” said Cook.
In record sales across nearly all product categories, Apple sold a record 15.43m iPads over the quarter, more than double a year ago.