INTO LAW this year by President Obama, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provides billions of dollars to businesses and government agencies in an effort to spur economic growth, rebuild infrastructure and create jobs, especially in the green jobs sector.
Read MoreDesktop Deluge
WE’VE ALL BEEN there. Wandering slowly through the long, wide aisles of your local office megastore, sifting through shelf after shelf of office products, wondering what to buy. There are no-smudge pens and tri-colored pencils, stapleless staplers, safety scissors, decidedly unsafe industrial scissors, and more brands of plain white paper than what is realistically conceivable. Deciding amongst all the different products can be difficult, which is how one usually ends up sitting in the fluorescent, timeless hallways, mulling highlighter colors for 45 minutes.
Read MoreGreen Machines
NATURE HAS a lot she can teach about efficiency. A few hundred million years of evolution have sculpted certain plants, like the cactus or lichen, to make the most with the barest minimum of resources. In an economy where every penny matters, mimicking Earth’s best survivors and paring down your company’s own resource consumption can not only lessen your overall environmental impact, but have similar results of spurring growth in an otherwise harsh climate.NATURE HAS a lot she can teach about efficiency. A few hundred million years of evolution have sculpted certain plants, like the cactus or lichen, to make the most with the barest minimum of resources. In an economy where every penny matters, mimicking Earth’s best survivors and paring down your company’s own resource consumption can not only lessen your overall environmental impact, but have similar results of spurring growth in an otherwise harsh climate.
Read MoreDomestic Partner
MANUFACTURERS ARE having their day in the sun at the moment, especially in our industry. How were these suppliers able to resist the rush a few years back to move production overseas? In most cases, the ability to continue manufacturing in the United States came down to trade-offs in three areas: a cost/benefit evaluation, comparing…
Read MoreBIC Graphic USA to Acquire Norwood
Indianapolis-based Norwood Promotional Products and BIC Graphic USA announced today a definitive agreement for BIC to acquire Norwood. After presenting a last-minute offer, BIC was awarded the sale outbidding the original stalking horse, Aurora Resurgence. Total consideration for the acquisition is $125 million plus approximately $37.5 million in assumed liabilities. BIC Graphic USA is a division of BIC USA Inc., a leading promotional products supplier.
Read MoreDo the Right Thing
Top five worst excuses not to go green, go safe and go responsible:
1. It’s too expensive.
2. One person can’t make a difference.
3. It doesn’t fit my lifestyle.
4. The quality of the products just isn’t as high.
5. I don’t know where or how to begin.
Do Gooders!
It’s easy to pigeonhole social responsibility into being about nothing more than driving a hybrid and saving old growth forests. The green movements power and celebrity, while valuable, can overshadow the other acts of human kindness that sustain societies as much as clean air, food and water.On both the supplier and distributor side of the…
Read MoreSurvival of the Finest
If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.Charles Darwin, naturalist (1809-1882) There is a survival-of-the-fittest mentality that we have all been adhering to—unless, of course, you are not one of the fittest, are living in a crowd of billions and have…
Read MoreA Midsummer’s Daydream
It happens every year, typically around late June, but it never fails to take me by surprise. It’s a peculiar feeling, particularly because the timing just seems, well, odd.
Read MoreEddie Bauer Files for Bankruptcy, Read Actual SEC Press Release
Eddie Baur’s official press release on bankruptcy filing with the Securites and Exchange Commission:
SEATTLE, June 17, 2009 – Eddie Bauer Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: EBHI) (“the Company”) today announced that it has voluntarily initiated proceedings under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware and under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) in Canada in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Commercial List), and is pursuing a sale process under Section 363 of the Bankruptcy Code and under the CCAA.
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