Stories indexed with the term ‘local business’

Sergio Mendez was meandering through the art fairs crowd in downtown Ann Arbor. Walking down Washington toward Main Street, Mendez saw something worth picking up. It was the left arm – just the left arm – belonging to a guy he knows, Eric Garcia. So Mendez  grabbed it and put it in his backpack.

That left arm wasn’t some sculpture in the art fair. But no worries, it also wasn’t Garcia’s literal left arm. It was a virtual arm, part of a multi-player iPhone game that Mendez and Garcia are developing, along with their colleagues at Phonagle, Jeremy Canfield and Ben Malley.

Phonagle LLC is a tech start-up. This week they’re using the art fairs as the setting to test out the game they’re developing. The object of this game: Find and collect virtual objects set up around the city – this version included their own virtual body parts. [Full Story]

Steven Lesse has some stories to tell – making a necklace out of a gall stone is just one of them.

The co-owner of Abracadabra Jewelry and Gem Gallery has seen a lot since opening his downtown Ann Arbor shop in 1974. Originally located in the building that now houses Herb David Guitar Studio, Abracadabra moved to its current location at 205 E. Liberty in 1976 and has remained there ever since. Lesse, who co-owns the business with his wife Katherine, fell in love with Ann Arbor when he set up a booth at the art fair during the summer of 1973.

“I was tired of the gypsy lifestyle – it was like being in a rock band,” Lesse said. “You were always traveling around city to city, art fair to art fair. It was a fun lifestyle when you’re not attached and you don’t have own a house.” Soon after he visited, Lesse rented his first building in Ann Arbor and opened his first gallery, which also became his apartment. [Full Story]

The cavernous commercial space next to the Liberty Lofts condo complex isn’t always empty –  as recently as May, The Chronicle documented a temporary architectural exhibit there. Mostly, though, passers-by can look through the floor-to-ceiling windows and see roughly 18,000 square feet of emptiness at the corner of Liberty and First.

But on Wednesday, July 8, the former factory space will have another temporary occupant: Karen Myers and Archie Welch are holding an open house from 3:30-7 p.m., hoping to garner support for a European-style indoor farmers market. [Full Story]

Behind a graffiti-covered door, at the end of the alley next to the Michigan Theater and one floor below street level, a handful of entrepreneurs are working at all hours in some pretty unusual office space.

Under the umbrella of TechArb, a coworking space for University of Michigan students, 10 start-up technology companies have set up shop in 30,000 square feet of commercial basement space that has been vacant for years. With 18-foot ceilings, imposing columns and no natural light, there is feeling of total isolation from the hubbub of Liberty Street, just one story up. The seclusion allows the 30 entrepreneurs to focus intensely on building their businesses.

They’re hard at work because the clock is ticking. They’ve got the rent-free space for this summer, and this summer only. [Full Story]

Less than two weeks after Shaman Drum Bookshop announced plans to close, the owners of another independent Ann Arbor bookstore are saying they could be next.

On Friday, Keith Orr – co-owner of Common Language Bookstore – sent an email to customers laying out the situation that his business faces: “There is no easy way to say this,” he wrote. “Common Language is not making enough sales to support itself. Its very existence is in peril.”

After a Chronicle reader forwarded the email to us on Monday, we went over to the store in Kerrytown’s Braun Court to talk with Orr. Sitting in the shaded courtyard in front of the shop he owns with partner Martin Contreras, Orr spoke about why they decided to reach out for help, and how he hopes the community will respond.

Contreras and Orr have been subsidizing the store with their personal savings and with money from another business they own, the \aut\ BAR, which is located in an adjacent building. They can’t continue that indefinitely – sales have to increase to support the store. Though there is a sense of crisis, Orr says, they aren’t planning to shut their doors next week or even next month. Yet they wanted to alert the community that they are struggling, and if they can’t find a way to make the bookstore financially sustainable, they’ll have to close. [Full Story]

When The Chronicle sees a Tweet wondering if a local business has closed, that sometimes sends us off on a quest – and Sunday evening, the business in question was Krazy Jim’s Blimpy Burger. Since we’d covered the mystery closing of another landmark eatery in January, we braced for bad news.

And seeing large CLOSED signs in the windows as we approached, plus a yellow cord strung across the front steps, it wasn’t looking good. But as we got closer, we saw – written much more faintly and in much smaller lettering – ”til Monday.” Then, ignoring the cord, we climbed the stairs and encountered a much more detailed sign on the front door: Blimpy’s was only temporarily closed for renovations. Whew. [Full Story]

Boxes upon boxes filled with vacuum parts and accessories pack Dick Sampier’s small shop behind Stadium Hardware, a shop so off the beaten path that it might go unnoticed unless you were looking for it. But customers find it because they are looking for it – Dick Sampier Vacuum Sales and Repair is one of the last remaining vacuum repair stores in the Ann Arbor area.

Sampier, who opened the business in 1985 and is the sole employee, can often be found in the back of the store, either answering customers’ questions or working on one of the 10 or so vacuums he fixes each day. Sampier says he considers himself more of an artist than a mechanic, and he’s earned a reputation as someone who can fix even the most tricky mechanical problems.

So how does someone end up starting a vacuum repair business, and then stick with it for nearly 25 years? [Full Story]

Karl Pohrt, who opened Shaman Drum Bookshop nearly 30 years ago, has decided to close the business on June 30. He plans to continue efforts to obtain nonprofit status for a separate venture, the Great Lakes Literary Arts Center.

The decision comes after many months of financial struggles at the bookstore, which Pohrt outlined in a column published by The Chronicle in February. In that column, he reported that textbook sales in 2008 had declined $510,000 from the previous year. He cut payroll and other operating expenses, but couldn’t cover the shop’s losses. Though trade sales (books of general interest) were up, that didn’t compensate for the loss of textbook sales. “The evaporation of our position has been astonishingly swift,” he wrote. “We had been holding relatively even financially until September. Suddenly we’ve moved into the red.” [Full Story]

On any given night when the weather allows, you’ll usually find James Macdonald chatting with customers or passers-by at his West Liberty restaurant, Bella Ciao, as servers shuttle in and out of the building to serve outdoor diners. But not for much longer. After running the restaurant for over 22 years, he and his wife Kathy Macdonald are selling the business to local chef Brandon Johns, who plans to transform it over the summer into an eatery that highlights food from local farms and markets.

Bella Ciao will remain open through the upcoming Ann Arbor Restaurant Week, an event spearheaded by James Macdonald that highlights downtown restaurants and features set-price lunches and dinners. Bella Ciao’s last dinner service will be on Saturday, June 20. Johns, with his wife Sara Johns and two business partners, plan to renovate the restaurant and open it in early August as Grange Kitchen & Bar.

The deal closed earlier this week. Kathy Macdonald made the announcement at Thursday morning’s membership meeting of the Main Street Area Association, which The Chronicle attended. In a phone interview later in the day, she said they plan to focus on their other local business, Pastabilities, a pasta wholesaler that sells to area groceries and chefs. She said they’ll be selling off most of Bella Ciao’s extensive wine list as well. “There’s only so much we can bring home,” she said. [Full Story]

On Saturday, May 30, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. the Washtenaw Dairy will throw a 75th birthday party for itself.

Jim Smith, president of Washtenaw Dairy, didn’t send out any special invitations to people – everybody’s welcome to come enjoy the free hot dogs, 25-cent milkshakes, and entertainment from “Elvis Presley” and “Buddy Holly.” Not even Bill Martin – president of First Martin Corp. and athletic director of the University of Michigan – got a special invite.

So when Martin dropped by the dairy on Thursday, and a tableful of morning regulars wanted to know if he was coming to the party, Smith wasn’t buying the “Nobody invited me” excuse that Martin was selling. “We don’t send out invitations!” admonished Smith. “Well, you didn’t call!” replied Martin. Martin wound up saying he’d try to attend, asking, “About what time are you guys going to be there?”

The Chronicle didn’t hear anyone take advantage of the obvious opening for a wisecrack: “Are you asking so as to avoid us, or what?”  Missing that chance was a rare exception judged against the hour we spent on Thursday soaking up the atmosphere at the corner of First and Madison on the west side of Ann Arbor.  [Full Story]

More than 250 people from academia, business, government and nonprofits packed the auditorium Monday afternoon at the Partnership for an Innovation Economy forum, hosted by the University of Michigan at its newly renovated art museum.

Throughout the two-hour event, The Chronicle learned, among other things: 1) which former Pfizer executive is a rugby referee, 2) which local power couples have relied on each other for advice, 3) who hosts one of the best holiday parties in Ann Arbor.

Of course, there was also much talk of UM’s role in economic development. [Full Story]

By the time The Chronicle arrived at Yourist Gallery on Broadway Street last Wednesday, the temperature had cooled from its maximum of 2300F° to around 170F°.  The owner of the gallery, Kay Yourist, had donned giant leather gloves to open the door to her new kiln after its first complete firing the previous night.

The door to the kiln is actually a wall of un-mortared bricks that gets opened and closed by stacking and unstacking the wall brick by brick. The top few rows of bricks, which were sourced through Schad Boiler Setting Company in Detroit, are custom shaped to match the arch of the kiln’s roof, and labeled to prevent the door-closing task from evolving into a puzzle-solving exercise.

Even though we were there to see the opening, we got a chance to see a bit of the closing process, too – Yourist had actually begun the opening process before we arrived. But she indulged us by first re-stacking the bricks into a solid wall, so we’d have a clearer idea of how it worked.

Unstacking the bricks was slow going at first, but once Yourist had un-wedged the top row, the pace picked up. It wasn’t long before the top front layer of pottery pieces became visible. The kiln has three tiers and a front and a back, so the volume of art work we saw was about a sixth of the kiln’s total capacity. [Full Story]

In our travels through downtown Ann Arbor this week, we saw a cupcake-shaped sign outside Cake Nouveau on Fourth Avenue, urging passers-by to cheer for Courtney Clark on Food Network this Sunday. Being the curious sort, we popped inside to see what there was to cheer.

Turns out it’s been a busy week for the owner of Cake Nouveau. On Wednesday, Clark appeared on ABC’s The View, one of three bakers who made birthday cakes for co-host Sherry Shepherd. (Shepherd picked Clark’s cake as her favorite.)

And on Sunday, Clark will be a finalist on Food Network’s Last Cake Standing – the winner of that competition gets a $50,000 prize. Sarah Mayfield, who works in the shop, told us the Food Network show had been taped in January. They know the outcome, of course, but are sworn to secrecy. [Full Story]

In the old days, downtown was divided into three parts: Main Street (called Downtown), State Street (called Uptown), and South University (called Campus). Each area was different, but all were part of downtown Ann Arbor.

During my early days while attending Angell School on South University, I remember my mother giving me money so I could go have lunch at the Dugout restaurant on South U, owned by the Klepac family (their daughter was in my class), then pick up some ice cream at Miller’s before returning to school. As I grew up I used to hang out at Beaver’s Bike and Hobby on Church Street (owned by Fred Beaver), learning how to repair bicycles from Bill Loy (now owner of the Student Bike Shop).

I remember when the students left at the end of the school year in April, the local business owners wanted more people to come into the campus area during the summer, so Joan Beaver and a couple of her art friends invented the “Art Fair.” Wow, that really worked. Just look what everyone else in town has done with it! [Full Story]

As part of the change in delivery of the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press, which began today, Washtenaw News Co. has gotten a boost – the first good news this local business has seen in several years, according to its CEO, Nick Genova.

Starting today, Washtenaw News – an Ann Arbor-based distributor of newspapers and magazines – will be delivering the New York Times to home subscribers throughout most of Washtenaw County, Genova said. The papers were previously delivered under an agreement with the Detroit Media Partnership, which manages the Detroit papers.

The three-year contract with Washtenaw News also includes delivery of USA Today and Investor’s Business Daily. In addition, Washtenaw News is a distributor locally for the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and the Ann Arbor News, among other publications. The deal means that Washtenaw News now uses about 20 independent contractors to deliver the papers, Genova said – about double the number they used before.

The Chronicle heard about this news on Sunday morning, when the following note slipped out of the New York Times delivered to Chronicle Central: [Full Story]

HealthMedia, says Ted Dacko, is “a company that shouldn’t be here.”

Just a few years ago, the Ann Arbor firm was left for dead. They had 85 employees, a burn rate of $685,000 a month, and very little revenue. Venture capital funding had dried up. Dacko was working there as vice president of sales and marketing when the previous CEO quit – two weeks before the firm would literally run out of money.

The board asked Dacko if he wanted the job. If he took it, he had two choices: Make a go of it, or lock the doors.

If you know the rest of the story, you know why Dacko was honored Thursday night with the New Enterprise Forum‘s Entrepreneur of the Year award. [Full Story]

Occasionally, we like to remind readers of the reason The Ann Arbor Chronicle is able to keep publishing: Advertisers have invested their dollars in ads that appear in the sidebars of the site. So every once in a while we’ll highlight those advertisers here in the center column. [Full Story]

We are extremely grateful to the people who advertise with The Chronicle – they are the reason we’re able to do what we do. We hope our readers take note of them, too, especially if you’re a subscriber to our RSS feeds and don’t get to see their ads on our site. You can find our complete list of advertisers here.

Some of them – the Washtenaw Drain Commission, for example, or the Ann Arbor Public Schools – aren’t in the business of selling gifts in the traditional sense. But many are, and we’d encourage you to consider spending some of your holiday dollars in their shops. To that end, here’s a quick roundup of some of the things you’ll find at these local businesses. [Full Story]

Economic development doesn’t always hinge on bureaucracies or government funding. It also happens organically, when small businesses find ways to help each other blossom.

You can see that phenomenon in person at Everyday Wines, a Kerrytown shop owned by Mary Campbell. She’s now providing space for two other businesses – Pot & Box and A Knife’s Work – to sell flowers and food there, giving the store the feel of a small European market. [Full Story]

Kim Cameron projected an image on the screen and asked people what they saw. “Mars,” someone guessed.   Someone else thought it was an aerial satellite photo, presumably of planet Earth.

It was a cow, Cameron revealed, at which point the group murmured a collective “Aaah!”

The cow’s head was defined by the lighter shadings in the image. “When you look at the light,” Cameron said, “everything changes.” It’s not the image that changes, it’s your perspective on it.

The exercise was an effective illustration of Cameron’s message: Being positive can yield enormous results, both physiologically and in your business. [Full Story]

Seven years ago, Eileen Bristol was about to move to California when the property at Huron and First came up for sale.

“I said, ‘Oh, man, I love that building – what could I do there?” she recalls, laughing.

The building was a former gas station built in the 1930s, and what she decided to do was start RelaxStation, a small walk-in massage business that crammed a lot of personality into the tight 280-square-foot space. Business has been good – so good that “we pretty well maxed out the space,” she says.

It was time to expand, and her project to more than double the space – a $900,000 $90,000 investment – is nearing completion. [Full Story]

How well-connected are you to people in Ann Arbor? You can test your social network’s strength by seeing how many people you know of the 220 local customers featured in new Bank of Ann Arbor TV and radio ads.

It’s amazing how many people you can cram into a 30-second spot when all they say is “Me.” It’s also amazing how funny that simple concept is, and how effective in conveying the bank’s point: We’re local, and we help folks.

The campaign reflects the quirky sensibility of Ann Arbor-based Perich Advertising + Design, the agency which put the ads together. (Oh, and Ernie Perich is on BOAA’s board of directors.) Check out the two radio spots and three TV … [Full Story]