Business Feeds

Brighton and Hove Chamber of Commerce is to stage a week of events celebrating business in the city in October under the banner ‘Business by the Sea’.

The events, which are open to owners and managers of any local business, are designed to strengthen the community bonds between businesses while also giving a no-obligation taster of Chamber of Commerce membership.

For four days from October 12, a variety of daily events will introduce non-members to the chamber’s commercial, social and influential advantages.

Highlights include a networking treasure hunt around central Brighton culminating in lunch, a local issues debate on the controversial question of whether Brighton needs a dedicated business district and entry for non-members to one of the chamber’s Friday networking breakfasts at Carluccio’s in the North Laine area.

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Small business owners are becoming acutely aware of the importance of establishing business credit scores that are completely separate from their personal credit scores.

In addition, many have found this to be a viable solution to overcome personal credit challenges that prevent them from obtaining credit.

While strong company credit files and scores can open the doors for various types of financing business owners should continue to work on improving personal credit scores as well.

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Talk about coincidences. Last week I downloaded Expensify’s expense report app to my Blackberry. Recovering from some frustrating bookkeeping -  the worst part of which was my expense reports – I hoped the service would live up to its promise to create “expense reports that don’t suck.” Within hours, I received a personal email from one of their developers, Michelle, welcoming me to Expensify and offering to answer any questions. This was not one of canned “we value you as a customer” emails.

I was impressed.

Then a few hours later, as I was tweeting about my “so far, so good” Expensify experience, I got an email from another team member who was unaware that I had just become a customer, but was reaching out to me as a writer to see if I would like to do a story about the fact that they company had just closed a second round of funding. So I asked founder David Barrett to share lessons he learned while successfully raising money – twice – in a lousy economy.

Y

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Evansville-based Integra Bank Corp. has completed a previously-announced sale of three branch offices in Kentucky.

The offices — two in Cadiz and one in Mayfield — were sold to Mayfield-based FNB Bank. With the acquisitions, FNB operates a total of eight offices.

The deal with FNB is the last of five transactions announced by Integra this year as part of a strategy to reduce the bank’s operating footprint and improve its financial position. All told, Integra has shed 17 branch offices this year.

Integra has lost money for the past nine quarters, most recently a $10.2 million loss in the second quarter.

“This (branch sale) strategy has greatly strengthened our capital and resulted in narrowing our geographic operating footprint to 48 branches all within 100 miles of Evansville, plus four branches in the Chicago area we continue to market for eventual sale,” Integra Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mike Alley said in a press release issued Friday.

In the FNB deal, FNB purchased the three branch offices at book value. As

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Jack Reynolds has a woodworking shop that would make Geppetto flush with envy.

And like Pinocchio’s creator, Reynolds works magic in his West Franklin Street shop.

Reynolds’ company, Mark-it Bright Designs specializes in a unique form of digital screen printing which burns near perfect photographic images onto wood surfaces such as tables and wall décor. It’s a process he says no one else in the nation is doing.

Back in 2004, Reynolds had just left his job as sales manager for a chemicals manufacturer and decided he wanted to trade in the drudge of mundane work for something that would challenge him both in the business and creative sense.

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Facebook and Twitter continue to be marketing forces smart business owners are harnessing. Facebook recently announced that it has exceeded 500 million active accounts worldwide, and Twitter continues to grow as a popular microblogging social platform, with over 105 million registered users and over 3 billion hits PER DAY. With these types of numbers, it is foolish not to join the social media marketing freight train.

However, is an account with Facebook and Twitter enough? Can you convey your full message about your business, your products or services, and your company culture in just 140 characters or less? The answer is no.

While you certainly should develop a social media marketing strategy and create accounts on the major social media platforms, you must complement these strategies with a bigger picture.

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The on-again, off-again relationship between Casino Aztar and Stoney’s Rockin’ Country appears to be on again.

In August 2009, Aztar announced that Las Vegas-based Stoney’s planned to open a country-western themed nightclub in the casino’s entertainment district. Plans called for a full-service restaurant along with a dance floor, live bands and DJs, pool tables and a mechanical bull.

The nightclub was to replace Jillian’s Billiard Club, which closed abruptly last summer.

In December, Stoney’s officials said they anticipated opening in mid-January.

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If you want to build a strong corporate credit rating, one of the essential steps is to create the appropriate business structure, which will typically be an S or C Corporation or LLC. In addition to the ability to build a business credit rating for your firm, a key benefit of a corporate structure is asset protection. If you properly maintain your corporation, it will be much harder for creditors to go directly after your business assets in a lawsuit.

Recently, though the Supreme Court of Florida took away a key asset protection benefit, reports my colleague Garrett Sutton, a corporate attorney and founder of Corporate Direct. He explains it here:

The case involved is Olmstead v. Federal Trade Commission (SC 01-109, Fla. June 24, 2010).

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