Hank’s Fine Furniture Keeps the Recipe For Success Simple

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Customer Service, Hank's Fine Furniture, Verified Valued Pricing

Hanks Fine Furniture emphasizes value in every aspect of its business practice, a focus that sets the enterprise apart as the definitive leader in a notably competitive industry. The company has grown markedly under the supervision of Founder and President Hank Browne, expanding from its first flagship showroom in Sherwood, Arkansas to nine additional statewide outlets, as well as locations in Texas, Missouri, Alabama, and Florida. With several newly remodeled, spacious galleries showcasing leading brands such as Thomasville, Drexel, Bernhardt, Lexington, and the Paula Deen Home Collection, Hank’s Fine Furniture has become the go-to source for top-of-the-line furnishings and home accessories priced to beat the competition.

Formed in 1975, the Hank’s Fine Furniture has always channeled a great deal attention toward earning customer loyalty through actionable measures, a focus that led Hank Browne to develop an innovative Verified Valued Pricing (VVP) system and create an unmatched warranty program with options to purchase supplemental insurance for a nominal fee. Mr. Browne’s dedication to his customers generates decidedly positive reciprocity, earning the organization distinction as a regional “Best of the Best” furniture store, among numerous other accolades. In addition to winning a host of people’s choice awards year after year, Hank’s Fine Furniture boasts the greatest percentage of returning clients in the furniture sales industry.

Bolstering its exceptional warranty policies with a “Double the Difference” low price guarantee, Hank’s Fine Furniture often organizes promotional events to clear way for new inventory. Individuals who want to learn about upcoming sales, obtain coupons, or acquire a subscription to the company’s newsletter can do so by joining the Home Place Furniture Network (HPFN) Group. Visit twitter.com/hanksfurniture  to learn more about HPFN membership. Family owned and operated since day one, Hank’s Fine Furniture proves that a simple recipe for success yields optimal results across the board.

Cleaning Up Nairobi’s Slums, One Toilet at a Time

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Sanergy

More than 2 billion people in the world do not have access to adequate sanitation, leading to water pollution and disease that cause 1.7 million deaths and cost $84 billion in worker productivity annually. This problem is prevalent in the slums of Kenya, where residents usually resort to “flying toilets” – plastic bags used for defecation and then tossed out onto the street.

A group of MIT graduates have come up with a solution during a Development Ventures class at the university’s Sloan School of Management. Their idea has now become a business called Sanergy (“sanitation” and “energy”), which received $100,000 in funds from USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures last year.

Sanergy is building a network of low-cost sanitation centers in Nairobi, which the startup will franchise to local entrepreneurs. Each center is designed to serve nearly 80 people, offering hot showers and clean toilets. Franchisees earn income by selling complementary hygiene products and through pay-per-use fees and membership plans. What about the waste? Sanergy’s system does not rely on sewers or septic tanks; instead, the excrement is deposited into airtight containers, which are collected every day and transported to a central processing facility. There, the waste is converted into energy and organic fertilizer and sold to the national grid and farms, respectively.

“As my grandmother likes to say, this is an input that never runs out,” says Sanergy co-founder David Auerbach. “We’re adamant about reducing sanitation-related disease, and in the end this is what this is about.”

The company hopes to have 6,000 toilets up by 2015 and believes that its market-based approach will address Kenya’s sanitation issue as well as generate jobs and income for the locals. Auerbach says that while the Nairobi City Council has plans to install sewers around the city, it will take them years to do so. “In the meantime, our facilities are a pragmatic solution that helps clean up the slums.”

This New York Biz Is a Laughing Matter (Literally)

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Vishwa Prakash, Yogalaff

Despite having achieved professional success, Vishwa Prakash still felt that something was missing. Hence, he went on a quest to look for the meaning of life – and came across laughter yoga. Since training under laughter yoga pioneer Dr. Madan Kataria in 2000, Prakash has been spreading laughter and joy around the world, opening laughter clubs across Asia, conducting workshops, and training hundreds of laughter leaders in Asia and the US. Laughter yoga is a series of gentle breathing and yogic exercises that ultimately lead to “a crescendo of excited belly laughter.” The practice is reported to offer a variety of health benefits, including reduced physical and mental stress, increased energy levels, and a stronger immune system.

In 2004, Prakash opened Yogalaff in New York’s garment district. The weekly laughter yoga workshops are free and open to everyone. Prakash also teaches laughter classes to corporate clients for a fee, starting at $250.

This Message Will Self-Destruct in 3, 2…

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Burn Note, Jacob Robbins

Have you ever had to send confidential information over the Internet but felt uneasy at the thought of it possibly being stored somewhere forever? That’s just the situation Jacob Robbins found himself in last year. New York-based Robbins was working on a project with someone on the West Coast and needed to share a password via email but didn’t want to leave a trace of it online. “What if there was something that would allow me to destroy the email?” he thought.

The former head of software development for Drop.io, Robbins eventually began building a service that would allow users to share sensitive information securely. Burn Note, which launched earlier this year, can be used to send private messages that are deleted after they are read. Each message is assigned a unique URL and can be viewed only once. Deleted Burn Notes are completely erased from the Burn Note servers, thereby making them impossible to retrieve.

Sock It to Me: Socks to Match Your Personality

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Carrie Atkinson, Sock It to Me

Carrie Atkinson was 26 when she began her entrepreneurial journey. At that time, she couldn’t find a “real job” that was satisfying despite her sincere motivation, good job history, and marketing degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She then remembered a nice pair of socks that she had gotten from Korea while teaching English there years earlier. They were comfortable, affordable, and colorful. Atkinson figured that if she liked them, then other people in America might, too. After mulling over the possibility of starting her own business for a year and a half, Atkinson took the leap and launched Sock It to Me in 2004.

Based in Portland, Oregon, Sock It to Me sells men’s, women’s, and children’s socks with fun and funky designs such as mustaches, unicorns, ninjas, dinosaurs, tacos, and “other things magical.” During the company’s early days, Atkinson kept her day job of cleaning houses while she tested the sock market. Working out of her bedroom, she participated at a local weekend market and eventually landed her first wholesale customer, Naked City, which still carries her socks today. Atkinson also started going to national trade shows and wore colorful knee high socks wherever she went. The business gradually grew, and Sock It to Me can now be found around the world. In 2010, the company’s revenue exceeded $1 million.

Sock It to Me promises to have something for every personality, with more than 200 different designs in various styles including crew, knee high, and over the knee. The company also gives sock lovers the opportunity to put anything they want on a pair of socks through its ongoing Design a Sock contest. Winning artists get a cash award and their designs are put into production.

Atkinson says she wants Sock It to Me to be staples in people’s wardrobe. She’s not stopping at socks, however, and reveals that the company is slowly exploring other options such as tank tops and underwear.

Setting a Standard of Excellence in the Transportation Sector

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Custom Companies, Perry Mandera, Transportation Sector

A highly accomplished entrepreneur and prominent philanthropist with deep ties to the local community, Perry Mandera is a longtime Chicago resident who owns and operates global transportation firm The Custom Companies, Inc. With a history of excellence that dates back more than twenty five years, The Custom Companies employs an effective “one stop” business approach and provides a wide array of delivery solutions that include truckload shipping, local cartage, dedicated contract cartage, and domestic or international air freight. Also offering distribution and warehousing assistance to customers interested in optimizing their delivery operations, The Custom Companies  continues to garner accolades for its top-quality service and recently gained ISO 9001:2008 certification, a distinction shared by only 270 other trucking ventures worldwide.

Based in Northlake, Illinois, The Custom Companies ships 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In keeping with Perry Mandera’s targeted focus on client satisfaction, the enterprise gladly undertakes last-minute assignments during the busy holiday season and any other time of year. Guaranteeing unsurpassed performance in every aspect of his operation model, Mr. Mandera channels considerable resources to ensure that The Custom Companies remains abreast of and implements the most recent innovations in shipping technology. With a state-of-the-art computer network that guarantees accurate pricing, billing, and shipment tracing, The Custom Companies maintains a large fleet of delivery vehicles guided via a satellite tracking system and uses Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) to facilitate a gradual transition toward a “paperless environment.”

The Custom Companies continues to flourish and expand under Perry Mandera’s deft leadership and takes great pride in meeting and exceeding customer expectations daily. The organization’s team members are some of the most reliable and hardworking individuals in the transportation sector and enjoy a multiplicity of benefits that maximize the rewards of a demanding yet engaging profession. To learn more about Perry Mandera and The Custom Companies, visit perrymandera.org

Sagun Tuli – An Experienced Neurosurgical Practitioner With Privileges at MetroWest Medical Center

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MetroWest Medical Center, Neurosurgical Practitioners, Spine Surgery

With more than a decade of clinical leadership in her field, Dr. Sagun Tuli has maintained a neurosurgery and spinal surgery practice at the Center for Advanced Brain and Spine Surgery since 2011. Dr. Tuli’s suburban Boston practice encompasses a wide range of conditions involving degenerative, traumatic, neoplastic, and infectious injury and disease. She additionally holds surgical privileges with the nearby MetroWest Medical Center (MWMC).

A teaching hospital, and the largest health care provider in the suburban corridor between Boston and Worcester, MWMC maintains more than 400 hospital beds. The Center also offers full-service outpatient diagnostic and rehabilitation services, including a well-known pain management program. Areas of excellence at MWMC include women’s health, cancer care, gastroenterology, and cardiovascular care. Dr. Tuli and her fellow practitioners regularly undertake a variety of surgical treatments related to the spine, including spinal corticosteroid injection, spinal tap, and spinal arthrodesis. The latter procedure corrects serious spine issues through the fusing together of two vertebrae.

Sagun Tuli, M.D. maintains a longstanding faculty position with Harvard Medical School. An instructor since 2002, she held additional responsibilities from 2004 to 2006 as clinical epidemiology tutor, assisting first-year medical students. She has served as Assistant Professor at Harvard since 2005, and is distinguished as the first and only woman spinal surgeon within the university’s medical system.  An experienced public lecturer, Dr. Tuli spoke before the Harvard Medical School, Department of Continuing Education, on spinal column tumors at the 2010 18th Annual Tumors of the Central Nervous System symposium.

Employers Hire Faster and Better With JobOn

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JobOn, Jody Presti

Founded by Jody Presti, JobOn is an online platform that condenses the hiring process in high turnover industries such as restaurants and retail. Instead of filling out job application forms, job seekers use a camera to record their answers to interview questions, which employers can then watch on their own schedules.

Presti came up with the idea for JobOn in 2010 after seeing a teenager with a bunch of application forms in a mall. Realizing that the job application and hiring processes have remained the same for the past 20 years, he began talking with franchise owners to learn what they looked at when hiring employees – and it wasn’t the application. As Presti found out, “The interview was the only part that mattered.”

Since JobOn launched late last year, about 1,000 companies have used the service, including Jamba Juice, Starbucks, and Subway. JobOn is free for the first five applicants, and subscription is $10 per month for unlimited use.

ASU Students Help the Hungry and Combat Food Waste

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FlashFood

Millions of Americans go to bed hungry every night. Meanwhile, it is estimated that 95 billion pounds of food are thrown away in the country each year. To address this problem, six graduate and undergraduate students from Arizona State University (ASU) have created FlashFood, a food recovery network that uses the power of social media to reduce the amount of food waste and feed the hungry at the same time. The team first developed the project in 2011 while enrolled in ASU’s Engineering Projects in Community Service program, which prompts students to come up with solutions to social issues. For Eric Lehnhardt, Jake Irvin, Loni Amundson, Steven Hernandez, Ramya Baratam, and Katelyn Keberle, deciding to tackle food insecurity was a natural choice – some members have personally experienced not having enough to eat, while others have worked in the food service industry. In addition, their home state of Arizona has the third highest rate of childhood hunger in America.

According to Lehnhardt, who acts as FlashFood’s director, the issue is very apparent when driving through Phoenix. “There’s the convention center, there’s major league ballparks. And if you drive a mile to the south of those world class arenas, you’re in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the entire state,” he says. “That’s very difficult to ignore in your own community.”

FlashFood, which won at Microsoft’s US Imagine Cup, works by connecting food service vendors, community organizations, and people in need. Restaurants, caterers, grocers, and conventions that have leftover food at the end of the night notify the network’s volunteers, who pick up and deliver the food to a community center. A text message is then sent out to the hungry, alerting them of the upcoming food donation. Telephone number randomization and demand prediction technologies are used to ensure efficient distribution.

The ASU students plan to fully launch FlashFood in Phoenix by 2013.

Intelligent Tactical Gear By Agilite

Based in Israel, Agilite is a professional tactical gear manufacturer founded by Israeli Special Forces and US Army veterans. Backed by a team with extensive experience in forward combat zones, Agilite makes intelligent equipment designed to provide military, security, and law enforcement professionals an edge even in the most difficult of missions, terrain, and weather conditions.

The company’s latest product is the Injured Personal Carrier (IPC), a 0.77-lb. high-tensile strap that allows soldiers to evacuate their fallen friends by carrying them like a human backpack. Evacuating the injured is one of the biggest challenges of war; as a matter of fact, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Pentagon have been considering the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to fly wounded troops out of danger.

Agilite’s IPC, which retails for $94.95, is intended to replace the fireman’s carry and can hold up to 2,000 lbs. According to the company, it is the only evacuation method that keeps both of the carrier’s hands free. The IPC takes only seconds to secure onto the wounded soldier, who can then be carried on their comrade’s back easily and comfortably for extended periods. The design was inspired by many Israeli Defense Forces units’ practice of fastening four rifle strings together to form an improvised backpack. Aside from soldiers, the IPC is also ideal for firefighters, hikers, and emergency responders. And while extremely strong, the system is very lightweight and can be folded into a compact size.

Agilite’s other wares include the Tactical Hi-Vest, which is the company’s signature product. Developed for years within Israeli Special Forces units, the Tactical Hi-Vest is one of the most advanced load-bearing systems in the world today, able to house up to a dozen 30 round M4 magazines, binoculars, and other gear. Agilite also markets various plate carriers, slings, assault packs, search and rescue harnesses, and modular lightweight load-carrying equipment (MOLLE).