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Business Beat

Business Beat: December 2009
Volume 39 / Issue 12
03/31/2010

Retail (Final Print Issue)

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Business Beat: November 2009
Volume 39 / Issue 11
03/31/2010

Media & Communications

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Business Beat: October 2009
Volume 39 / Issue 10
03/31/2010

Insurance

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Business Beat: January 2009
Volume 39 / Issue 1
03/31/2010

Financial Services

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Business Beat: August 2009
Volume 39 / Issue 8
03/31/2010

Manufacturers

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Business Beat: June 2009
Volume 39 / Issue 6
03/31/2010

Biotech & Research

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Business Beat: January 2010 (Digital)
Volume 40 / Issue 1
01/04/2011

Hotels and Event Facilities

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Business Beat: February 2010 (Digital)
Volume 40 / Issue 2
01/04/2011

Office Support Services

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Business Beat: March 2010 (Digital)
Volume 40 / Issue 3
01/04/2011

Gyms & Fitness

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Business Beat: April 2010 (Digital)
Volume 40 / Issue 4
01/04/2011

2010 GMCC Annual Business Expo

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Business Beat: May 2010 (Digital)
Volume 40 / Issue 5
01/04/2011

Architects and Engineers

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Business Beat: June 2010 (Digital)
Volume 40 / Issue 6
01/04/2011

Web Designers

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Business Beat: July 2010 (Digital)
Volume 40/Issue 7
01/04/2011

Printers

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Business Beat: August 2010 (Digital Edition)
Volume 40 / Issue 8
01/04/2011

Automobiles and Transportation

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Business Beat: September 2010 (Digital Edition)
Volume 40 / Issue 9
01/04/2011

Banks

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Business Beat: October 2010 (Digital Edition)
Volume 40/Issue 10
06/21/2011

Florists and Business Gift Giving

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Business Beat: November 2010 (Digital Edition)
Volume 40/Issue 11
06/21/2011

Retail

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Business Beat: December 2010 (Digital Edition)
Volume 40 / Issue 12
06/21/2011

Copier and Printer Supply and Support

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Business Beat: January 2011 (Digital Edition)
Volume 41/Issue 1
01/06/2012

Grocery Stores

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Business Beat: February 2011 (Digital Edition)
Volume 41 / Issue 2
01/06/2012

Event & Meeting Facilities

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Business Beat: March 2011 (Digital Edition)
Volume 41 / Issue 3
01/06/2012

Human Resources & Staffing

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Business Beat: April 2011 (Digital Edition)
Volume 41 / Issue 4
01/06/2012

2011 Annual Business Expo

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See You At The GMCC Expo
April 2011 Volume 41/Issue 4
01/06/2012

SEE YOU AT THE GMCC EXPO

Meet More People Face To Face In A Day Than You Usually Do All Month

This Article Originally Was Published in the April 2011 GMCC Business Beat.

By Judy Dahl

Attendees and Exhibitors Connect at the Annual Business Expo

Attendees and Exhibitors Connect at the Annual Business Expo

Although Lamers Bus Lines is the Midwest’s largest motor coach operator, Eric Stadler, charter sales manager, never takes for granted that people are familiar with his organization.

That’s why the company has exhibited at the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce’s Annual Business Expo for over five consecutive years.

“It’s a very suitable avenue for us to display our services. Exhibiting helps us garner more top-of-mind awareness in the Madison metropolitan marketplace,” says Stadler.

“It puts our personnel right there with decision makers from businesses of all types, so we can describe how we could provide them with more affordable, quality transportation service.”

Read more...

Business Beat: May 2011 (Digital Edition)
Volume 41 / Issue 5
01/06/2012

Social Media

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Business Beat: June 2011 (Digital Edition)
Volume 41 / Issue 6
01/06/2012

Ask Sam & SCORE Workshops

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SCORE One For Chamber Members
Volume 41 / Issue 6
06/07/2011

The Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE) and the GMCC have teamed up to offer targeted business workshops.

BY JUDY DAHL

This article was featured in the June 2011 GMCC Business Beat digital magazine. This was the final issue of Business Beat.

Jane Huang is president of Dragon Technology Solutions, an information systems consulting firm comprised of professionals experienced in all phases of the IT project life cycle, and a certified minority business. When she wanted to ensure her company was moving in the right direction, she attended a business workshop at the GMCC, facilitated by members of Read more...

Ask Sam
Volume 41 / Issue 6
06/20/2011

New GMCC Business Resource Desk Launches At 2011 Expo

By Judy Dahl

This article was featured in the June 2011 GMCC Business Beat digital magazine. This was the final issue of Business Beat.

If you’re one of the nearly 2,000 people who attended the GMCC Expo on May 2—or if your business is one of 200 that exhibited—you doubtless saw chamber staffers in “Ask Sam” T-shirts.

They were helping spread the word about the GMCC’s new business resource desk. Ask Sam Read more...

The Marketing/Communications Edge
July 2011
07/12/2011

Savvy Professionals Can Help You Triumph Over Your Competition

By Judy Dahl

Consumers have myriad choices when purchasing products and services. One way to ensure they choose yours is to work with marketing/communications professionals—on staff, outsourced or both—who can make your product stand out from the crowd.

“The ideal situation is to have outside people when necessary, and augment with inside staff that can handle tasks you don’t need to pay a marketing professional for,” suggests Wayne Glowac, CEO of Read more...

Who Cares?
July 2011
07/19/2011

Ask Yourself That Question When Pitching Stories to the Media

By Judy Dahl

Carleen Wild, NBC15 News anchor, has 2,300 email messages. She’s been trying to clean out her inbox all week. Last time she emptied her inbox, she had 120 messages within an hour. If you’re sending her a press release, that’s what you’re competing against, so it had better be good.

“I hate phone calls,” Wild says. “If something’s not in email form, I usually don’t get to it. Even then, you really have to state your case. To grab attention, you have the subject line and the first few words—it has to be short and to the point, and tell us why we should care.”

A newsroom is not an ad agency, she notes. “We won’t push a product, unless it’s something that would improve quality of life, like a cancer drug.”

The network does feature stories about business trends. “And I like to feature new business openings on the 4 p.m. show because we’re all consumers,” says Wild. “But my news director pushes back on it because it’s not a news story.”

Most times telling TV news media about your business—unless it’s something advertisers’ target audience, women ages 25-50, would really care about—won’t get coverage. There has to be a news hook.

“A new office, a new product, a ribbon cutting, is not necessarily a good story,” Wild explains. “What’s behind it? If the subject line is, ‘Local business growing, hiring more workers,’ it would catch our attention. There’s so much negativity right now.”

Read more...

Maintain & Upgrade
August 2011
08/16/2011

With Construction Markets Still Slow, It’s a Good Time to Make Facilities Improvements or Even Acquire New Space

By Judy Dahl

Troy Berg, owner of Dane Manufacturing and Brad Gilbert of Gilbert Cost Control Consultants visit the site of Dane Manufacturing’s latest addition, to be completed later this year. Dane has taken advantage of the economic downturn to invest in an expansion that will allow them to continue to increase their manufacturing capacity.

Connecting With Customers
August 2011
08/23/2011

The recessionary downturn in the construction industry affected many building trades — here's how several have survived and thrived.

By Judy Dahl

GIVING BACK

“Through the
Heat Up Wisconsin
program we give away
free furnaces.

Last year we put one in for
a World War II veteran who
had just returned from the Honor flight to Washington
D.C. I'm co-chair of the
program; we gave away 72 furnaces last year, and plan
to give 100 this year.”

Kendall Richards, President
All Comfort Services

ChamberCare: Affordable Health Care for Small Businesses
October 2011
10/01/2011

By Judy Dahl

Don’t Forget About Tax Credits
Certain small businesses are eligible for federal credits

Too few businesses receive the federal Small Business Health Care Tax Credit for Small Employers, says Victor Liamachka, owner of independent agency Apex Insurance Group. “Employees with fewer than 25 employees and average annual wages less than $50,000 should be taking advantage of these credits, but many businesses are unaware of them,” he says. “If they offer coverage already, or for new businesses contemplating offering coverage, this may be a good time to do so and get the tax credit.”

The IRS offers an online video on the topic. There are also two online calculators businesses can use to see if they qualify for a credit, and if so, the amount of the credit.

Contact Information
To learn more about ChamberCare plans, contact your insurance agent or:

Apex Insurance Group
237-1737
apexquotes.com

Dean Health Plan
800-279-1301
deancare.com/chamber

Group Health Cooperative of
South Central Wisconsin
800-605-4327
ghcscw.com/chamber_care.asp

Health Care Hub
October 2011
10/15/2011

“Best of” lists often cite greater Madison’s abundant, high-quality health care as a chief regional attribute, and our three major health care organizations are working to keep it that way.

By Judy Dahl

St. Mary's Birthing Suite

All three area organizations have undertaken significant construction and renovation projects in recent years. And despite the recession—and the uncertainty health care reform poses—all are thriving.

Read more...

Cater It
December 2011
12/01/2011

Holding a lunch meeting, banquet, or other event? Local caterers can help make it easy, affordable and delicious.

By Judy Dahl

Queen Anne's Catering

You can do some things yourself, but for others you call a professional—a plumber, an electrician, an accountant. “We’re the same; we’re food professionals,” declares Dave Chamberlain, president of Gaylord Catering Inc. “You make one phone call and we can take care of everything: event planning, the food, tables, chairs … you don’t have to worry about missing anything or doing things poorly.”

Businesses have more do-it-yourself options today than 10 or 20 years ago, notes James Bresette, president of Read more...

Competitive Catering
December 2011
12/15/2011

The catering field is crowded in greater Madison, and successful service providers stay on top of their games to stand out.

By Judy Dahl

Rocky Rococo's Chicago Pizza

To state the obvious, Madison has a lot of restaurants, many offering catering, and there are quite a few catering-only organizations as well. Some say we have more restaurants per capita than any other U.S. city. (Incidentally, a Google search reveals plenty of websites making the claim, but no real proof. And several other cities make the same claim.)

Regardless, what Read more...

Retailers Go Social
January 2012
01/01/2012

Virtual Marketing Gets People in Stores’ Actual Doors

By Judy Dahl

The Lindsay, Stone & Briggs team — (L-R) Jake Magyar, interactive designer; Bill Winchester, chief creative officer; Todd LaBeau, digital director — collaborates on a digital project in their new office space.

Karen Brown-Larimore, a buyer at Mallatt Pharmacy & Costumes, created a website for the company in 2003. “We wanted to reach outside the Madison area to make it easier for people who buy from us—mostly in Wisconsin—to purchase, rather than faxing a purchase order or coming in,” she says. “We also wanted to reach people who had never heard of us.”

Online ordering is the primary activity on the website and it’s growing all the time. “In 2011 we did about $150,000 in online sales, and that doesn’t include shipping costs,” says Brown-Larimore. “Our major business is prescriptions; about one-fourth of our theatrical sales are online.”

Currently Mallats doesn’t advertise online and considers its website mostly a convenience. “But we plan to pursue online customers next year,” Brown-Larimore notes.

She’s creating another website, with an “umbrella” site that will give people access to pages for the Monroe and Willy Street stores, Mallats’ closed-door pharmaceutical delivery store, as well as the to the existing site. “Our current site has pictures of costume rentals, directions to our stores, our hours, and pretty much all in-store items at Monroe Street—Willy Street is much smaller,” she explains.

“The new site will feature more products—wine specialties, special vitamins—and eventually people will be able to fill prescriptions,” she continues. “People had requested online prescriptions and more store information, and we wanted it to be more helpful for people in the Madison area.”

Read more...

Don't Wait Until You're a Victim
February 2012
02/01/2012

Every business should have security plans and systems in place to prevent crime, workplace violence, and data breaches—and to minimize losses if problems occur.

By Judy Dahl

A JBM staff member on duty “So many business owners don’t understand that security is an everyday standard operating procedure,” laments Jim Mankowski, president of JBM Patrol & Protection Corp. “Too often it’s an afterthought.”

He cites a company with a very expensive security system. “Only one person knew how to operate it, and when that person left, they elected not to use it. Or businesses don’t lock their doors. It’s casual things people don’t think about until they’re victims.”