Innovation News

Spicy Olive founders sell fresh oil, vinegar

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October 9, 2012

Heads up, foodies. The Spicy Olive, a new olive oil and vinegar shop in West Chester, is not a café. “A lot of people poke their head in the door and think that we’re a restaurant,” says Melanie Cedargren with a laugh. She co-founded the specialty shop with two friends, Theresa Banks and Lynn Altonen, after a 2006 trip to Italy introduced fresh olive oils and flavored vinegars to her palette. Today, a step into the store reveals a row of 15-liter, stainless steel fusti, or tanks, which hold olive oils. Shoppers browse among them, stopping to taste and match oils and vinegars from among the more than 40 olive oil and vinegar varieties. “When they find something they like, we bottle it up fresh for them to take home," Cedargren says. "It’s fun to taste and try before you purchase; a lot of people have never tasted an olive oil like this before.” Cedargren admits she’s surprised that The Spicy Olive already has a handful of repeat customers after opening in early September. She points to Bad Girl Ventures – The Spicy Olive was a recent finalist – and the trio’s SCORE mentor, Jim Stahly, as instrumental in their early success. While completing a brief course at BGV, the women created a business and marketing plan, as well as projected financials for BGV judges to review. At Stahly’s urging, they cleaned up their documents, choosing bigger, bolder headers, adding charts and images and cleaning up dry prose. Current products include 10 varieties of fresh olive oil alongside 15 flavored varieties, including organic Tuscan herb (a favorite), organic Persian lime and blood orange. Vinegars include a white balsamic aged 12 years, and 18-year aged balsamic and a range of flavors, such as chocolate, espresso and pomegranate. By Robin Donovan

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Volpe pushes for outreach at NKU’s Small Business Dev Center

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Entrepreneurship

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October 9, 2012

A month into her new job as director of the Small Business Development Center at NKU, Rebecca Volpe wants to expand the center's outreach and talent. "I want to get out there and engage the businesses and community stakeholders who can use SBDC's services to meet the needs that they have," says Volpe, former business retention and recruitment specialist for the city of Covington. "I also want to really utilize contracting with professionals who are experts in their fields. I think the SBDC can be a hub to bring people together." Volpe comes to SBDC with a wide range of business development experience. A Michigan native, she earned both a BS and MPA from Northern Kentucky University and is a certified economic development finance professional. Among her skills are credit analysis, grant writing and strategic planning. In the last four years, she helped businesses and real estate developers attract $30 million in capital. Volpe wants to bring that grassroots business development experience to her new work with small businesses in Northern Kentucky. "I have an understanding of the basics of community development, and the need to create a place where people have access to economic prosperity," Volpe says. "I want to help create that opportunity for business owners. I want to be engaged with fearless people starting businesses, or [those] who have an existing business." SBDC offers free, one-on-one business services to small businesses and entrepreneurs in Boone, Campbell, Gallatin, Grant, Kenton and Pendleton counties. SBDC focuses on getting businesses ready for market, or expanding existing businesses by helping with market research, competitive intelligence, market validation, market segmentation and more. Find out more on the Northern Kentucky SBDC website. By Feoshia H. Davis Follow Feoshia on Twitter

Dell, Microsoft unveil new products at C-Forward Covington event

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Architecture + Design

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October 9, 2012

Tech powerhouses Dell and Microsoft give Northern Kentuckians a sneak peak at upcoming products at the locally organized "Growing IT in Covington" showcase. C-Forward Information Technologies, a 14-year-old Covington IT firm, organized the event with support from area community sponsors and other city IT companies. Growing IT is from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 19, in Covington at the Raddison Hotel, 668 W. Fifth St. It's free, and lunch will be provided. C-Forward has 21 employees and provides IT services for small- and medium-sized businesses. Those services include networking, communications, security and desktop and mobile computing support. "People will get to see a preview of the new Windows 8, Microsoft Windows Server 2012 and Microsoft’s new Surface tablet," says C-Forward sales manager Brian Ruschman. "Dell is one of our main suppliers and they are coming out with a new line of tablets and computer as well." Windows 8 launches Oct. 26. Other featured local companies include Tier 1 Performance Solutions and 3z.net. Along with C-Forward, all have "grown up" in Covington. TiER 1 once had three employees and two desks; it’s now based at the RiverCenter in Covington and has 100 employees with multiple locations across the country. 3z.net has 10 employees and provides hosting and data center solutions. "We are going to talk about five minutes about what we do, and people can touch and see the new technologies that can help their businesses," Ruschman says. "It's sort of like an open house. There is very little organized structure as far as talking goes." Event supporters include Gateway Community and Technical College, Covington Business Council/Urban Partnership of Covington, the city of Covington and the Northern Kentucky ezone. By Feoshia H. Davis Follow Feoshia on Twitter

Brandery’s Demo Day hits one out of the park

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Architecture + Design

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October 9, 2012

At the Brandery's third Demo Day Oct. 3, a packed house at Great American Ball Park looked forward to a home run, but not from the field below. The stadium's Champions Club had been transformed into a space where founders of 11 startups paced, shook hands and smiled as they prepared to offer their practiced pitches that they knew could net them millions in investment dollars. This year, there were more than twice as many applicants for the seed-stage startup accelerator in Over-the-Rhine as both of its earlier years, combined, according to Brandery General Manager Mike Bott. Only 10 percent of those applicants were local, Bott says. The companies selected for the intensive four-month session in Cincinnati hailed from Seattle and Brooklyn, from Cleveland and San Francisco. One local business, REPP, made the final cut. As its name implies, The Brandery focuses mostly on consumer products and services. Its strength is in its location and its expertise: the branding giants of Cincinnati help make The Brandery attractive to entrepreneurs from around the world. The latest startup session included plenty of mobile and social applications. An example? The first startup to present on Demo Day: CrowdHall. Crowdhall, a free social platform, collects questions and ideas from a single crowd and helps the members of an audience organize and prioritize them democratically. Matthew Dooley, founder and CEO of Cincinnati's dooley media, made a bold prediction about this startup, which has already created "crowd halls" with NYU prof and Earth Institute leader Jeffrey Sachs, Dhani Jones and PG Sittenfeld. Dooley's tweet: "Impressed with @crowdhall pitch at #brandery2012 #demoday. Will be bought out by Twitter within a year. #boldprediction @brandery @jbkropp." You've read about this Brandery class in Soapbox for months now, from Sostock, which planted roots and intends to remain in Cincinnati, to REPP, the latest big idea from Cincinnatians Michael Bergman, his wife BreeAnna and David Volker, formerly of LPK (where Bergman also formerly worked). Find a full list of startups here. And more coverage of The Brandery on Nibletz, "the voice of startups everywhere else." By Elissa Yancey Follow Elissa on Twitter.

FENNOfashion founder tackles many roles

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Architecture + Design

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October 9, 2012

Megan Fenno doesn’t just have a radio spot, a jewelry business and a writing gig with CincySavers. She also has a few tips for women looking to stay on trend this fall. “Anything that’s glitzy and has a shine to it, that’s really popular right now,” she says, noting that sparkly rhinestones are trendy. Color blocking with deep hues such as navy or burgundy set against brighter accents (think bright yellow), she says, are also popular this fall. A Cincinnati native, Fenno moved to Tallahassee, Fla., as a teen, then attended the Savannah College of Art and Design. She moved to Austin, Texas, after graduation, where she launched FENNOfashion, which features vintage-inspired necklaces, bracelets and jewelry. “I loved Texas, but nowhere is home like Cincinnati,” she says. Her collection this season highlights a few of her own favorite design elements, especially a vintage “found” look and antiqued gold. Fenno says that sites like Pinterest have led to a surge in popularity of stacked bracelets, sometimes called “arm candy,” that she’s having trouble keeping them in stock. As much as Fenno is an accessories designer, she’s also something of a free spirit, and encourages others with creative startups to resist the urge to plan each step or to stick rigidly to a business plan. “Five years ago, I had no idea that I’d be back in Cincy working on my favorite radio station, but that all derived from starting my own business," she says. "It’s OK. Opportunities present themselves throughout your business career that you can’t predict.” By Robin Donovan

(3E) Summit touts, teaches benefits of green business

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Education + Learning

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October 2, 2012

"Going Green" isn't just a feel-good initiative for businesses. It can have real economic benefits. Those benefits -- lower utility bills, less waste, among others -- are there to take advantage of regardless of whether the business considers itself green. That's the message organizers of this year's Energy, Economy and Environment (3E) Summit want businesses to grasp. The 4th annual 3E Summit is Oct. 5, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Xavier University's Cintas Center. Tickets are $50 each, with discounts for Green Umbrella Members and students. "There's a lot of small and medium businesses out there, the people making widgets, who don't always have time to think about how to green their business," says Cincinnati's Sustainability Coordinator Steve Johns. The Summit hopes to remedy that, giving these businesses concrete ways to become more energy efficient, as well as insight into how that affects the bottom line. There will be two panel discussions on Green Business. One is a CEO Roundtable featuring local companies that decided to incorporate green concepts into their businesses. The panel will feature Mac's Pizza, emersion DESIGN, Compost Cincy and Burke, Inc. "Most of these companies aren't producing green products, but thought it was important to take care of energy and waste needs more effectively," Johns says. A second panel discussion will feature reps from UC Health and Procter & Gamble highlighting their efforts to green their supply chain by seeking out sustainable suppliers. "You can really have a competitive advantage by having a green business," Johns explains. The Summit also will feature a "Speed Greening" session, where experts will be on hand to answer specific questions about greening businesses. Those experts can answer questions related to electric and natural gas, waste disposal, transportation and water. In addition to the City of Cincinnati, the 3E Summit is hosted by Green Umbrella, Xavier University's Brueggeman Center for Dialog, the Greater Cincinnati Green Business Council, and USGBC Cincinnati Chapter. Register and find more information at the 3E Summit website. By Feoshia H. Davis Follow Feoshia on Twitter.

Cincinnati Photo Tours take aspiring artists through OTR

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Architecture + Design

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October 2, 2012

“It’s a two-hour tour, so it’s a long walk,” says Scott McHenry of his company’s photo tours in Over-the-Rhine. “Every time, something different pops up.” The founder of Cincinnati Photo Tours found himself inside a church he’d been curious about during his last tour; one of the brothers happened to be on the sidewalk as his group approached. Another time, he found a group of kids playing volleyball on Race Street, and photographers snapped shots of the children leaping through the sand. McHenry says interest in his tours is growing thanks to his Facebook presence, which he uses to drive traffic to the main website of his eponymous photography business. McHenry first grabbed a camera to escape fellow soccer parents at his son’s games (he coached for years), and ended up selling shots of high school athletes to the Community Press. During the next nine years, he expanded his skills, joining the Professional Photographers of America and widening his scope to include portraiture as well as weddings. He also has a flair for fine art; you may have seen his works on display at downtown’s Coffee Emporium during two recent stints as an artist in residence there. These days, McHenry is leading groups of 5 to 12 people through Over-the-Rhine, Cincinnati’s burgeoning historic district. He’s also planning a new tour that will transport his students among the various hilltops in the city. “With all the hills surrounding Cincinnati, there are a lot of great photographic viewpoints.” McHenry says a photo tour he researched while traveling to New York City sparked the idea of offering a similar tour here: “There’s so much interest in Over-the-Rhine with the revitalization of Washington Park.” By Robin Donovan

Environmental forum assesses ‘state of the city’

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Diversity

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October 2, 2012

Green Cincinnati. It’s ubiquitous these days, with our civic progress appearing both in national headlines and at eye-level, in the bike-shares and local markets that seem to spring up almost daily. If you’re struggling to keep up with all this change—in a good way, of course!—or if you just have two cents to share, head to Northside Tavern at 6 p.m., Oct. 10 for the free, public “State of the City” environmental forum. The forum, organized by Cincinnati Green Group, hopes to recreate the success of last year’s event, which saw over a dozen city council candidates fielding questions—on everything from curbside recycling to fracking—from more than 150 attendees. This year will feature WVXU’s Ann Thomson as facilitator, with speakers Mark Fisher from the Cincinnati Zoo and Neil Seldman from the DC-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Cincinnati council members will be on hand once again for Q&A. Larry Falkin, director of Cincinnati’s Office of Environmental Quality, will deliver the State of the City address. Falkin plans to highlight recent strides in the areas of energy, green building and waste management, as well as a number of transportation solutions—such as the forthcoming Zip Car auto-share program—making Cincinnati debuts in 2012. Falkin points to the Green Cincinnati Plan, an 80-point sustainability blueprint officially adopted by the city in 2007. “We wanted to use less energy, more renewable energy, and we had a series of strategies for how to get there,” he says. “In five years, city government has done energy efficiency retrofits on 70 city buildings and installed solar energy systems on 20 city buildings. We’ve created a nonprofit organization and gotten funding for them to do work in the private sector, and that organization, the Greater Cincinnati Energy Alliance, has completed energy retrofits on more than 1,000 homes.” As a city, Falkin says Cincinnati reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 8.2 percent, surpassing the goal outlined in the 2007 plan. Falkin also plans to discuss Cincinnati’s energy aggregation program, which now provides 100 percent renewable energy for 60,000 residents and small businesses. Despite recent progress, there is still room for improvement, particularly in recycling and adoption of zero-waste strategies that other cities use. “There are communities around the nation and around the world that have made zero-waste pledges,” says Melissa English, Development Director for Ohio Citizen Action, an 80,000-member coalition that canvasses the state promoting environmental consciousness. “[These cities] pledge to send as little as possible of their waste streams to landfills or incinerators, and instead recover those materials—which is essentially money, it’s resources that we’re choosing to bury in the ground—and put that back to work in our economies.” The environmental group leader points to the Rumpke landfill as an example of how much waste the region still discards ineffectively. “We have the nation’s sixth-largest landfill in our county, in Colerain Township, and it’s not just the city of Cincinnati that’s filling it up,” English says. “Any sort of zero-waste strategy will be much more effective and farther-reaching if it is [adopted as] a regional strategy.” Find out more: • Post questions in advance of the event. • RSVP for the State of the City environmental forum. • Download the city’s sustainability plan. By Hannah Purnell

Tongue-in-cheek T-shirts delight Cincy sports fans

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Architecture + Design

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October 2, 2012

After moving to Dayton, Ohio, with his family in 1992, Doug Aldrich experienced the first tug of community – and the Cincinnati sports scene – traveling south for Bengals and Reds games, and soon became a loyal fan. The problem? A graphic designer by training and a marketer by trade, he grew tired of commercialized fan gear. Instead, he wanted a shirt that would be a nod to local sports, without over-the-top branding. Soon he had drawn up pages of his own designs, and had a couple printed for himself. “I like the experience of the game and experiencing the community of Cincinnati, but I didn’t want to wear a big brand logo on my chest,” he explains. When friends saw him wearing the whimsical T’s, they wanted shirts of their own, and after having a handful printed, Aldrich designed a logo and website, and Cincy Clothing was born. Despite Aldrich’s insistence that his lovingly drawn designs are “pretty simple,” they feature custom, hand-drawn fonts and graphics and tongue-in-cheek text (one reads “Keep Rolen,” another “One Dey”) that makes a statement. “I wanted to create something that’s on the fringe of the brand, basically,” Aldrich says. “For instance, Mr. Redface is really an homage to the Andre the Giant graffiti -- it’s sort of a take on that. I wanted more of a fan’s perspective in the graphics.” Aldrich launched Cincy Clothing less than a month ago and has a small, but steadily growing fan base of his own, with four hand-drawn designs available. They’re currently available at Prep Clothing in Dayton and online; Aldrich hopes to win a street vendor’s license soon. By Robin Donovan

Medacheck app aids in medication compliance

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Entrepreneurship

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September 25, 2012

Dawn Sheanshang, a pharmaceutical sales rep, became sick of medications one day. Despite her insider knowledge, she couldn’t handle the medication regimen of a loved one who’d recently been discharged from the hospital. Determined to help, Sheanshang searched online for solutions but found no easy answers. Out of her frustration, MedaCheck was born. With the help of startup acceleration Innov8 for Health, and a partnership with Jeffrey Shepard, a self-described “serial entrepreneur with a Ph.D.,” this high-tech health startup – and its eponymous app – were born. “More and more today, medication regimens are extremely complicated, with many different drugs and people’s changing presciriptions," Shepard says. “People are using mobile devices for a slew of different things. We wanted to target our product around medication adherence – ensuring they’re taking the right pill at the right time, in the right amount and having it set up with a system to ensure they’re actually doing it.” Instead of simply placing a reminder on your phone, this app works with the pharmacies, utilizing frequently updated, high-resolution images of the approximately 16,000 medications catalogued by the National Library of Medicine. When it’s time to take a medication, a user can click on the pill box to open it, then view their medications using photos and bulleted lists of pertinent details: medication name, dosage, etc. Reminders, including a phone-call reminder if a dose is missed, are also built in. The challenges of developing such an app include the necessity of HIPAA compliance and generics that constantly change. “The challenge is making sure that you’re not making specific claims around medication consumption,” says Shepard. “We don’t give anybody advice or share any information about any specific individual.” The company is running a pilot of the app in November in collaboration with Cincinnati-based Kroger, with the hopes of making the app public in mid-November. Users will pay a small fee to download the app, which will be available through their pharmacy. A web-based app as well as native apps for mobile devices is available. By Robin Donovan