Patch's New Site for Small Businesses Offers Tips, Info and More

The newly launched website provides practical advice and innovative ideas for those small business owners.

Patch has launched a new site — smallbusiness.patch.com — to educate and empower small businesses with the digital tools, social media strategies and marketing know-how needed to ensure long-term growth. Readers will have access to exclusive interviews with well-known founders and CEOs, and small business industry experts who share their experiences, advice and tips for success. One of the latest articles features an exclusive interview with successful real estate entrepreneur, Barbara Corcoran, founder of The Corcoran Group. In this Q&A, Corcoran discusses the how to take advantage of the size of a small businesses, and why making big “mistakes” made all the difference in her success. Click here to read about the tactics Corcoran used to…

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CYGA Finds Success in a Good Combination

Catering to cyclists and yogis, CYGA offers a unique take on fitness, with cycling and yoga offering balance to clients.

In the four years since opening its doors, CYGA, Cycling and Yoga, and its creators, Margie Freeman and Julie Prochnow, have sought to offer Shorewood a more "unique" look at fitness.   “CYGA is more of a boutique type fitness facility,” said Freeman, who discovered the concept while living out West. “We turn yogis into cyclists and cyclists into yogis!”  CYGA, Cycling and Yoga opened its Shorewood location at 3575 N Oakland Ave, in September of 2009. Freeman, partner turned owner when Prochnow retired last September, grew up in nearby Cedarburg. She was first turned onto cycling while attending college at San Jose State University in California.  “During the time I spent in San Jose and in the San Francisco Bay area, I really got into the…

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Faces of Shorewood

Social Worker by Day Jewelry Maker by Night

What started out as a hobby has blossomed into a business for Shorewood Resident Julie Bischoff who has been a jewelry and greeting cards vendor at the Shorewood Arts and Crafts Fair for 15 years.

It all started while on vacation in Arizona at an earring-making workshop with a friend. Four hours of playing with beads and earrings blossomed into 15 years of jewelry making for her little business Jewels by Jules. Julie Bischoff's goal behind her jewelry, and you could say her life, is to make people happy. A social worker by day and a jewelry maker by night, she balances the stress of social work with the relaxation that jewelry making brings her. “This is my part-time relaxation creative outlet,” Bischoff said. Jewels by Jules specializes in wire wrapped and hand stamped jewelry, greeting cards and nature photography. Her jewelry and greeting cards might have started out as a hobby but now she is showing at arts and crafts fairs. …

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Small Business Owners Invest in Communities

The owners of small businesses throughout the Metro Milwaukee area say it works for them to be part of the fabric of their communities.

Small businesses work for a strong community. The days of Henry Ford coming into a community to build a plant and hire 25,000 workers are gone. But the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well on a much smaller scale. From neighborhood diners and booksellers with a handful of employees to niche operations with dozens of employees, small business owners have found ways to be profitable while strengthening the community in which they operate. Paul Schueller, CEO and part owner of Franklin Energy Services in Port Washington, Wis. was an engineer for Wisconsin Natural Gas Company.  Schueller saw an opportunity and struck out on his own.  “It’s more cost effective for energy companies to find ways to improve energy efficiencies than to build …

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Not So Stuffing Savvy? Local Options for Thanksgiving Dinner

Even if you don't cook Thursday, Shorewood's Bakers Square and Whitefish Bay's Jack Pandl's Inn are offering turkey dinners so you can get your fill.

If you’re not so savvy on seasoning the stuffing or trained on basting that turkey, there are a couple options locally to get your fill on Thursday. Most local restaurants’ doors will be closed on Thanksgiving Day, but City Market and Baker’s Square will open with limited hours. Bakers Square at 1305 E. Capitol Dr. is open from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., and is offering a turkey, pot roast or pork chop dinner with traditional Thanksgiving sides. The meals run $12.99. The restaurant will open back up at 7 p.m. and stay open all night for Black Friday.  On the other hand, City Market will open from 6:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. and will offer its regular menu with a few seasonal additions including holiday pies and other desserts. However, the additions don't …

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Strong Small Businesses Make Communities Better

Local business improvement district leaders say a thriving small business climate makes the whole community stronger, but it takes support from residents, the government and business owners to make things work.

Thriving businesses are one-third of a triumvirate of a vibrant community. “You need good schools, a quality housing stock and a solid commercial area,” said Tim Ryan, president of Shorewood’s Business Improvement District.  Ryan is invested in all three. He and his family live in Shorewood, his daughter goes to school in Shorewood and he is the president and owner of Harleys: The Store for Men on Oakland Avenue in Shorewood. Small businesses line the commercial corridor that runs east and west along Capital Drive and north and south along Oakland Avenue, Ryan said. “Unlike many small communities, our business district is spread out on two thoroughfares.” Small businesses, like Harleys, are invested in a community the way national chains …

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David Tatarowicz

5:09 pm on Tuesday, November 13, 2012

@Ab Fab You make some very good points and more importantly ask some very good questions. I noted that Ryan said " thriving small businesses reduce the tax burden for homeowners and buoys home values." which is just not true. Property tax rates are the same for commercial property as it is for residential property. In Wisconsin, unlike some other states, the local communities get no share of the …   more ›

Editor's Notebook

SCORE Helps Business Owners

No, there's not a catch. SCORE's experienced mentors will help you take your business to the next level.

When it comes down to it, behind just about every small business is an entrepreneur hoping to turn their passion into a paycheck. But, as many wise business advisers have noted: Hope is not a strategy. Business owners need support to turn dreams into reality. That's why Patch is pleased to announce a new partnership with SCORE, a nonprofit organization with 12,000 business experts nationwide who provide free mentoring to small business owners. The partnership makes sense because we believe that when local commerce grows, the whole community gets stronger. Patch already provides free listings for local businesses and other tools to help build local brands. Whether you're a 10-year-old jewelry designer or a 79-year-old who carves wood knives…

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Did Village Err By Lending Money to Failed Community Bookstore?

Two years after its closing, questions linger about Shorewood's decision to lend $35,000 to the Open Book co-op, a debt that village officials have written off as "uncollectable."

April marks two years since organizers slammed the book closed on Open Book, leaving an empty shell on the busy North Oakland Avenue block. The bookstore co-op opened in November 2010 and occupied the space that previously housed the Harry W. Schwartz Bookstore. With high community energy and backing, including a $35,000 loan from Shorewood, Keith Schmitz and hundreds of other Shorewood residents, through a grassroots effort, hurried to open the store before the holiday season. Schmitz said the store was something that created a buzz in Shorewood and the community rallied behind. “This was something that the community needed and wanted,” he said. “We had 40 volunteers that got involved to make this thing happen.” Those involved in the …

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Governor Talks Wisconsin Jobs, Mining and Education at Rotary Appearance

Gov. Scott Walker said, among other things, that he supported extending unemployment benefits through a worker's unpaid training period.

Gov. Scott Walker addressed job growth, responsible mining and the pressing need for skilled labor on Tuesday while speaking to a full house of almost 300 people at the Milwaukee War Memorial Center. The Milwaukee Rotary Club sponsored the appearance, during which Walker fielded questions from an audience without a protestor in sight. The governor thinks so. Walker said he's noticed a trend among small manufacturers — while there are jobs galore available and employers are desperately in search of employees, there are just not enough people to fill these jobs with the right credentials. "One of the most frustrating things for me, is employers telling me that they have jobs, but they don't have enough skilled workers to fill those jobs, …

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Steve

12:04 am on Saturday, March 10, 2012

It's not a soil sample but an exploration drilling core sample. Soil or overburden is removed before mining to get down to the "rock". Only one core? Before mining a lot of core samples are taken to find the ore body's width and depth. I hope they found some pyrite "The oxidation of pyrite (iron sulfide) by molecular oxygen produces iron(II), or Fe2+:" would be a crappy mine without iron   more ›

North Shore Stores See Brisk Business on Black Friday

Looking for good deals without the big crowds, many shoppers hit their local business districts.

While hundreds of North Shore shoppers descended on Bayshore Town Center Friday, just a few blocks away sisters Joan Colman and Breta Landy chatted as they walked down Silver Spring Drive, peeking in store windows of small merchants and reading window signs promising special deals for Black Friday. "Instead of fighting the crowds at Bayshore, we decided to come here and have a leisurely walk," said Colman, a Whitefish Bay resident. "We're just meandering around and looking in different stores." The business districts of the North Shore were not overrun Friday, but merchants said they had many customers who came in looking for discounts without having to battle the crowds. At family-owned Thiet Jewelers on Silver Spring Drive in Whitefish …

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