In the late 1980s, Michael Jordan shaved it all off. Soon, the world was examining the scalps of Bruce Willis, Andre Agassi, Moby and just about one token character on every TV show — not to mention a swarm of Oscar nominees and presenters this year, including Jack Nicholson (who had shaved his head for a role).

The response is a booming market of products being developed and sold specifically to the unhirsute — a new front in the nearly $5 billion onslaught of male grooming products in the United States.

“I’m a former comb-over wearer,” confessed Howard Brauner, founder of the two-year-old company Bald Guyz. “I would spend half an hour in the morning making it look right, and then finally I just realized it was ridiculous. Once I decided to really go bald, my wife would get annoyed at me for using her expensive shampoos. But I had to use something to clean my head”

For that particular ablution, Brauner now uses a head wash that’s part of the line of products he developed in response to his wife’s complaints. Bald Guyz also puts out pocket-size individual head wipes, for use on the go. And there is a conditioner, to be used twice a week. “Your skin up there is either dry or irritated or oily,” he said.

New York Times News Service

Women decide or in some way influence most of the car and truck purchases in the United States — more than 80 percent, according to some estimates. But talk to women about their auto-buying experience in showrooms, and you’ll find that many aren’t thrilled.

Salespeople who ignore the woman when a man and woman are looking for a car came up last month when Times-Dispatch readers voiced their customer-service pet peeves. So what’s a male-dominated industry like the car business to do?

Enter AskPatty.com, started by a couple of entrepreneurs who thought they could make money straightening out the problem. The site educates women about all things automotive, with female experts who write articles and answer questions on repair, maintenance and car buying.

AskPatty.com certifies dealerships as female-friendly after they have passed a course on how to communicate with women. A check of the Web site found no dealerships in the Richmond area that are certified. To be certified, members of a dealership’s sales team must read a book on how to communicate with women, “How to Get Rich Selling Cars and Trucks to Women,” and take a training course. Then they must pass a 134-question test, which takes about an hour to complete.

The Web site gets about 20,000 visitors each month. About 50 dealerships have signed on for certification services. Dealerships pay $225 per person for 12 months of training and $795 a month for the dealership certification.

Richmond Times-Dispatch

Shay Hammond started her business when she was 11 years old. She got her idea from a dog bone cookbook she found while on vacation. She wanted to make dog treats for her dog Pancake, so she did.

“He really liked them and I thought, “Wow this could really end up being something huge!” So i went around town to see if anyone would actually sell them and i found a couple of business that would, ” Hammond said.

Now, she sells her homemade dog treats, which come in flavors such as Mutter Butter and Chic’n Lick’n, from her website and in a neighborhood store which sells local artisan’s goods on consignment. Hammond earned $700 last year and $1,500 since she started the company.

Inc.com

Despite alert store personnel, sophisticated anti-theft systems and other precautions, shopping carts seem to have lives of their own, disappearing like magic from Valley retailers.

Enter Tom Martinet, whose company, Arizona Cart Retrieval, operates every day of the year except Christmas to locate and return the carts to area businesses.

In an average week, one of Martinet’s contractors will have dispatched crews to round up and return close to 15,000 carts to Arizona retailers.

The retrieval service employs 18 flatbed trucks that serve more than 30 retailers and about 460 stores in the state. Clients include Fry’s, Safeway, Albertsons, Wal-Mart, Family Dollar and Lowe’s Home Improvement.

Once captured, the carts are steam-cleaned or refurbished on-site using equipment loaded onto the flatbeds. Most of the repair work is limited to replacing handles and seat straps and welding wheels. Carts that can’t be fixed are parted out.

Business can only continue to increase for the cart service, especially as the Valley becomes more congested. “In areas that are built up with apartment complexes, office buildings and condos, you’re going to see this continue,” Oliver said.

The average steel shopping cart costs about $100. Custom styles, such as the plastic race car kiddie carts, cost $400 to replace. The firm works on a contract basis with retailers to retrieve carts.

Arizona Business Gazette:

Robert Likoff was looking for a way to sell more drugs. No, not that kind of drug. Likoff’s Montclair, N.J., firm, Group DCA, markets medications on behalf of pharmaceutical companies.

Group DCA was pretty good at persuading physicians to try new drug therapies, but the company struggled when it came to reaching patients. Rebates, a time-honored strategy, were a hassle. Free samples didn’t always translate into paid prescriptions. Likoff, 53, needed a marketing tool that would slice through the clutter of an ad-mad world.

In early 2005 he heard about Serious, a New York City startup with a patented DVD technology called Cardz. The technology is expensive and requires major creative investment, but the results compare favorably to conventional direct mail. Likoff hired Serious to design Cardz for some of his clients, including Merck and Pfizer. He also paid $350,000 for the license to sell Cardz to other pharmaceutical firms.

While Cardz resemble ordinary rectangular plastic gift cards and can include a magnetic stripe to swipe at a cash register, they feature a DVD encoded on the back. Slip one into a DVD player or computer, and up pops a multimedia presentation offering video, text, photos, games and printable coupons.

The initial investment, which covers design, production and manufacturing of 25,000 Cardz, runs upwards of $75,000. For repeat campaigns, prices range between $1.50 and $3 a card, depending on features and packaging. Likoff spent about $100,000 on his first Cardz campaign, for a popular birth control pill, and has since launched 14 more Cardz campaigns for other drugs. He calculates that Cardz adoption has driven a 30 percent increase in revenue at Group DCA in the past two years, from roughly $16 million in 2005 to $21 million in 2006.

CNN Money

Stephanie Dellamura dreaded taking her toddlers to a public restroom. Visiting parks and fairs was worse, she said. Portable restrooms are often filthy and there’s no place to wash hands. But dirty restrooms weren’t her only worry. Candies and ice cream also made her boy’s hands a sticky mess.

Dellamura searched stores and websites for a product to protect her children, but came up empty-handed. That’s when Dellamura invented Gotta Go Mitts.

Her survey of more than 100 mothers — friends, family, even strangers in bathrooms — showed two out of three said they would buy disposable mittens for their children. The information she collected helped guide the development of Gotta Go Mitts, such as making a small package to fit in a purse or pocket.

A bookstore clerk suggested Tara Monosoff’s “The Mom Inventors Handbook.” It gives readers advice for conducting market research, developing a prototype, manufacturing and marketing a product. Dellamura found the guide practical and inspiring. She followed every step and enjoyed reading about several mom inventors who turned inspiration into action.

Dellamura made the first prototype on her kitchen table. Her mother-in-law and a friend helped cut and sew plastic sandwich bags into child-sized mittens.

Now the finished products, 2.5 million mitts in 125,000 packages, sit in her basement. Dellamura invested more than $17,000 to bring her idea to market, but she expects to start making a profit in fewer than two years — $5 at a time.

Frederick News Post

For two weeks, Steve Arnold trudged through the dusty farmland of Kiowa County, Kansas, a 6-foot rope trailing over his shoulder. Tied to the end of the rope was a metal detector cobbled together from PVC pipe and duct tape. Back and forth Arnold paced, pulling the jury-rigged device across the dirt, hunting for meteorites. He had already found a few, but nothing bigger than 100 pounds or so. Mostly, he found horseshoes. And beer cans.

On a Thursday afternoon, his rig yelped, a shrill beep sounding through his headphones. To speed things up, Arnold attached his contraption to a tractor. He drove forward, tires pulling in the fine soil, and the detector crescendoed to an electric wail. After digging down about 5 feet, Arnold scrabbled into the hole with a shovel and started clearing. Finally, the blade clanged against something metallic. The more dirt he moved, the more meteorite he exposed.

About the size of a beer keg, the rock weighed 1,430 pounds, the largest pallasite ever found in the US. By Arnold’s reckoning, it was worth more than $1 million.

For the past decade, these Indiana Jones types have found a ready market among collectors and art gallery owners, who have come to see meteorites as high-end decorative objects.

wired.com