On a visit to Dalian, a city in Northeast China, in 2007, Warren Buffett answered a knock at his hotel room door to find two Chinese tailors. The tailors ran tape measures up his legs and around his waist, and eight minutes later, they departed. Back in Omaha, Neb., three weeks later, Buffett opened a package to find their handiwork -- two custom-made suits that fit him like a second skin.
What's hot off the presses this week?
She's petite, she's middle-aged, she's bookish, and if she gets a chance, she'll knock you on your keister.
Try maneuvering a kayak through icebergs -- big ones, small ones, ones that look like alligators and flat-topped bergs that could spell trouble because they are mostly underwater.
Style has come home to roost in St. Louis. Downtown is experiencing a major revitalization, powered by a brigade of young artists and designers who are giving the area a new lease on life, much like that vintage Chanel handbag you found in your grandmother's attic.
With all the MySpaces and Facebooks and Twitters and so forth out there but only so many hours in the day with which to waste on them, what social networks are the best ones to join?
Lori Van Voorhis crossed an emotional threshold using just a bit of recycled cloth and some imagination.
Thanks to the flu, a broken ankle, a staph infection, and bronchitis, plus several school cancellations, my three children were at home -- hurting, vomiting, coughing, or tracking muddy water into our house -- all but seven days last February. (Shall I pause to let the horror of that number sink in? All but seven.) I'm normally an efficient, organized person who thrives on plans and checklists, but by the end of that month, I'd accomplished almost nothing beyond reading aloud the entire fifth book of Harry Potter. I felt so anxious that I was on the verge of hyperventilation.
Lizzie Cameron is in Musoma, Tanzania working with the Musoma Engineering Project.
I was very lucky as a boy because I got to go away to camp two summers.
On a visit to Dalian, a city in Northeast China, in 2007, Warren Buffett answered a knock at his hotel room door to find two Chinese tailors. The tailors ran tape measures up his legs and around his waist, and eight minutes later, they departed. Back in Omaha, Neb., three weeks later, Buffett opened a package to find their handiwork -- two custom-made suits that fit him like a second skin.
What's hot off the presses this week?
She's petite, she's middle-aged, she's bookish, and if she gets a chance, she'll knock you on your keister.
Try maneuvering a kayak through icebergs -- big ones, small ones, ones that look like alligators and flat-topped bergs that could spell trouble because they are mostly underwater.
Style has come home to roost in St. Louis. Downtown is experiencing a major revitalization, powered by a brigade of young artists and designers who are giving the area a new lease on life, much like that vintage Chanel handbag you found in your grandmother's attic.
With all the MySpaces and Facebooks and Twitters and so forth out there but only so many hours in the day with which to waste on them, what social networks are the best ones to join?
Lori Van Voorhis crossed an emotional threshold using just a bit of recycled cloth and some imagination.
Thanks to the flu, a broken ankle, a staph infection, and bronchitis, plus several school cancellations, my three children were at home -- hurting, vomiting, coughing, or tracking muddy water into our house -- all but seven days last February. (Shall I pause to let the horror of that number sink in? All but seven.) I'm normally an efficient, organized person who thrives on plans and checklists, but by the end of that month, I'd accomplished almost nothing beyond reading aloud the entire fifth book of Harry Potter. I felt so anxious that I was on the verge of hyperventilation.
Lizzie Cameron is in Musoma, Tanzania working with the Musoma Engineering Project.
I was very lucky as a boy because I got to go away to camp two summers.
Lizzie Cameron is in Musoma, Tanzania working with the Musoma Engineering Project.
In a city famous for being the birthplace of the avant-garde, it can be hard to keep up with the latest trends. Here's a rough guide to what's hot right now in the French capital.
Last summer Laura Zander hoped a Makeover would turn Jimmy Beans Wool, the Reno knitting-wool company that she owns with her husband, Doug, into a household name ("Weaving a Web Strategy," July/August 2007). It hasn't happened yet.
Lizzie Cameron is in Musoma, Tanzania working with the Musoma Engineering Project.
Lizzie Cameron is in Musoma, Tanzania working with the Musoma Engineering Project.
Lizzie Cameron is in Musoma, Tanzania working with the Musoma Engineering Project.
Lizzie Cameron is in Musoma, Tanzania working with the Musoma Engineering Project.
Lizzie Cameron is in Musoma, Tanzania working with the Musoma Engineering Project.
As the room echoes with R&B music, students from Clark Atlanta, Morehouse and Spelman colleges laugh, talk and work on brightly colored pieces of cloth on long tables.
Laura Zander has big plans for her little knitting-supply business. "We want to be a household name," she says. "Every knitter should know about us." It's not the kind of huge ambition she expected to have again when she fled San Francisco in 2001 after the dot-com bust. She and husband Doug Zander landed in tiny Truckee, Calif., where the former Silicon Valley programmers shifted into the slow lane, trading computer skills for goods and services.
Sometime in the next month it will become obvious the New Orleans Hornets are better than their skeptics had imagined. Or so thinks coach Byron Scott.
Lizzie Cameron is in Musoma, Tanzania working with the Musoma Engineering Project.
How a seamstress turned politician is almost single-handedly tackling the crisis of displaced families in her troubled Baghdad neighborhood
Lizzie Cameron is in Musoma, Tanzania working with the Musoma Engineering Project.
Ever since eBay announced changes to its feedback rules and fee structure last week, sellers have been irate, exploding onto message boards and blogs with discussions about how the new policies will affect their businesses. But when the idea of a strike was floated, some sellers and buyers decided to get more organized about expressing their displeasure.
Lizzie Cameron is in Musoma, Tanzania working with the Musoma Engineering Project.
Lizzie Cameron is in Musoma, Tanzania working with the Musoma Engineering Project.
If at first you don't succeed ... ask yourself, Am I an otter? A squirrel? A mouse? The answer could spell the difference between things going swimmingly and squeaking to a halt. Find your own winning style.
Lizzie Cameron is in Musoma, Tanzania working with the Musoma Engineering Project.
Lizzie Cameron is in Musoma, Tanzania working with the Musoma Engineering Project.
Lizzie Cameron is in Musoma, Tanzania working with the Musoma Engineering Project.
Lizzie Cameron is in Musoma, Tanzania working with the Musoma Engineering Project.
Lizzie Cameron is in Musoma, Tanzania working with the Musoma Engineering Project.
The hardwood floor will be a replica of the Detroit Pistons court. There will be a Nintendo Wii and a pop-a-shot basket and 16 tickets for children with cancer and their families. "There is a picture of my hand on the wall," says Tayshaun Prince, the Pistons forward who has made all of this happen, "so they can put their hands up against it to see how big they are."
Lizzie Cameron is in Musoma, Tanzania working with the Musoma Engineering Project.
Lizzie Cameron is in Musoma, Tanzania working with the Musoma Engineering Project.
As the weeks click by, and the Patriots' dominance starts to gather historical weight and register in our collective consciousness, we're beginning to hear more about New England's chances of measuring up to a pair of record-breaking teams from the past: the 1972 Miami Dolphins of 17-0 perfect season fame, and the 1998 Minnesota Vikings, who set the league's single-season scoring record of 556 points en route to a 16-2 record.
Lizzie Cameron is in Musoma, Tanzania working with the Musoma Engineering Project.
Lizzie Cameron is in Musoma, Tanzania working with the Musoma Engineering Project.
Lizzie Cameron is in Musoma, Tanzania working with the Musoma Engineering Project.
Developing emotional closeness with someone is hard work. Imagine the challenge if there are thousands of miles between you.
When most people talk about printers, they talk about them in terms of printing documents and Web pages, but with more and more high-resolution cameras around, it's becoming more common for people to print large photos at home. If you want those big prints to look nice, that means buying a medium-format printer, such as Canon's Pixma Pro9000.
Even for someone as optimistic as Jeff Bezos, 2006 is turning out to be a hellish year. The Amazon.com founder and e-commerce pioneer saw his second-quarter profit plunge 58 percent, due largely to...
Political refugees flee the worst places on earth to launch businesses in America.
LIKE MOST ENTREPRENEURS, Hajia Kangame rarely dwells on the past. She stays plenty busy running her San Diego handicraft business and raising four daughters. But Kangame, 37, will never forget the ...
The Scene caught up with Nandita Das to talk street food, handicrafts and the less welcome side of globalization...
Bridge City Tool Works Dozuki Saw $129
The best new hardware made by small businesses.
I knew it was coming.
Bonny Dutton just wanted to stick to her knitting. The single mother of a 2-year-old boy, Dutton (right), 42, runs a children's apparel business called Fleece on Earth from a barn behind her home i...
Steps could have been taken to stop suicide hijackers if Zacarias Moussaoui had leveled with investigators about his al Qaeda ties, a government witness told jurors Wednesday in the penalty phase of Moussaoui's trial.
We humans have always placed considerable value on smelling nice, often going to great lengths, and great expense, to acquire the finest perfumes and fragrances with which to douse ourselves.
As a child at the White House, Caroline Kennedy got early lessons in the power of words.
Mena Trott's personal Web log isn't exactly the stuff of headlines. She writes mostly about her daily life -- what she did over the weekend, what's she's reading, what she ate for dinner. Chances are, if she weren't the co-founder of a successful Web log publishing company (Six Apart), her Web log probably wouldn't get much press.
An English design graduate has created a device to help knitters keep track of the number of stitches they have knitted.
Take heart as you embark on your next summer road trip: There are ways to tone down the "are we there yet?" chorus coming from the back seat.
If you were looking for someone to design a better tablesaw, Stephen Gass, 42, would be the perfect candidate. An amateur woodworker who makes home furniture in his free time, Gass also happens to ...
The recent U.S. ban on cigarette lighters aboard passenger planes has caught scores of smokers by surprise at North American airports, but the ban is also making waves globally.
Flat Stanley: successful teacher, world traveler, goodwill ambassador and now Hollywood celebrity. Not bad for a tiny, thin guy made out of paper.
It's been 31 years since the first Michaels (MIK, $30) converted a Ben Franklin five-and-dime into a humble arts-and-crafts store. Today the Irving, Texas, company is a national chain of 842 hobby-...
The term "behind the scenes" will take on a whole new meaning when it comes to describing London Fashion Week in future, as fabrics get more high-tech and science becomes a key part of the business.
When the discount chain Costco wanted to launch a new offer for "Two pillows for $10," it called Leo and Jeff Hollander, the father-and-son team that owns Hollander Home Fashions. When Laura Ashley...
Investors were rushing to cash their shares of Starbucks Corp. after Wednesday's close. The company earlier said same-store sales rose only 8 percent in August, the first time in nine months that the trendy retailer's growth fell below double digits.
Thinking of getting mom something special for Mother's Day but want to move beyond the typical fare?
When you meet Kate and Andy Spade in their whitewashed product gallery, it's easy to forget that they're budding corporate titans. Looking like Audrey Hepburn's best friend, Kate, 40, wears clunky ...
Bridge clubs are fine by me. Nothing wrong with bowling clubs or knitting clubs. I can even truck with the Hell's Angels, which, its members insist, is a "club," not a gang. Where I draw the line i...
By day, Jerry Fank is a metals man. A machinist by trade, he co-founded Fancort Industries 32 years ago and still serves as vice president of manufacturing. The West Caldwell, N.J., company designs...
Jake Burton Carpenter has one of the best jobs in America. Last year he spent 113 days riding his snowboard and still had time to run his company. Luckily for Carpenter, his passion is his business...
Now that the chaos has subsided, people can argue that there was nothing wrong with the concept. It was just lousy execution. Nevertheless, what sounded like a good way to cut costs in 1999 came cl...
So you've finished your basement and now, thanks to all that new space, you find yourself shopping for a pool table. Maybe even an antique one. Go to a dealer in, say, Manhattan, and it can run you...
At a Cincinnati dinner party in 1845, John Brunswick, a Swiss immigrant carriage maker, saw his first billiard table, a British model with dazzlingly ornate details. Brunswick knew little about bil...
Maybe you just want a little extra spending money – or you're trying to catch up with the bills. Some freelance work can go a long way in bridging your personal budget gap. But instead of following the same worn-out job-search track, why not blaze your own creative path?
There is an arithmetic to innovation that seems inescapable--it is repeated again and again in both the business world and the natural world. It is the essence of Silicon Valley. Out of a thousand ...
Look down. It's almost a cinch that whatever you're wearing on your feet wasn't manufactured in America. Of the 1.3 billion pairs of shoes sold annually in the U.S., fewer than one out of 20 is mad...
The U.S. textile industry--5,000 makers of yarns and fabrics, some huge, some tiny, with total sales of $58 billion last year--is astonishingly innovative and productive. The industry spent $2 bill...
Back in 1984, Roxanne Quimby was hitchhiking into town from her home in rural Maine when a yellow pickup, driven by a somber-looking man with a scraggly beard, rolled to a stop. She'd heard the gos...
Back in 1984, Roxanne Quimby was hitchhiking into town from her home in rural Maine when a yellow pickup, driven by a somber-looking man with a scraggly beard, rolled to a stop. She'd heard the gos...
"Do not touch my tie!" snaps Kiton's normally charming founder, Ciro Paone, slapping away our photographer's hand. "You can make a mannequin look perfect, but not a real man--you must leave him the...
Here's how to cash in on Ralph Lauren's much ballyhooed debut on the New York Stock Exchange in June. First, don't badger your broker for an allotment of shares in the estimated $600 million initia...
Margarita Perez, president of Fortaleza Asset Management, has a knack for finding the stocks of fledgling companies that take off rather than plummet. Her secret? The emerging growth outfits she li...
Sometimes Warren Isabelle, 42, can be a bit gloomy. "How am I doing today? Terrible," says he, as a greeting. In a business of rampant bullishness, Isabelle clearly isn't afraid of being negative. ...
YOU'D EXPECT a company that returned an average of 54.3% a year to shareholders over the past decade to embody every precept of today's orthodoxy of excellence, right? Yet here's Mark IV Industries...
CROMPTON & KNOWLES How do you revive a company that's hit a wall? Vincent Calarco, 51, faced that challenge when he left his job at Uniroyal in 1985 to head Crompton & Knowles. Although his new com...
ONE YEAR into the Nineties and this is shaping up as the decade in which we came, we saw, and we ran for cover. The economy is wobbling, the Germanys are merging, and the entire world is being held...
EVER FANTASIZE about running a private company? Do you imagine escaping Wall Street's relentless demands for quarterly profit gains, breaking free to invest in visionary projects that hurt earnings...
Q. Why are comprehensive durable power of attorney instruments, obtained at considerable expense, not honored by many banks and thrifts? Recently, a bank wouldn't honor mine and insisted that its o...
''Nightingales? It's sleazy,'' declares Gail Douglas, taking a drag on her cigarette. An operating-room nurse at Atlanta's Northside Hospital, Douglas, 50, is critiquing last season's controversial...
The wealth of Japanese corporations intrudes on the consciousness of American business executives through a steady stream of small transactions. A Japanese leasing company buys part of a big Americ...
I WAS 8 YEARS OLD, sitting in our brand-new cherry-red '57 Chrysler clutching a 15-cent hamburger and 10-cent fries. The crowded parking lot flickered under the most amazing neon sign Aurora, Illin...
REGINALD F. LEWIS, chairman of TLC Group, smiled to the other passengers as he stepped into the elevator of his Manhattan club. It was a politic smile, since he was carrying a lighted cigar, forbid...
Eight years ago, Neuma Agins, a successful New York City fashion designer, decided to simplify her life by moving to the rural Berkshire Hills in Massachusetts to make her own sweaters. Some simpli...
CHART: TEXT NOT AVAILABLE CREDIT: MARK KING FALLS Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics; SSMC Inc. CAPTION: THE DECLINE OF DOMESTICITY DESCRIPTION: Number of women in the work force and number of sewi...
Isaac Singer started making sewing machines in the U.S. in 1851. These days the company whose products bear his name is called SSMC -- a spinoff from parent Singer Co., which is now devoted solely ...
The company meant sewing machines for 135 years. But in mid-July Singer Co. of Stamford, Connecticut, shed its sewing machine and furniture operations, and stockholders are to get one share in the ...
Conglomerates are out of fashion on Wall Street. Investors prefer companies that are spinning off subsidiaries, reducing debt, and buying back stock. By any of these measures, Willcox & Gibbs falls...
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