Category Archives: Stores and Services

From dry cleaners to shoe shiners, this category is for companies that do stuff for others.

Brand Spanking New

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As you may have noticed, we have recreated our website.   Here is what we’ve learned:

  1. Hire good people.  We hired a great consultant to design us a new look.  Why not do it ourselves?  Well, it’s hard to be objective on the stuff you love.
  2. Get good tools.  We use Macromedia Dreamweaver for web development and even though we could write the code from scratch, their template system makes it easy to update and track the look and feel of all files at the same time.    We’re not recommending that you run out and start buying up software, but we do recommend that you find the right tools for your trade.  This is very important, because it will save you time, and as a result, it’ll save you money.
  3. Check and recheck.  It’s a good idea to get a couple of independent eyes to check your creations.  At best, it’s people familiar with the business who are unfamiliar with the project.  That way, their help can be useful and impartial.

Tell us what you think: info@browncouchconsulting.com.

More ideas than time

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Since I have more ideas than time (I am borrowing this line from a friend – Greg Raiz), I have to write them here in the hopes that someone picks them up and uses them to do some good.

So – here is my idea.  I met a couple of women who are starting out as independent attorneys in the Boston/Brookline/Newton area and are looking to share office space.  I think that someone should start the Zipcar equivalent of office space rental.  For example, there would be a building with, say, 5 personal offices, a receptionist, a main number with several extensions, Internet and a coffee pot with a never ending supply. You’d have to pay some nominal fee for the year – say $200 – to partake in this venture.  Then you’d have to rent the office space by the hour.  I’m not sure how much an hourly rate should be, but I’m guessing that something around $20 dollars should be able to cover the cost while being affordable.  

This setup would allow the contractors to keep costs to a minumum because they would only use the office when they were meeting with clients or when they needed some quiet time and place to work.  There would also have to be a conference room. 

I think that if the prices were right and the marketing was done correctly, they would really be able to make this a good profitable venture out of this.   You’d have to figure out a way to track hours of who occupied what office for how long.  Perhaps the card readers most companies use to give access to facilities for their employees would do the trick. Finally someone would be open about tracking time with those things.

And, so? Any takers?

Spread’s the word – Deborah’s Kitchen

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My sandwiches are, at best, bland and every time I watch my husband take a bite of what I’ve created, I think to myself that I really need to learn to make better sandwiches.  And I might just have found my salvation: Deborah’s Kitchen spreads (www.deborahskitchen.com).   I read about them in Edible Boston and decided to give some spreads a try. 

What I like:

  • The taste! There are some wonderful, creative combinations with names to match. 
  • The spreads are made from natural ingredients and contain very little added sugar. 
  • They are local (Littleton, MA).

What I would recommend:

  1. Consider making at least a couple of the spreads organic. 
  2. Sets should cost less than the combination of their individual components, i.e. giving a discount for quantity buys. 
  3. Include a recipe section on the website and perhaps even distribute recipes with each purchase. 
  4. The website needs more substance (no pun intended).  So far, it’s basically an order form. 

So, with some marketing assistance, Deborah may just be on her way to becoming the next Mrs. Fields.

Zippi Di Do Da – A review of Zipcar

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I’ve taken on a new challenge recently and given up my old friend and buddy – my 1995 Toyota Tercel – to become a car-less city dweller.   This is just the latest of our many green steps.  But very few of us can survive entirely without wheels, so I’ve signed up for Zipcar (www.zipcar.com) for the occasion trip the burbs.  Here are some comments on the concept and the service they provide.
  1. Zipcar is fantastically convenient. We live in the city and there are about 25 cars within a mile walk. To get one, I reserve online (about 1 minute of my time), walk to the car (another 5 minutes, maybe), tap the Zipcard on the windshield and the car is mine.  So in about 10 minutes, I can rent a clean car, that’s full of gas, that someone else drives to the repair shop, someone else cleans, someone else takes care of paperwork.  What else could you want???  A funny side note about this. When my friend and I first rented a zipcar, on our way out of the parking lot after locking up everything and painstakingly checking that we left nothing, I said to her “Do you feel like we’re forgetting something big?” She said “Yes.”  And then, I figured out what we’d forgotten:  “Like the car?!”.
  2. It’s convenient, but is it cheap???  As we’re making every dollar stretch as far as it can go, I had to do some calculations to make sure that Zipcar is actually worth its hype.  Here is my calculation. I use Zipcar for errands that last about 3-4 hours each. That’s somewhere around $30-$40 for the car. $40 you say. That’s crazy. Well – do some quick numbers. I was paying $135 in parking, plus about $100 in insurance and gas per month. That’s $235 per month, or about 6 such trips.  I use the car only once a week, which means my tab is somwehere between $160 and $200 dollars, which is less than I was spending.  Suppose I didn’t own a car and had to shell out another $300 to $400 in monthly payments, plus regular maintenance, etc.  Well, you get the idea!  It adds up fast and Zipcar is suddenly looking very nice indeed.
  3. Take your pick.  Probably one of the coolest things about Zipcar is the variety of cars they have available. I happened to rent a Mazda 3 ($9/hour) since it was the closest, but they also have Toyotas, Hondas, and others in sizes small and big. The bigger the car, the more you pay, but it’s still very reasonable to rent a truck if you need to go to say, Ikea, to buy something thrifty will all the money you’ve saved from ditching your car.
  4. Hybrids… One small gripe is that Zipcar doesn’t have many hybrids.  They are about $6/hour for the smaller models, which is $3 less than most others and I would rent one in a heartbeat, but there isn’t one within a mile walk of me.