Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Is Greening an Existing Building Worth It?

Greening an existing building is profitable for several reasons. Whether you have a multi-unit complex of 250 apartments or a 100,000 square foot commercial office building-you can make changes that will significantly decrease your monthly operational expenses. Significantly. Not 5%, not 10%, more like 40-70%.

The beauty of incorporating green into your buildings is that the small changes have major impact and thus, major savings. When I first began in the business and 'greened' my first few homes, I saved them money but it pales in comparison to what we do with a big project.
Here's why:

1. Most commercial properties are more than 5 years old. Thus their irrigation systems and equipment is not the latest in energy efficiency and often times isn't working properly.

2. Most landscaping companies don't know much about water conservation. Their job is to make the property look nice, not worry about how much water/energy it's using. The people seeing the system on a regular bass are not landscape designers-our guys are. They also might not be qualified to give you the best recommendations on smart controllers, sprinkler-heads, etc. They typically recommend what they are comfortable working with which is not usually the best solution. We replace current systems with energy efficient products such as MP sprinkler heads and Solar Synch controllers made by Hunter

3. No clear-cut project manager exists for green efforts. Most properties have 1 company doing the water, 1 handles the electric, 1 handles the HVAC, 1 does the landscaping, 1 does the plumbing fixtures, etc, etc. There is typically not 1 team that audits the entire property as a system. That is why when we come in we're able to discover significant cost savings. We look at everything.

4. Most property owners/managers have little experience navigating through the myriad rebates and incentives programs available. Thus, they pay full wholesale price for a toilet instead of getting a low flow unit that has a 90% rebate attached to it. There are plenty of rebates available all over the country, not just California. Believe me, understanding and utilizing the full extent of the rebates available is almost a full-time job.

Let's go through a quick example to illustrate the savings. Assume we have a 250-unit condo complex and the water and sewer bills are $30k per year for just the landscaping. After auditing we replace some irrigation equipment, replace fixtures in common area bathrooms, laundry rooms, etc. Even though the irrigation system is 15 years old we find energy efficient equipment that will cut the water usage by 65%. The materials for all of the improvements cost $10k. The rebate for all of the equipment comes to $9500. For example, SDGE offers more than 157 rebates for businesses. The labor cost is $5000.

Here's the breakdown: Total cost for improvements (including labor)-$15,000. Total rebates-$9500. Total net cost-$5500. Net Cost savings in Year 1-$14,000 (65% of 30k is cost savings, then subtract net cost). Total savings end of Year 2-$33,500. Total savings end of Year 3-$53,000

So, again, right now it makes sense to green a commercial building. If/when the rebates go away, it might be less of a big opportunity but right now it's a slam-dunk.

Jim Simcoe is an eco-consultant and sustainability strategist. A noted authority on green business strategy and green building, Jim has been featured on NBC, Fox, SmartMoney.com, etc. He can be reached at 760-271-7128 or online at: http://www.ecolifeconsulting.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jim_Simcoe

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Six Key Criteria to Identify What Kind of Company Culture You Have

Read time 3.5 minutes.

Corporate culture is an overt or covert agreement about "This is the way we do things around here."

Two cultures are always operating in a company, family or group.

1. The "Marketed or Public Culture" - what we would like the world to think we are: "Be the customer." In a "Marketed Culture," what we say often does not fit with what we really do or what people are encouraged to do. So if we say, "Be the customer" but we treat them badly what we market does not fit our behaviors.

2. The "Authentic Culture" is the one in which people's behaviours are congruent with the stated values. "Be the customer" means we do whatever it takes to fulfil customer needs to produce a WOW! customer experience.

An "Authentic Culture" points the way to an ideal and "happy place" that will lead to a sustainable business that is humanly and financially sustainable.

Why Build a Humanly and Financially Sustainable Culture?

  • Short answer -- for fun and profit.

An "Authentic Culture" tends to increase engagement, which leverages people's performance. It makes alignment easier because people have bought into the values. It charges up motivation to be the best because most employees are giving their best, which has a positively viral effect throughout the organization.

Southwest Airlines, Westjet, Google, and The Container Store are examples of "Authentic" cultures.

WindowPane Design Group employs 50 people. Half are best-in-class designers. The other half are support people. Its cultural ethic is one of attracting, engaging with, and retaining the best customers for innovate design. WPDG regards its employees as customers.

Retaining is the key element here, because in the design business the sales cycle is very long -- often years. Developing a level, profit producing, client-connected designer takes years.

WPDG has not had a "failed" assignment. They have certainly made mistakes and had conflicts with clients -- and they have managed to strengthen all their customer relationships as a result. They have many repeat clients.

The "Authentic" and the "Marketed" workings of culture share common ground.

To change the culture from what it is today, i.e. from fuzzy goals, unclear ground rules, and substandard results -- to what we want it to be i.e. inspiring vision, clear mission and consistently profitable results, we have to change the "way things are done around here." Poor performers scurry out like rats deserting a sinking ship. High performers jump on board for the ride.

  • Congruency is the "Secret Sauce" to Talent Managing An Authentic, High Performing Corporate Culture
Six key criteria to identify what kind of company culture you have.
  1. Values & Behaviors.Who decides what are the priorities? What behaviors get rewarded? What actions are unacceptable? What goes unnoticed. Who goes unnoticed? What are our core values that guide how we engage and behave toward each other, our customers and our suppliers?
  2. Internal -- External.How do we make sure we are engaging with the right people? Are we congruent with what we say to our customers and what we deliver to our customers? Do we have the competitive intelligence we need to compete in this environment of business? What are we doing to develop our people?
  3. Vision.Where are we going? What kind of corporate future do we want to create? Does it fit our values? As we are creating our future what are we giving up in exchange for what we are getting. Is it worth it?
  4. Improving.What do we need to -- Stop Doing? Start Doing and Keep Doing? -- to get there? What's the Big Goal? How will we know when we've arrived? Do we have a road map or strategy to get us there?
  5. Mission.Why are we in business? What are we actually selling? Is it products, services and/or experiences? Do our customers know what we are selling?
  6. The Emporer's New Clothes?If a person from Mars came to visit us, what would s/he see or say about us?An "Authentic" culture is built on principles and policies that drive behaviors that inspire the human spirit to become great. An "Authentic" culture is behaviorally congruent. Or, WYSIWYG.
Is our culture "Marketed" or Authentic"?

To get your FREE Instant Copy of -- A TASTE of GENIUS -- go to http://www.subject2change.ca
From Dr. Jim Sellner, PhD.,DipC. -- Helping Zoomers & Super Zoomers find more joy, health and sense of abundance.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dr._Jim_Sellner_Ph.D.

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Blogging - An Important Part Of Any Marketing Plan

When the worldwide web began, the internet was simply an informational tool - the yellow pages and an encyclopedia combined - and at the command of our fingertips. With the advent of online shopping, the internet became interactive where we could see a product online and by filling out a form and including our credit card, could buy it and have it shipped directly to our home.

The web continued to change and evolve; user-generated content made its debut and it caught on big. People started keeping online diaries of their thoughts, feelings and experiences and the blog was born. As all creations have a tendency to do, the blog continued to grow and has now developed into a strong marketing tool as well as an effective form of communication.

There are a variety of reasons for starting a blog, but these are the most popular:
• To Express Ideas, Opinions and Thoughts
• To Market or Promote a Product or Service
• To Establish Yourself as an Expert
• To Connect With Like-Minded People
• To Stay Connected with Family, Friends and Business Associates
• To Make Money

As a business tool, blogging can be used to establish yourself as an expert, connect with people interested in your expertise, market your product or service to those people and ultimately put money in your bank account. Blogs are often at the top of every Google search and can bring thousands of people to your website and business.

Although writing a blog may be relatively easy for many, optimizing the impact of your blog is a many fingered process. A blog is a website in itself and if you're using it to promote your product or business, it needs to reflect the professionalism and approach developed on your webpage. Constant updating and search engine optimization are key to keeping your blog at the top of the different search engines. And ongoing submissions to blog hubs as well as internet directories will keep your blog "popping up" for related internet searches.

There was a time when having a website and paying for a service that made sure your key words would show up in a Google search was enough; now it's imperative that your potential customers can get to know you, understand your expertise, and be able to quickly connect with your website or internet store. That's the power of a blog.

Many people try to create and maintain a blog on their own; some are successful. But the majority of business owners are going to experts who can develop a professional search engine optimized blog, keep the contents updated and get the blogs submitted to hubs, directories and social bookmarks.

Keeping up with the ever changing technology of the internet is sometimes best left to the experts. But one thing is very clear - blogging has become a very important part of any good marketing plan.

Erik Welker is the author of a http://www.totaltrafficexplosion.com blog . To know more details go to market and promote products

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Erik_Welkers

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Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Affiliate Marketing - Free Traffic Methods Used to Generate Laser Targeted Traffic

Affiliate Marketing has to be one of the easiest ways to make money on the internet. You don't need your own product, you don't have to handle the sales, and you never have to deal with any customers. In fact, you don't even need your own website. You just find a good affiliate product in your niche and you are on your way.

With that being said, Affiliate Marketing is not quite as easy as everyone wants you to believe. It does take some work and it does take some time, but it sure does beat a 9-5 job.

Sure everything is all set up for you. All of the hard work is done, so you just need to go out and promote. That is where it can get tricky. How do you promote your affiliate product? How do you get people to click on your affiliate link? And more importantly, how do you get them to buy from your affiliate link?

This is where you need to work at generating laser targeted free traffic. Here are several proven methods used by all of the top affiliate marketers:

1. Blogs
Blogging is one of the best ways to get your name out there and to build yourself as an expert in your field. It is very easy nowadays to build you're your own personal Blog. Websites like Wordpress and Blogger.com allow you to build a Blog in a matter of minutes.

Your Blog should be relevant to your niche and contain a lot of useful information for your reader. You need to continuously update your Blog with new material and make sure that it is set up to be pinged by the top Pinging Services such as Technorati and Pingomatic.com. If you are using one of the Blogging Programs, this can be set up to automatically ping for every new post.

Another free traffic method concerning blogging, is posting comments on other people's Blogs. Search for Blogs related to your niche and find the most popular ones that allow commenting. Just make sure that your comments are useful and relevant, so that they are not considered spam.

2. Forums
Forum participation is another great way to get free traffic and lots of back links to your site, Blog or affiliate link. Do a search to find forums within your niche. From there research each forum to make sure that it is popular, with a lot of members and a lot of posts. Also make sure that they allow affiliate links in your signature.

After you join some of the better forums, you need to start making posts and replying to posts. Most forums have a section to introduce yourself, this is a great place to start. Make sure that your interaction is all relevant and useful to the forum. Don't post just to get your affiliate link out there. This is considered spam and you will be banned from most forums.

3. Article Marketing
Article Marketing has got to be the best way to generate free traffic. You need to write an informative article pertaining to your niche. Do not use the article to sell your product. Rather sell yourself as someone that is well educated on your niche and direct them to your product or webpage in the author bio. Ideally, your article should be between 500 to 750 words.

Once your article is written and proofread, you can start submitting it to article sites. Be sure to read their terms, each site's policies are a little different. I personally start with EzineArticles.com and wait for them to approve my article first. They are one of the best sites on the web and they are very particular about duplicate content. From there you can submit to the rest. I suggest just using the top 10 or 20 sites.

These are just a few ideas to get you started in generating free traffic to your affiliate product. There are many other methods available, some of them effective, some not so much. The more creative you can get the better you can do. Just remember to start doing something and to stick with it.

Glen Speckmann is a successful internet marketer focusing on Affiliate Marketing. Sign up for his free newsletter and receive tips and tricks on how to grow your internet business at http://www.gjsmarketing.com You will also receive a free money making report that will help you increase your affiliate sales.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Glen_Speckman

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Blogging Tips - Building a Blog Network

Blogs are big and here to stay. Of that, there is no argument. However, just putting up a blog on the Internet is no guarantee that anybody is going to see it. You need to generate traffic to your blog. Problem is, that's easier said than done and getting your blog up the SERPs is no easy chore. However, by building a blog network, you can get all your blogs up the SERPs rather easily. This article explains how.

Probably the best way to illustrate this is with an example. Let's say that you wanted to create a blog network revolving around the rock group "The Beatles." Now, putting up just one blog would probably not get you very far in the SERPs without a lot of work. After all, this is one very popular group with a lot of sites out there. However, what if we built a network of blogs around the group itself? How can we do this? The next paragraph gives some ideas.

How about we start off with a main Beatles blog. This one would go into a brief history of the Fab 4. Maybe include a listing of all their albums and singles that they released. Then, we could put up some supporting blogs. For example, we could have a blog for each member of the Beatles; Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. And then (this is the key) at each supporting blog, you have a link pointing to the main or mother blog. This way, you develop your network. Naturally, you would have links from the main blog to each of the supporting ones.

You could further expand on this. You could have a blog that has nothing but all their songs listed along with lyrics. You could have a blog that has nothing but videos of the Beatles. You could have yet another blog that goes into their personal lives, such as who they each were married to. You could have still another time line blog where you go through all the important dates in their history, such as song releases, concerts and so on.

Do you see where I am going with this? There are a number of specialty blogs that you could put up that all relate, in some way, to the mother blog. Linking them all together, you will eventually have one powerful network going for you.

Yes, this does involve quite a bit of work, but in the long run, it will pay off big time if you do it correctly.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

CLICK HERE to discover how to put together an authority site that will ultimately bring you in a steady income for years and years to come with very little upkeep

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Steven_Wagenheim

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3 Tips For an Effective Online Business Strategy

An online business strategy is essential when you are ready to look at the big picture. To keep yourself busy doing some home based business earning a few hundred dollars every month, you really won't need any big strategy. Moreover, you are never in full control of events that keep unfolding in such situations. But, what constitutes a business strategy and what are the major building blocks?

1. Web based business strategy defined

The basic attribute of a strong plan is defining the objectives. Once you set the objectives, consider the means to achieve those objectives. This does not mean that you immediately think in terms of a large organization with all the paraphernalia. There are successful internet businesses run by single individuals. The size would depend on your own abilities to take on multiple functions and keep track of all the events.

2. Building blocks

Once your objectives are defined and the means identified, the next step of your Internet business plan is to create the building blocks. List out the components needed to make your business up and running. The product line, your website, traffic generation, auto responder, payment gateway integration, customer support, and complaint redressal are some of the essential components.

3. Trouble shooting

Even the best online business strategy will face some roadblocks in the initial days. This calls for an effective trouble shooting mechanism. For example, if there are issues with your payment gateway, the monies that customers part with may not reach you. In another scenario, customers are unable to reach your order form or there is a link failure. Close monitoring of every day activity and quick response to issues is essential until your business can move on to top gear.

Would you like to learn more about starting a Online Business? I just completed a brand new free guide.

Download my brand new free guide here: Online Business

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dale_E_East

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Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Permission Marketing - It's Time For Change

British Companies are spending £18 Billion on their marketing advertising campaigns, finding ever more ingenious ways to reach the increasingly savvy British consumer. Are they wasting their money? Their marketing campaign's are less effective than ever with the average consumer turning to the internet and major search engines to find their wants and needs.

As more and more consumers turn to the internet and the addition of Google-ing into the dictionary it's only a matter of time before the leaders of our companies realize they have to increase their effectiveness and lower their cost per aquisition ( marketing speak for customer). Internet Marketing has become a huge industry worth 100's of billions of dollars and even in this economic downturn it continues to grow! There's a message there!

Last week, Maurice Levy - CEO of Publicis - which owns Leo Burnett and Saatchi & Saatchi - admitted that search engines can deliver more results than a formidable advertising campaign.
Major search engines control the internet traffic and with the monumental rise in PPC Marketing (pay per click marketing) it's easier than ever to place a small text based add that is triggered by a pre-determined keyword or keyword phrase. Clicking on the advert takes the consumer to predetermined website addresses that can even be tailored to suite the ad and the keyword that triggered it ( in fact the major search engines are starting to demand that they do, its called KEYWORD RELEVANCE).

These ads can be customized to target specific locations, specific times of day and even specific demographics! No longer is the advertiser hoping his add will be seen by enough eyeballs to trigger an action to buy. The Advertiser is placing his advert right in front of consumers that have already raised their hands and pre-qualified themselves!. This is huge!

Our companies are looking to giant media corporations and advertising moguls to lead them through this change, however why would marketing companies want anything to change? Huge sums of money and fat inflated bonus's have become part of the deal, its been that way forever!.

It started quietly, you spot an ad that looks enticing and 1 click later your staring at a web page and if the advertiser is smart it's an offer! A small ethical bribe to seal the deal and there it was! You give your email address and maybe your name and in return you are sent a freebie, just like that!. You have just placed yourself into someone's sales funnel! It's like magic!

Permission Marketing

If the advertiser has done his job right, the advert, website and the offer are all congruent and the content of the subsequent offer provides value, you as a consumer feel happy and content with the deal. Here is only the start of the sales funnel! The canny advertiser has captured your details and now has your permission to send you further offers it's email marketing done correctly, and why wouldn't you be interested? A great deal delivered into your Inbox is still a great deal! the difference being that this advertiser has the opportunity to build some trust, a short series of emails delivered to allow you to get to know the company, their products, services and effectively brand themselves. As they say People buy from those they Know Like & Trust.

Every business needs to know, especially in the current climate, that effective marketing campaigns delivering customers, branding their image products or services, building loyalty and trust is going to be the single dividing factor that will separate the winners from the losers. It's time to embrace the customer, find out what they are thinking, cater to their wants and become Great, as they say Serving the many leads to Greatness.

Permission Marketing - Mark Taylor

Mark Taylor

Mark Taylor founded The Marketing General to educate and give a useful resource to Companies, business's and individuals looking for a greater return on their advertising budget's. He continues to coach internet marketing techniques and strategy's and looks to implement these systems into local National and International Business.

find out more about Mark here http://www.WhoIsMarkTaylor.com

Find The General Here at http://www.TheMarketingGeneral.com

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Leadership Styles - What is Most Effective in Leading Change?

What are the leadership styles that are most effective in leading change and especially in the current environment?

The key themes that emerges from a brief review of the research and literature on leadership are :

(1) Good management alone is not enough - key additional factors are:

  • The realisation that a focus on people before process is in the long run more productive than a job or task centred focus
  • Getting the balance right between a task orientation and a people orientation and knowing when and where to move to the most appropriate position on that spectrum
  • Having the flexibility to adopt leadership styles that are appropriate to the level of development or maturity of the people involved

"Leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do things right." [ Bennis]

(2) Leadership is required and - in the form of leadership styles:

  • That in some way transcends short-term goals and focuses on values and higher order needs and provides meaning for people
  • That also addresses their deepest fears.
(3) The importance of a people-centred leadership that:
  • Addresses people's anxieties and fears:
    • Generally about the uncertainties of the current environment and:
    • Specifically about the impacts and consequences of a step-change initiative.
  • Realising that this is important because people cannot work effectively if they are experiencing emotional turbulence - and that their ability to get work done depends on their emotions being under control.
  • A leader has to address those often unconscious and unexpressed fears along the way in order to help people keep them under control.

(4) Recognising the emotional dimension of leadership:

  • That emotions are essentially contagious, and that the leader's attitude and energy "infects" a workplace either for better or for worse
  • The importance of the leader's ability to articulate a message that resonates with their followers' emotional reality and their sense of purpose, and thus motivate them to move in a specific direction
  • The leader's style determines about 70% of the emotional climate which in turns drives 20-30% of business performance

Ultimately, the quality of leadership that you provide is one of the top 5 factors that will determine whether you really do succeed and realise the benefits with your step change initiative - or whether -to put it bluntly - you join the long list of 70% failures.

The other 4 factors are:

  1. Determining that you are embarking on a step change that sits outside of business as usual and needs to be handled as a specific initiative
  2. Using a programme management based approach to your step change initiative
  3. The thoroughness of your pre programme review and planning process
  4. The extent to which you identify and address the cultural change in your organisation that is required to deliver the step change and the desired business benefit.

Stephen Warrilow, based in Bristol, works with companies across the UK providing specialist support to directors delivery significant change initiatives. Stephen has 25 years cross sector experience with 100+ companies in mid range corporate, larger SME and corporate environments. For more information: http://www.strategies-for-managing-change.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Stephen_Warrilow

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The Story of the Menominee River Sugar Company 1903-1955

Menominee, Michigan, situated far from the world's financial centers a hundred years ago, much as it is today, nevertheless placed itself directly in the middle of one of the hottest business booms of the early twentieth century - sugar. The small community that dared to plant a footprint in world commerce occupies a slivered point of land that dips into Lake Michigan at a point so close in proximity to Wisconsin that had a cartographer's finger twitched at a crucial moment, Menominee would be in Wisconsin instead of Michigan.

Menominee is bordered on the east by Green Bay, an arm of Lake Michigan, and on the south-west by the Menominee River. In 1903, many investors in the beet sugar industry had a timber background and had thus come to believe that the same rivers that had once delivered logs to sawmills in abundance could also serve the needs of a beet sugar factory where massive volumes of water are used for fluming beets into the factory, washing them and then diffusing the sugar from them. A sugar factory could easily put three million gallons of water to use every twenty-four hours. Barges can carry sugarbeets from the farm fields and freighters can carry products to market. The presence of the Menominee River convinced investors that Menominee could compete with the nation's sugar producers despite negative comments from naysayers who said Menominee was too far north to successfully grow sugarbeets.

The naysayers had a point. Menominee, Michigan is an unlikely place to construct a beet sugar factory. Situated at the western end of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, the growing season is about forty days shorter than the prime beet growing regions in the state's Lower Peninsula. The short season can prevent the ripening of beets which will then lessen sugar content of immature beets ill prepared for the stress of the milling process. Severe frosts in early spring are not unusual and are almost always fatal to a crop of young beets. Frosts can come early in the fall, too, which can make it impossible to harvest a crop. A farmer stood to lose his entire crop either early in the growing season or near the time of harvest after he had invested heavily in bringing the sugarbeet crop to term. Investors, however, in Menominee, as in many of Michigan's cities, tended to discount input from farmers before building a factory and would frequently interpret exaggerated enthusiasm from a handful of growers as representing the broader farming community. Quite often, as in Menominee's case, as it would turn out, the handful did not represent the whole.

Official recognition by the United States Department of Agriculture in 1898 of the importance of the sugarbeet industry sparked the construction of beet sugar factories across the nation. One year earlier the nation could boast only ten beet sugar factories, four of which were in California, one in Utah, two in Nebraska and three in New York. The construction of seven sugarbeet factories in 1898 brought into focus for the first time the stirrings of a rush not unlike the dot-com boom that blossomed nearly one hundred years later. The idea that sugar produced from sugarbeets could compete with sugar produced from sugarcane expanded into a full-fledged boom by 1900 when the nationwide count of sugarbeet factories stood at thirty-two in eleven states.

Nowhere was the blaze hotter than in Michigan where nine factories followed the successful start up of a factory in Essexville, Michigan, a suburb of Bay City. A burst of cyclonic enthusiasm caused a mad scramble when investors, constructors, bankers, and farmers combined energies and skills to bring to life eight factories in a single year! They were in Holland, Kalamazoo, Rochester, Benton Harbor, Alma, West Bay City, Caro, and a second factory in Essexville. Despite the paucity of factory constructors and the engineers to operate them, fourteen additional factories rose on the outskirts of Michigan towns during the next six years, one of which appeared in Menominee in 1903.

In Menominee, a group of investors undeterred by the natural disadvantages and buoyed by encouragement from influential investors and knowledgeable experts, set a plan in motion to maintain the economic viability of their city after the approaching demise of the lumber industry, which had until then provided the underpinnings of Menominee's economy. The plan included the design of one of the largest and most modern sugarbeet factories to appear in America up to that time.

As the lumber era petered out at the beginning of the 20th century, railroads that had come into their own because of timber, sought new sources of revenue. Principal among them was the Detroit and Mackinac Railroad whose land agent, Charles M. Garrison, collected and distributed information about the potential of the sugarbeet industry. While Garrison spread word among Detroit's financiers about prospective profits in sugarbeets, communities affected by the decline of lumber looked to area resources for ways of replenishing wealth. They had plenty to work with. The state was crisscrossed with rail lines and rivers and some left over cash from the lumber era. With Garrison leading the way, investors perked up. Communities eager to find a quick replacement for lumber hastened to attend meetings sponsored by Garrison and quicker yet to bring their towns into the fold. All that was needed was to persuade the farmers to grow the beets. That is where the Michigan Agricultural College (Now Michigan State University) stepped in.

Upper Peninsula farmers, encouraged by Michigan Agricultural College to plant sugarbeet test plots, received an even greater shot in the arm by the visit of Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson, in 1902. He expounded the advantages of sugarbeets and discouraged the notion that the Upper Peninsula's climate wasn't up to the task of producing profitable crops. Wilson served in three presidential cabinets, McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft, serving longer (1897-1913) than any other cabinet official. He encouraged modern agriculture methods, including transportation and education as they applied to agriculture. His word carried a lot of weight. When he spoke of sugarbeets, some farmers listened and when his department avowed that the cold northern temperatures would not inhibit the development of the industry in their neighborhood, investors, farmers, and manufacturers lined up to begin the industry in Menominee.

Optimism rose to new heights when the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced favorable results of the sugarbeet plot tests. The Sugar Beet News of December 15, 1903, reported test results from beets delivered by approximately 140 farmers. The test runs revealed 15.6 to 19.9 % sugar, which meant a cash value to the farmers per acre of from $5.70 to $7.13 per ton ($135-$169 inflation adjusted to the current period). At those projected prices, no crop in human history had held the potential for creating such a high return from so few acres.

In the Lower Peninsula, a farmer with above average ability who placed fifteen acres in sugarbeets could earn more than $800 and if his family provided the bulk of the labor, the net profit would more than take care of a family's needs for a year, which, including food, was less than $800. After adding revenue from crops in rotation and revenues from milk, eggs, and poultry, the farm family's standard of living advanced from a subsistence level to one that compared favorably to those who held mid-management positions in industry. USDA figures supported belief that Upper Peninsula beets would exceed by two per cent the average for all the other 18 sugar beet factories in the Lower Peninsula.

If the tests proved reliable indicators, Menominee region beets were worth up to $10 more an acre than Lower Peninsula beets, assuring an income of nearly $1,000 per year just from sugarbeets.

Although enthusiasm was on the upturn, something more was needed to seal the deal. To instill confidence in prospective investors that technical expertise lay near at hand, Benjamin Boutell, who won fame as both a tugboat captain and as a captain of industry, arrived in Menominee from his Bay City, Michigan headquarters for the single purpose of conveying interested investors to Bay County where they could see groomed beet fields and efficient factories spinning out white crystalline sugar. Eleven prospective investors accompanied Boutell to Bay City where convincing evidence lay at hand. Four beet sugar factories, more than in any other city in the United States, had been constructed in that city's environs. Bay City virtually hummed with economic activity because of the presence of sugar factories. Mansions peopled by former lumber barons who had transformed themselves into sugar barons, lined the city's prestigious Center Avenue.

Boutell announced he would become one of the investors, providing the other investors had no objection to having a factory designed and installed by Joseph Kilby who was according to Boutell, the finest constructor of beet sugar factories in the United States. Many others agreed with Boutell's assessment; Kilby built nine of the eventual twenty-four factories built in Michigan. Local investors lined up behind Boutell to organize the Menominee River Sugar Company. A half dozen important backers came forward, each of whom subscribed to more than $25,000 in stock of the Menominee River Sugar Company.

Heading up the list of local shareholders was Samuel M. Stephenson, a former lumber manufacturer and native of New Brunswick, Canada who had made a home for himself, his wife, Jennie and their four daughters and one son, in Menominee. He was then seventy-one years of age but in no mood for retirement. Following a successful career in lumber and banking, he served three successive terms in Congress (Michigan's 11th District 1889-93 and the 12th District 1893-97). He invested $100,000 ($2 million by modern standards) in the beet sugar factory, taking heart in not only favorable test plot results and the enthusiasm of his neighbors but also interest shown by the American Sugar Refining Corporation, generally known by its then popular sobriquet, the Sugar Trust. Some years later the Sugar Trust would fall into disfavor as a result of charges of unfair business practices, but in 1903, it had the confidence of the general public and investors alike and controlled the manufacture and sale of 98% of sugar consumed in the United States. Trust Executives, Arthur Donner and Charles R. Heike, invested $300,000 to acquire 36% of Menominee River Sugar Company's stock.

All the members of the board of directors and roster of officers apart from Bay City resident, Benjamin Boutell, listed Menominee as their home of record. Menominee residents made up 74% of the shareholders. Together, they controlled 53% of the shares. In addition to Stephenson, other major shareholders who also accepted positions as either officers or directors were: William O. Carpenter who invested $55,000 and served the sugar company variously as president and vice-president. Gustave A. Blesch invested $15,000 and served as treasurer. John Henes, a brewery owner, invested $25,000 and served as a director. Augustus Spies was the second largest investor after Stephenson and the Sugar Trust. He, too, served as a director.

Spies provide an excellent example of the hardy pioneering spirit that prevailed in Menominee. He was a native of the grand duchy of Hessen-Darmstadt, Germany where fertile soils and a mild climate allowed the production of grain and wine. He participated in the founding of the Stephenson National Bank in partnership with future U.S. Congressman Samuel M. Stephenson and Samuel's brother, future U.S. Senator, Isaac Stephenson. In addition, he owned the Spies Lumber Company and several large tracts of forest; he was an investor in the First National Bank of Menominee, the Marinette and Menominee Paper Company and president of the Menominee Light, Railroad and Power Company. When the fledgling sugar company got under way, he stepped forward with $75,000 ($1.5 million in current dollars).

Support from Menominee's wealthy class, who also shared distinctions of making good business decisions and rising on their own merit rather than inherited wealth, was so great that there was no need to solicit funds from the public at large. With its shares over-subscribed by $35,000, the Menominee River Sugar Company was in the enviable position of having adequate capital for its venture. Not only was it possessed of sufficient capital but also it enjoyed the added benefit of the experience of Benjamin Boutell and representatives of the Sugar Trust. Menominee would not want for technical or business expertise.

Gustave Blesch, like Augustus Spies, owed his success to the inherited qualities of hard work, honesty and the respect of his peers. He would become the sugar company's first treasurer. He was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin in 1859, the son of Francis Blesch, a native of Germany and Antoinette Schneider, a native of Belgium. Gustave became an office boy in the Kellogg National Bank of Green Bay, rising to teller by the age of twenty. Five years later, he moved to Menominee to help establish the First National Bank of Menominee where he began as cashier before becoming the bank's president. He became president of the Menominee Brick Company, vice-president of the Menominee-Marinette Light & Traction Company, and treasurer of the Peninsula Land Company.

In January, 1903, the newly elected board of directors approved an $800,000 (nearly $19 million in current era dollars) construction contract for a Kilby designed and built factory that would slice 1,000 tons of beets per day. Of the 48 beet sugar factories in operation in the United States in 1903, only two were larger than Menominee's new factory, one in Salinas, California and another in Fort Collins, Colorado.

The average sugar factory in Michigan in 1903 could slice six hundred tons of beets in a twenty-four hour period. Four thousand acres of beets would easily supply a season's factory run. Had the investors surveyed the farmers first, surely they would have been advised to build a smaller factory, and perhaps would have been persuaded to build none. Farmers delivered beets from approximately 1,500 acres, well short of the 9,000 acres the investment demanded.

The Menominee factory's first factory run (referred to as a "campaign" in the sugar industry) ended quickly, having received only 14,263 tons, enough for a production run of fourteen days for a factory the investors planned to operate at least one hundred days. However, the farmers had submitted beets containing the highest sugar reported of any company during its first campaign, 15.04 percent - about 20 percent more than average and enough to allow for a small profit from a meager beet supply. Like nearly all the factories, records that would inform us of profit, if any, earned during that first campaign, did not survive the passage of time. However, it would be reasonable to estimate, based on the known cost of supplies of coal, coke, limestone and the cost of labor, that a profit of $36,000 was achievable, especially under a management style that paid close attention to expenditures and especially in light of the very high percentage of sugar in the beets.

The second campaign was better with enough beets for a full month, still well short of a supply needed to generate profits enough to justify the investment. By 1911, the local supply reached a level that allowed steady profits but was insufficient to encourage expansion, a condition that persisted until 1926 when grower apathy fell to a level that required closing the factory until 1933 when it reopened for a final run of twenty years during which the factory lagged behind the industry in technology and growth. Year in and year out, because of an inadequate supply of beets, mostly grown in Wisconsin, the underutilized factory ended its campaign weeks earlier than was needed to produce healthy profits which then could have been reinvested in the factory. Menominee investors learned, as did many other sugar factory investors, that the mantra, "build it and they will come" fell on deaf ears among farmers who often displayed a better understanding of sugar economics than did investors.

The passage of time brought neither harm nor good to the Menominee factory as it was unable to expand or modernize. It settled into the process of graceful aging. Profits awaiting opportunity gradually accumulated thanks to the company's penurious management style and a dedicated cadre of farmers.

George W. McCormick, the company's first manager, inaugurated a careful management style that went a long way toward keeping the company profitable despite annual shortfalls in the beet supply. He managed the company during its first thirty-two years of operation, beginning when he was twenty-four years of age. He met Benjamin Boutell in Bay City when he moved there to take a job as a district manager for Travelers Insurance Company. Boutell thought the young man belonged in the rapidly developing sugar industry and encouraged him to help in the establishment of a sugar factory in Wallaceburg, Ontario. After completing the assignment with success, Boutell recommended him for the manager's job in Menominee.

Menominee was the most difficult place in the United States to process sugarbeets. The low temperatures took a heavy toll on workers, machinery and beets that usually went through the slicing machines like boulders, damaging equipment that robbed the factory of slender resources. It was difficult to find replacement parts because of the distance separating Menominee from suppliers and from Lower Peninsula sugar factories where it was common for factory managers to lend spare parts to one another.

The company's diligent attention to cost control paid off in 1924 when sugar factories located in Green Bay and Menominee Falls, Wisconsin went on the market. Menominee River Sugar Company purchased both and then invested significant sums in restoring the Menominee Falls factory that had been shut for three years immediately preceding its sale.

The renovated Menominee Falls factory combined with the Green Bay and Menominee, Michigan factories created more capacity than was needed for the available acreage. One of the factories would have to close. Menominee won the noose after the accountants counted up the freight costs for hauling beets to each factory. The Menominee factory remained closed until 1933 when Michigan's farmers relented and agreed to return to sugarbeets, a decision that came too late to save the hides of the sugar company's owners who had lost the company to defaulted bonds three years earlier.

Disruptions in Europe beginning in the early part of the 1930s brought a new name to Michigan's beet sugar fields and corporate offices - Flegenheimer. Albert Flegenheimer was the son of Samuel Flegenheimer who had immigrated to the United States in either 1864 or 1866 and became a naturalized citizen in 1873. The next year, however, he returned to Germany, settling in Wurttemberg. He lived out his life there, dying in 1929 at the age of 81. His brief sojourn in the United States and his U.S. citizenship status, however, would one day save his descendants from German death camps.

In February 1939, Albert Flegenheimer carried his family to the safety of Canada and then to the U.S. claiming nationality as the son of a naturalized citizen. He planned to raise his family and devote his time to the sugar industry in both the United States and Canada. His plans met with considerable success and by 1954, he controlled the sugar factory in Menominee and the one in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Despite Albert Flegenheimer's efforts, a lack of interest on the part of farmers kept the factory small and outdated. It struggled year by year until finally in 1955 with its equipment exhausted, its buildings in tattered repair and its farmers pursuing other crops, Menominee River Sugar Company, built on hopes and dreams and operated with fortitude and persistence for more than a half-century, closed its doors forever.

Sources:

GUTLEBEN, Dan, The Sugar Tramp-1954- Michigan, Printed by: Bay City Duplicating Co, San Francisco, 1954

1962 TWIN CITY COMMUNITY RESOURCES WORKSHOP, section entitled Famous Leaders Who Helped Build Menominee, prepared by Irene Swain, Dr. Leo J. Alilunas, Director.

HENLEY, ROBERT L., Sweet Success . . .The Story of Michigan's Beet Sugar Industry 1898 - 1974, Michigan Historical Center, Department of History, Arts and Libraries

INFLATION ADJUSTMENTS: The pre-1975 data are the Consumer Price Index statistics from Historical Statistics of the United States (USGPO, 1975). All data since then are from the annual Statistical Abstracts of the United States. Recorded at http://www.westegg.com/inflation

MICHIGAN ANNUAL REPORTS, Michigan Archives, Lansing, Michigan
©2009 Thomas Mahar

About the Author:
Thomas Mahar served as Executive Vice President of Monitor Sugar Company between 1984 and 1999 and as President of Gala Food Processing, a sugar packaging company, from 1993-1998. He retired in 1999 and now devotes his free time to writing about the history of the sugar industry. He authored, Sweet Energy, The Story of Monitor Sugar Company in 2001.

This blog provides a history for each of the 24 beet sugar factories constructed in Michigan beginning in 1898 and ending in 1920.

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Attention Everyone - Blogging is a Must in Order For Your Business to Survive

With people shopping online more often then they shop in person no home based business can afford to ignore the online market. Some small businesses might think that having a Web site is enough to keep there business competitive. Wrong! A Web site is useless without a method of bringing in new leads to the site and one of the most efficient and cheapest ways to do this is through blogging.

If you have a web site for your home based business, you know that your site traffic tends to go up and down. To increase traffic engaging in link baiting, link exchanges and pay per click advertising are a few well known ways to increase advertising online. To target customers locally business cards, flyers and coupons might be used. Though all of these methods will work, none of them offer consistent results and advertising will run up your business costs. Blogging however practically pays for itself.

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For example, a company that sells wedding jewelry through its Web site can write a blog post about a new item in the store and include a hyperlink to the page on the Website where the product is being sold. People who read the blog are more likely to click on a link that has already been provided for them instead of wading through your Web site to find the newest products. This can also be used to highlight merchandise in your online store with sluggish sales.

Because of the way blogging is set up, every new blog post is a way to increase traffic to your site and thereby result in more sales. When your home based business focuses on providing interesting, well written content, one blog post can get you traffic and sales for months to come. How is this possible? You can use keyword focused blog posts to drive traffic to your site from users who search for certain words on search engines. Adding links to your blog on social networking sites, leaving comments on others blog posts and tagging are just a few more ways to keep traffic coming in.

Blogs are also a way of encouraging potential buyers to believe your home based business is trustworthy. Add a comment and rating section to your blog and allow visitors to post messages about the quality of your products and there customer service experiences. Polls, surveys, videos, audio, mini games and other interactive content can be found for free and added to make the site more engaging and encourage visitors to return.

Use your knowledge to help your home based business become a success. Turn to blogging to help expose your Web site to a larger Internet audience. Helping you to make new sales, network with other professionals and create a brand awareness that set your business apart from its many competitors.

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