September 18, 2008

By Jeff Bond

Bruce Asper is hoping the 901 Fifth Avenue Building downtown will be in the sweet spot of Seattles current office space market.Aspers firm, Beverly Hills-based Kennedy Wilson, has spent about $35 million refurbishing the 570,000 square-foot building, including turning the property into a silver LEED-certified green office tower.The upgrades should give the 65-percent vacant building…

  • October 2008

September 18, 2008

By Nick Horton

Prescription drug advertisements, it seems, are everywhere. We stumble upon them while watching television, while reading our newspapers and magazines, or while flittering aimlessly about the web. Ever feel awkward or anxious in social settings? No worries: Paxil knows how you feel. How about sleep? Is it ever hard to slow your racing mind? Fear…

  • October 2008

September 18, 2008

By Lilium Pierson

In 2004, Cause Haun made a phone call from a cab in China. She was visiting her husbands family and had come across a pair of toddler shoes made of supple leather with super-flexible rubber solesjust right for new walkers like her one-year-old, Kai. Haun called the shoe factory about manufacturing under a private label…

  • October 2008

August 21, 2008By Seattle Business Magazine

Amid the daily drama of the nations housing woes, Seattles emerging high-rises, such as Olive 8 and Escala, raise a new water-cooler question: Who, in a time like this, is going condo? With luxury condo prices running into the multimillions, it seems incredible that Seattleites would pony up that kind of cash in these post-subprime…

  • September 2008

August 21, 2008By Seattle Business Magazine

How could that be? How can a company like Tullys not prosper? We decided to try to unravel the enigma that is Tom OKeefe. We wanted to figure out how one runs a retail business for 16 years and raises more than $60 million to grow the company without ever showing a quarterly profit from…

  • September 2008

August 21, 2008By Seattle Business Magazine

Angel investors are a major factor in early-stage investing today, with total investments in 2007 of $26 billion, according to the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire. An arena that angel investors are becoming increasingly interested in investing in is so-called clean technology. The term cleantech is generally used to describe…

  • September 2008

August 21, 2008By Seattle Business Magazine

As I write this column late in July, the stock market is in the midst of a severe summer meltdown. I suppose we can take solace in the fact that some of the regions top stockbrokers had predicted a rough patch for Wall Street. But no one had expected the nations housing problems to get…

  • September 2008

August 21, 2008By Seattle Business Magazine

Seattle shop-owners Tammy and Andy James say that a grateful merchant in northern Thailand changed their lives. The merchant could also say the same thing about the Jameses. While vacationing in 2006, the coupleowners of Seattle waterfront icon Ye Olde Curiosity Shopvisited a remote village and purchased $500 worth of eclectic merchandise to re-sell in…

  • September 2008

August 21, 2008By Seattle Business Magazine

The rough seas of the economy are giving business owners more reasons to whisper the B word: bankruptcy. Its not something that entrepreneurs like to talk about, especially when they are 100 percent focused on staying positive and getting their businesses off the ground. But enthusiasm and hard work can only get you so far…

  • September 2008

August 21, 2008By Seattle Business Magazine

One trip to China in 2004 was all it took to sell Seattle technology entrepreneur Dave Parker on the idea of doing business there. Even today, Parker is still ebullient as he describes how impressed he was with Chinas booming but nascent consumer market. He says he likened todays China to the Wild West era…

  • September 2008