How to Research Your Business Idea

By Karen E. Spaeder

Somewhere between scribbling your idea on a cocktail napkin and actually starting a business, there's a process you need to carry out that essentially determines either your success or failure in business. Oftentimes, would-be entrepreneurs get so excited about their "epiphanies"-the moments when they imagine the possibilities of a given idea-that they forget to find out whether that idea is viable.

Of course, sometimes the idea works anyway, in spite of a lack of market research. Unfortunately, other times, the idea crashes and burns, halting a business in its tracks. We'd like to help you avoid the latter. This how to on researching your business idea is just what you need to keep your business goals on track.

To continue reading this article please see the article in its entirety at Entrepreneur.com

Hubig's pie begins shipping namesake pastries to evacuees

Stacey Plaisance / Associated Press
For 85 years, New Orleans residents didn't have to look far for a fruit-filled, fried Hubig's pie.

The hand-sized pastry, wrapped in white paper emblazoned with the sketch of a plump man in a white apron and tall baker's hat, could be found at the counter of almost any grocery store or gas station -- even at the local hardware store and jail.

Hurricane Katrina changed that, when it brought the Simon Hubig Pie Co. to a halt and washed away its customer base. But the resilient culinary touchstone is slowly recovering and changing its business model along the way.

For the first time, Hubig's is making Internet sales to meet demand from displaced residents. Third-generation co-owner Andrew Ramsey said phone calls and e-mails for pies have come in steadily, from just about every state, since Katrina.

"We miss a lot about New Orleans, especially the Hubig's Pies ," one former Orleanian wrote in a recent online order from Chicago. Another writes: "My transplanted grandson yearns for Hubig's Pies. Do you ship to Las Vegas?" And another: "Does anyone carry your pies in Dallas?"

For four months after the August 2005 hurricane, Hubig's couldn't fry pies because of damage to the bakery and a lack of basic city services and workers. There was no shortage of tears as Ramsey recounted the company's struggles to reopen, one of the biggest being with the insurance company.

"Our neighborhood was either without water or the water was contaminated. There was water in the gas lines, and we certainly didn't have enough gas pressure to run the big boilers and big cookers that we use," Ramsey said. "But they just couldn't understand why we weren't making pies."

Hubig's used a $5,000 grant from a nonprofit entrepreneur group called the Idea Village to launch an online ordering service for T-shirts with the Hubig's logo. One of the stipulations of the grant was that the money go toward a new business concept or project.

"So while the company wasn't making pies, we sold T-shirts," Ramsey said.

In January 2006, when the insurance company finally settled and Hubig's started making pies again, Hubig's added pies to its online T-shirt orders. Drivers delivered pies to reopened stores and gas stations in New Orleans and to residents and workers living in tents in hard-hit coastal parishes.

Ramsey got emotional recalling parking a delivery van near a parade route and handing out hundreds of free pies to crowds gathered for the first post-Katrina Mardi Gras, last year.

"You have no idea," he said. "It was a good feeling, not just the feeling that people enjoyed the pies , but the feeling of, it's over, and we're going to be OK."

Today, the bakery produces as many turnovers as it did before Katrina -- sometimes more, depending on online orders, Ramsey said. The company is making roughly 100,000 pies a week, or 5 million a year, he said.

The bakery itself is right where its been for more than 80 years, tucked among shotgun homes and cottages just blocks from the French Quarter.

One recent day, a worker poured hot apple pie filling into buckets for cooling while another pinched dough between his fingers to check its consistency.

Dough was pushed through a machine, flattened into long, narrow strips. Sweet-smelling filling, lumpy with apple chunks, was squirted onto the dough in palm-sized doses as a machine folded the dough in half.

A large metal cutter -- one the bakery has used for at least 75 years -- rolled over the dough, cutting it into shape. The turnovers were dropped into a fryer, drained, and glazed with hot icing. They were cooled on rotating, circular racks with fans then dropped onto a conveyor belt, where a worker lined them up to be wrapped.
Hubig's hasn't resumed production of its 8- and 9-inch round pies . Ramsey said demand was declining before Katrina, and only about half the company's pre-Katrina work force of 60 is back.

Delivery routes also have changed: before the storm, the bakery delivered pies within about a 200 radius of New Orleans. Today, population shifts have caused changes in many routes. Some, including one to Gulfport, Miss., have been nixed altogether.

Depending on the destination, the cost of shipping is as much, or more, than the price of the pie. That's because shipping often must be expedited due to the short shelf-life of the pies, and the weight of the pies also affects the shipping cost, Ramsey said.

Pies retail for less than a dollar each, but a case of a dozen purchased online is $25. Shipping for that case, to such cities Baltimore and Chicago, runs about $18.18. It's about $22.38 to Boston and Denver, and $24.54 to San Francisco.

"It's embarrassingly pricey," Ramsey said. "But people want them."

The company buys many ingredients locally and makes its own filling. The best-selling flavors are apple and lemon. Other flavors include peach, pineapple, chocolate, banana and coconut.

Seasonal flavors include blueberry, blackberry and sweet potato.

Hubig's was started more than 100 years ago by baker Simon Hubig in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. New Orleans became a branch bakery for the southeastern U.S. chain, opening at its present location in the Faubourg Marigny in 1922. New Orleans was the only Hubig's to survive after the Depression, when the pies sold for just pennies.

Read full article
On the Net: Hubig's, http://www.hubigs.com

DISNEY ROCKS PRESCHOOL 'MOVERS'

By Kimberly Nordyke
From the Hollywood Reporter

Disney Channel has given a series pickup to "Imagination Movers," a show for the preschool-targeted "Playhouse Disney" daily programming block that stars the New Orleans-based music group of the same name.

In addition, the group, whose music videos have been airing on Disney Channel since the fall, has signed with Walt Disney Records.

"Movers," which will include music performances, stories and skits, is intended to emphasize creative problem-solving skills and introduce "high-energy" rock music to kids. It will feature the band members as "everyday guy" brain-stormers working hard to solve "idea emergencies."

The band comprises former journalist Rich Collins, former teacher Scott Durbin, architect Dave Poche and Scott "Smitty" Smith, a New Orleans firefighter who was a member of the Hurricane Katrina search-and-rescue team. Three of the band members lost their homes, production office, instruments and props to Katrina.

The series, which begins production at the NIMS Center in New Orleans in early October, is targeted for a 2008 premiere.

"After seeing the musical group perform at Jazzfest 2005 in New Orleans, we were determined to find a way to bring their energetic and infectious music to preschoolers everywhere," Disney Channel senior vp original programming Nancy Kanter said. "They have already struck a resounding chord with our viewers through their music videos, and we look forward to adding this talented group to our series lineup."

Skot Bright and Sascha Penn are executive producers on the series. The band members are co-executive producing with Rick Gitelson.

In October, Walt Disney Records will release a "definitive introduction" to the Movers with a collection of songs titled "Juicebox Heroes," culled from the group's three albums. A new studio album will follow next year that will feature original songs from the series. The group is currently on tour.

iSeatz sits pretty in N.Y., but misses N.O.

Revenue mushrooms after Katrina move

By Pam Radtke Russell, Business writer

Before Hurricane Katrina hit, New Orleans-based iSeatz was relatively content booking restaurant tables online for $2 an honored reservation.

But when the city flooded, and the company was forced to relocate to high-cost New York, $2 a table didn't seem like much.

"Being kicked out of home was really a jarring experience," said Kenneth Purcell, founder and president of iSeatz.

The astronomical costs of Manhattan forced Purcell to take risks he wouldn't have taken in New Orleans.

"Honestly, before Katrina we would have said we don't do hotels or rental cars," he said of his company.

While relocated, Purcell accelerated the company's foray into other travel booking. Compared with $2 a reservation for restaurants, online travel agencies earn as much as a 30 percent commission for booking travel, Purcell said.

The company had started working with Expedia and Orbitz by 2003. But after Katrina, the company started tailoring their offerings to different vendors such MasterCard.

Most recently, the company started providing travel-related services to Delta.com customers.

Through Delta's Web page, iSeatz technology allows people who book their airline tickets to also reserve everything from hotels and ground transportation to tours of Hollywood stars' homes and and carbon offsets -- or purchasing reductions in greenhouse gases.

Purcell, who won't reveal his company's exact earnings, says that before Katrina, iSeatz's revenue was in the "lower digit millions." But since then, iSeatz's gross revenues have increased by more than 1,000 percent, he said. He's also increased his staff from five before the storm to more than 50, including contract workers.

Its success in New York aside, Purcell said his startup technology firm is considering returning to New Orleans in the near future.

"The real advantage (of New Orleans) is quality of life and cost of living," Purcell said. "No matter how much money you make in New York, you can't drive down St. Charles Avenue. You can't have a slow-paced walking day."

The company currently is talking to the city of New Orleans and GNO Inc., the local economic development group, about the possibility of its headquarters returning.

Pam Meyer, director of business development for GNO, said iSeatz has been told of all of the incentives that would be available to it if it relocated to New Orleans.

Meyer said she's excited about the prospect of iSeatz returning to the city.

"I think it's a great sign," she said.

"If we're going to have a more progressive economy, we need this sort of creative entrepreneurial technology," she said.

But even if its headquarters don't return, the company will continue to expand in New Orleans, with more iSeatz employees in the city than there were before storm. Ten people work in the company's office in CanalPlace, and Purcell plans to add four more in the New Orleans office by the end of the year.

Custom site offerings

What iSeatz does is difficult to explain. The company not only provides the technology to various companies to be able to sell hotel, plane and restaurant reservations on one site, it also puts together customized offerings for Web sites and notifies everyone about upcoming reservations.

All of that is done without ever leaving the site a person is viewing, Purcell said. All of the reservation requests made on Delta.com or MasterCard's priceless.com, for instance, are sent by encoded message to iSeatz, which then processes them.

"You never really know you're using iSeatz," he said.

Henry H. Harteveldt, vice president and principal analyst of travel research for Forrester Research in San Francisco, likened using iSeatz to shopping in a department store and picking up a shirt, shoes and socks in different parts of the store, then paying for them at one counter.

"It gives the customer a chance to say 'yes' " to booking something other than airline reservations without ever leaving the Web site, he said.

"People who make reservations on Delta.com often want to book ancillary services, and they look to other ways online to find those," said Joel Weiss, managing director of Delta.com. Weiss said the company wanted to offer their customers those services without having to leave the Delta site.

Harteveldt doesn't expect people will visit Delta.com simply because of the added features. But he said the added features should keep customers on Delta's Web site instead of going elsewhere.

Weiss said there's a big upside for Delta too. The company can make money by booking hotels and other services through the site.

On its own, booking airline tickets is not usually a profit maker, Harteveldt said. But by cross-selling other products, airlines can make "tens of millions of dollars," Harteveldt said.

Only about 1 percent to 3 percent of customers who book on airline sites currently take advantage of cross-sell offers, he said.

If Delta, through its additional offerings, can increase that to 5 percent or more, it "will stand to make a nice bit of incremental revenue, and iSeatz will make revenue," Harteveldt said.

That increase wouldn't be a stretch. About 29 percent of all leisure travelers book online, up from 11 percent in 2002, he said. By 2009, online booking will account for one-third of all leisure traveling, according to Forrester Research. Harteveldt said 55 percent of leisure travelers research their trips online, and about $86 billion worth of online travel was booked last year, he said.

'A lot of vision'

Weiss said Delta chose iSeatz because it was fast and flexible, and could give the company what it needed quickly.

"iSeatz came to the table with a lot of vision and energy," he said. "They really had a long-term view of what this thing could be."

Without iSeatz, Delta could have worked with Expedia or Orbitz, but those companies would not have provided what iSeatz offered and would have cost more, Harteveldt said. Though it's too early to tell how well Delta's enhanced site is doing, Weiss said the company has definitely seen a positive reaction.

"Customers seem to be really reacting," he said.

Purcell said his company is in discussions with other airlines to provide them with similar services.

Harteveldt expects it won't take long for other airlines to follow Delta's lead.

"This is the direction that airlines should go in," he said.

And iSeatz is continuing talks with those in New Orleans about where it will be permanently located.

Purcell said one of his concerns is being able to hire the type of employee his company would need.

Meyer said other technology companies are successfully hiring new employees, and with more creative people coming to the city, "wanting to make a difference, I think you're going to see more of this here," she said of the prospects for iSeatz and for more creative technology companies to relocate to the area.

Purcell also is trying to convince some of his top executives, many of whom he recruited while in New York, that New Orleans is the best place for the business.

"It was never my intention to leave New Orleans," he said.