If you thought the economy was scary for you, try being a retailer this Halloween.
Tight financial times are expected to significantly slow growth in Halloween spending as consumers hold on to their wallets — and forecasts for the all-important Christmas shopping season aren't any better.
Still, retailers are hoping that Halloween could be a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy shopping season.
Halloween Express stores in Ashwaubenon and Appleton have seen plenty of foot traffic this season, but customers are spending a little less, said Todd Cloutier, owner and manager of the stores that sell costumes, decorations, accessories and other items.
Herbert Goetz invented a new hair dryer, even though he probably doesn’t need one himself.
Goetz, who sports the military’s trademark “high and tight” buzz cut after serving with the Marine Corps during Operation Desert Storm designed and obtained a patent for his dryer design more than a decade ago while studying industrial design at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.
Salon owners expressed interest but efforts to market the product stalled, and Goetz, of Neenah, took up truck driving.
Fox Valley Technical College is helping Goetz get back to building and marketing his dryer through programs that connect inventors with entrepreneurial resources. The “take-it-to-market” approach to product development caught the attention of Massachusetts Institute of Technology representatives who visited Appleton last month.
Fabrication Laboratories, or Fab Labs, are an exercise in global technology sharing spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Now a Wisconsin technical college has adapted the concept — and more schools are lining up to launch similar hands-on commercialization centers. MIT is so impressed with what Fox Valley Technical College has done with its “Take it to Market” program — based on the Fab Labs but with a more directly entrepreneurial spin — that the world-renowned research institute is looking to learn more from the small college’s approach. MIT’s Sherry Lassiter is visiting Fox Valley to get idea for expanding other Fab Labs, which up to now have been primarily educational, so they can accommodate inventors who want to commercialize their ideas.
GRAND CHUTE — An international network of inventors' labs visited Fox Valley Technical College this week with plans to take the school's model global.
The Fab Lab network, which was launched by MIT about seven years ago, offers software and technology to help people turn their ideas into actual products. Individuals use the computer design programs and laser cutting machines in the laboratories to experiment.
The FVTC lab, which is one of 30 locations around the world, has taken it to a new level: It is the only Fab Lab in the world that also trains inventors to take the product they create to market.
Say you’ve been with a company for years and have never really had to look for a job. Suddenly, the company closes or downsizes.
You and your co-workers might be gathered into an exit meeting, given a packet of information about your future options and shown the door.
Or maybe you’re just shown the door.
“I had 10 minutes notice,” said Scott Alberts, of Appleton, who was laid off from a graphic design job he’d had for 14 years.
He knows exactly what NewPage employees are feeling right now as they contemplate losing their jobs when the Kimberly mill closes in August. The company announced Wednesday the mill’s 475 employees will be out of work, though they’ll be paid through September.
Alberts remembers his thought when he learned he was out of work: “I was too old to be paying my dues again.”