New York SBDC Research Network

Challenges of Co-Packing Food Product Design R&D Management By: Christine M. Homsey, Contributing Editor April 1999 This article fleshes out the trials and tribulations for marketer and manufacturer, offering some advice on choosing an arrangement. “Many factors need to be considered when signing a contract with a co-packer. For example, projected product volumes will influence how good a match a marketer and manufacturer will be. If a marketer has very low volumes or a single product to sell, many manufacturers will not want to bother. On rare occasions, co-packers turn away large volumes that would cause them to exceed their capacity or make them too dependent on one customer.” Making Your Business Their Business Is Contract Packaging The Right Fit For You? By Mel Duvall PMT: Packaging Machinery Technology Onecle Sample Business Contracts Here is a sample contract for a co-packing agreement: Packaging Agreement between Hansen Beverage Company and U.S. Continental Packaging, Inc.

2002 SURVEY OF BUSINESS OWNERS (SBO) , formerly known as the Surveys of Minority- and Women-Owned Business Enterprises (SMOBE/SWOBE) "Half of U.S. Businesses Are Home-Based, Majority of Firms Self-Financed, Census Bureau Reports The Survey of Business Owners (SBO)...provides statistics that describe the composition of U.S. businesses by gender, Hispanic or Latino origin, and race. Additional statistics include owner's age, education level, veteran status, and primary function in the business; family- and home-based businesses; types of customers and workers; and sources of financing for expansion, capital improvements, or start-up. Economic policymakers in federal, state and local governments use the SBO data to understand conditions of business success and failure by comparing census-to-census changes in business performances and by comparing minority-/nonminority- and women-/men-owned businesses." Meanwhile, the Census Bureau has also released 2004 employment size data

We used to have password access to an online database of manufacturers' reps. However, the rules of information access are constantly changing, and the site's owners pulled the plug on our access. I've only recently discovered that you can obtain lists of manufacturers' reps from the Thomas Register site . Some of you may have already discovered this, but for those that haven't, it's pretty cool. On the home page, type a word or phrase in the "Product/Service" tab for what you're seeking. When you get results, notice the column titled "Modify Results" on the left hand side. Looking down that column, you'll see a box titled "Company Type". Notice "Manufacturers' Reps" is one of the options. The number of reps appears in parentheses (and, if there are none, expect to see a zero). Click on the link, and boom, there you have it. I'm pretty sure that the TR's geography is limited to the U.S. and Canad

Another interesting tidbit on the radio this morning was concerning ageism in the workplace – in both directions. The British government is only now introducing legislation to attempt to curb age discrimination in the workplace. On PersonnelToday.com, a favorite magazine for the HR professional, they ran a story in about a small survey done by a consultancy called Water for Fish that revealed that 27% of the recruitment ads in a national Sunday newspaper contained language that might put the listing companies afoul of future laws. The article suggests it may be challenging for companies to rethink their hiring practices. Elements like requiring a specific number of years experience, asking for information that would reveal the applicant’s age, and using language such as “young”, “mature”, “dynamic” or “new graduate” won’t make the cut in the future. Survey exposes ageism in recruitment ads PersonnelToday.com Mike Berry 12 May 2006 09:32 Ageism laws set to transform job adverts BBC New

Indeed.com, one of the free agregator sites of online job postings, has just released a beta version of a salary search tool, available at http://www.indeed.com/salary Type in the job title you are interested in and a location, and it will provide average salaries for that, and related, positions. Or change it up and create a comparison of jobs or locations.

From SBA: Small businesses in the United States have received a share of federal procurement dollars not quite commensurate with their relative importance in the U.S. economy, according to a research study released by the U.S. Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy . The study states that while 99.7 percent of all employer firms are small, they receive about 23 percent of direct federal procurement dollars and almost 40 percent of subcontracting dollars. The Government's Role in Aiding Small Business Federal Subcontracting Programs in the United States was authored by Major Clark III, Chad Moutray, and Radwan Saade from the Office of Advocacy. The study discusses the importance of the small business sector to the overall economy and the policy framework for the federal government's involvement in requiring federal prime contractors to subcontract with small businesses. It examines the policy from 1958 to the present; and discusses steps needed to improve the Ame

Each year, the magazine Advertising Age publishes a supplement called the "Hispanic Fact Pack". This year's version can be found here . The table of contents for this 27-page PDF file promises such things as: Hispanic ad spending by media and category Top Hispanic DMAs by media spending Top web sites by viewers & ad revenues U.S. Hispanic population by race, origin, projected growth And other items, too. It's a macro view, to be sure, but the document provides a nice intro to this subject.