Business

Babysitters of the Future

Wed, 01 May 2013 09:28:00 -0700

All parents know the moment. They need to get something done. (Or just want to do something; never mind what.) Babysitters don’t just appear. Nannies require commitment. Day care isn’t Happy Hour care.

Karen Beninati believes she has a solution. The clientele of WeVillage, the drop-in day-care business she started in the Pearl District and plans to expand, seems to agree. In three years, WeVillage has watched about 4,000 kids, whose parents can leave them at Beninati’s fully certified facility on the spur of the moment.

The model is simple—two-hour minimum, $12 an hour, any time there’s an opening—one might think WeVillage–like businesses would be ubiquitous. They are not. Or, as the 40-year-old single mother might put it, not yet. This winter, she launched a 2,700-square-foot outpost in Orenco Station, Hillsboro’s growing urban-style district. With investment lined up for national expansion, she’s scouting locations in LA and Seattle and weighing franchising models.

“I started this business because I saw the need so clearly,” she says. “I lived it.” As an independent film producer in LA, Beninati found “flexible schedule” actually meant constant child-care woes. “I was dragging my son around everywhere,” she says. “Production meetings. Agent meetings.” She found daycares depressing. “How can people like me insist that restaurants be beautiful,” she says, “yet leave our kids at these awful places?” There was also a personal dimension: “When can I go on a date?”

A relationship landed her in Portland, where she launched in the Pearl, a neighborhood not usually associated with kids but full of hyper-empowered consumers. “People who live in the Pearl are smart,” she says. “Not snobby, but they just want more.” The location also attracts parents who seek a little nightlife of their own; it’s open until 11:30 pm on Fridays and Saturdays.

“Just because busy people have kids doesn’t mean we have to die.”

—Karen Beninati

With a tiny capital stake from an investor, she rented a Gregory Building storefront and secured the arduous state child-care permits. Revenues tripled in three years, and this summer the cramped prototype will give way to a 1,800-square-foot location a block away.

At Orenco Station, Beninati aims for a dream demographic: international talent drawn to once-bucolic Hillsboro by Intel. “We have clients from India, Saudi Arabia, France, Pakistan,” she says. Moms’ nights and a bright, Vanillawood-designed interior make the Orenco location a community hub.

“One for the city, one for the burbs,” Beninati says. “Different communities, but the needs are similar. Just because busy people have kids doesn’t mean we have to die.”

What's Better: Real Crab or Real Krab?

Wed, 01 May 2013 09:25:00 -0700

Image: Courtesy Shutterstock

You know krab with a k. You’ve probably eaten it in strip-mall California rolls, in which finely ground whitefish often stands in for the real thing. What you may not know is that Oregon, which hauls in 20.2 million pounds of crab (with a c and working pincers) every year, also plays a leading role in the krab masquerade.

Surimi, the fine art of disguising one fish as another, dates back to 12th-century Japan. Basically, surimi makers grind up cheaper fish and craft the resulting paste to mimic the look, taste, and texture of more expensive fish. The abundance of Pacific whiting off the coast lured Oregon processors into the surimi business more than 20 years ago. The state ranks well behind Alaska as a US fake-crab producer—but Oregon State University’s Jae Park is the man who helps the whole industry create simulations.

In 1993, Park, a food-science professor, began leading the Surimi School, an annual short-
format seminar in Astoria. Since then, he’s trained more than 4,500 people to twist, color, and mold lesser fish into fancy forgeries. This month, crabstick (that’s Park’s preferred term) experts descend on the old seaport for insight on manufacturing, chemistry, flavor creation, microbiology, and other arcana. This highly technical content makes Park’s program a must-do for the industry, with spin-offs in Europe and Asia. Last year, Seafood Executive magazine named the professor one of the 100 most powerful leaders in the global seafood industry.

Knowing that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but still wondering whether crabstick is our friend or faux (sorry, we couldn’t resist), we weighed crabstick’s merits against the real thing.

VERDICT: Depends on your taste buds, the pinch of your budget, and your green consciousness. (But we’ll be checking out the live tank, thanks.)

How Poler Stuff Scaled the Heights of Outdoor Gear

Wed, 01 May 2013 09:23:00 -0700

Image: Dylan Harkavy

Poler Stuff's Benji Wagner dons the Napsack.

Two years ago, Portland photographer Benji Wagner faced a conundrum. He loved being outside, and professionally he often shot advertising material for major outdoors companies. But he felt like his employers didn’t understand him, or his friends.

“The industry was full of good products,” says Wagner, now 34, “but the brands weren’t relating to young people in an authentic way.” Images of soulful, handsome adventurers contemplating mountain vistas didn’t match Wagner and his tribe’s more rough-and-tumble approach to camping, hiking, and travel. You don’t need waterproof ultra-wicking poly/spandex boxer briefs to drink Rainier tallboys by a campfire.

So Wagner and two collaborators created Poler Stuff, a camping and travel gear brand aimed at urban-based adventurers who might have more moxie than money. They funded the start-up themselves and worked out of their homes to produce the 2011 debut line of tents, T-shirts, and bags. The Man Tent promised ample room for yoga and an eye-shaped window to let in starry nights. The Wunder Bundler, a foldable thermal pad, can keep a six-pack cold or a burrito warm. The Napsack, Poler’s wearable, hooded sleeping bag (yes: a sleeping bag you can walk around in), sparked a cult following. Most products cost less than $200.

“We want to inspire people to embrace everyday outdoor activities,” Wagner says. “You don’t have to be climbing Mount Everest to have a good time.”

After a modest debut at local shops like Worn Path and Communion, Poler has steadily increased sales, added employees, and, in March, opened its first retail space. The latest line adds some gravitas with a hefty, leather-lashed backpack made for more serious excursions. Early this year, Poler decisively shattered the Northwest culture-niche ceiling when Hannah, creator-star Lena Dunham’s character on HBO’s Girls, lounged in a puffy, neon orange Napsack. (Decidedly less hip Al Roker later nestled in one on Today.) Despite another character’s claim that the Napsack made Hannah look like a “sad little glow worm,” the glorified Snuggies remain the company’s most popular product—and maybe the best summary of this scruffy rising star of Portland’s outdoors industry.

“We embrace the things people actually use,” Wagner says. “Everyone grows up car camping. Instead of acting like people are outside of civilization, as much as anything it’s about travel and couch surfing.”

My Millionaire Makeover

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 09:15:00 -0700

Image: Nomad

Sameera Sullivan is always looking. She looks at Zupan’s. At Whole Foods. At the bar at the Pearl District P. F. Chang’s. She is looking for love—but not for herself.

“Hi,” she tells the unsuspecting organic shopper or corporate cocktail consumer. “I run a matchmaking service for elite business professionals. Are you single?”

The former executive headhunter (defense and aerospace, in Texas) thinks Portland’s low-blood-sugar dating scene needs a boost. “Everyone is so passive,” she says, echoing many a girls’-night-out lament. Her two-year-old firm, Lasting Connections, aims to hook up the city’s untethered professional class and elites. Clients’ incomes, she says, run from $70,000 a year to “millions.”

Sullivan recruits wherever unattached high achievers can be found. She cold-calls people on LinkedIn and stations herself at Starbucks, Peet’s, and, yes, P. F. Chang’s. “It’s a good place,” she says. “Everyone there is gluten-free, single, and works a lot.”

To see what she offers lonelyhearts, Portland Monthly sent Sullivan a 26-year-old white male guinea pig: me. Being a writer, I fall outside of Sullivan’s economic catchment zone. But we agreed the experiment could be mutually beneficial.

Sullivan’s clients can avail themselves of three service packages, from “Basic Executive” to “Black Diamond Concierge.” (Sullivan won’t divulge the exact fee for the latter publicly, but rest assured it is substantial.) The services rendered can stretch on for an entire year. All the packages involve a Sullivan-directed total makeover of look, wardrobe, and even attitude. That’s what I got.

Improvement was not hard. I met her wearing my usual. She told me I needed immediate attention across the board. My dirty P. F. Flyers sneakers were “not working.” My hair looked like I’d “just rolled out of bed.” My pants were dirty. I was a disheveled mess. Undatable, by Sullivan’s standards.

A new upscale matchmaking service, Lasting Connections, promises over-scheduled, under-cuddled Portland professionals a new lease on dating life. We sent disheveled writer Sam Coggeshall to find out what that really means.

She took pity, and command, with the no-nonsense air of a person in the business of providing opinions. Sullivan ordained a new haircut (a Channing Tatum–esque ’do). We went to Avalon Antiques and Vintage Clothing and picked out a new look, composed of a blue ’60s blazer with gray stripes, a button-up shirt, dress pants, and shoes. A gold lapel pin and cotton handkerchief pulled it all together. Sullivan patrols salons and clothing shops with the sharp eyes of a huntress. She also advised me on how to compliment women without “crossing the line,” which I don’t think was a problem. But maybe this date whisperer sensed something about me of which I’m not aware.

So? No dates yet. Perhaps I need to step up for the Black Diamond treatment Sullivan lavished on one dude, described in a recent press release, for whom she collected online applications from interested women and organized a ladies’ night of 100 to narrow the selection.

But, hey, there’s nothing like a vintage blazer to give a guy more confidence. And for Sullivan? Business is good. She’s expanding to Seattle, San Jose, and Houston. “I feel like this is what I am meant to do,” she says.

How Slappy Cakes Took Portland Pancakes to Tokyo

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 08:00:00 -0700

Image: Michael Novak

The Southeast Portland breakfast stop Slappy Cakes wanted to expand on its winning formula: cook-yourself pancakes on tabletop griddles, fresh local ingredients, full bar. But instead of looking across town or scanning the I-5 corridor, the family-run operation jumped the Pacific, opening a Tokyo location this winter. And while the concept remains the same, the two branches of this global small business offer a study in radical contrasts.

LOCATION

Portland A low-slung building on SE Belmont Street, home of TriMet’s no. 15 bus line

Tokyo The seventh floor of the Lumine Est shopping mall near Shinjuku, the world’s busiest train station, which serves about 4 million passengers every day

BACKSTORY

Portland In 2009, Adam Fuderer and some partners hatched a plan to embed hot griddles in tables and send waitresses around with pitchers of batter. Crowds lined up.

Tokyo Last year, a representative of the influential Maruha Restaurant Group, credited for introducing Thai food to Japan, came to Portland to pursue Japan’s latest culinary obsession: American breakfast.

INTERIOR DÉCOR

Portland Bright, high-ceilinged east-side postindustrial, accented with liberal use of cheerful orange

Tokyo Wood-paneled and oddly faux-maritime. (Apparently the entire seventh floor of this mall at the world’s busiest train station has a beach theme—who knew?) Large paintings illustrate the steps to a DIY pancake.

BEER OF CHOICE

Portland Green Lakes Organic Ale

Tokyo Yebisu Premium Draft

PRICIEST ITEMS

Portland Pork belly Benedict, $12

Tokyo Country fried steak & the “Truck Stop” breakfast, tied at 1,300 yen (about $13.85)

PANCAKE FIXINGS

Portland Optional ingredients include goat cheese, vegan sausage, and locally sourced dried cherries; six different batters.

Tokyo Only three batters so far. The head chef and outside consultants will work to maintain the original Slappy focus on local ingredients.

TARGET AUDIENCE

Portland A typical weekend morning at Slappy Cakes sees a crush of families, kiddie birthday parties, and adults in need of either the Stumptown espresso or the “Whiskey for Breakfast” cocktail—or both.

Tokyo According to Fuderer, the Lumine Est mall targets “young women on the go,” drawn by the prime shopping on Shinjuku’s east side.

THE FUTURE

Portland Fuderer says Portland has become an ideal testing ground for exportable culinary ideas, and he plans to expand in this country, too. “Portlanders have demands and expectations when it comes to food,” he says. “If you’re successful here, your formula can carry over to any market in the US.”

Tokyo The rapidly growing international restaurant market seems hungry for American concepts. “It looks like this will not be our only location in Japan or Asia,” Fuderer says. Meanwhile, the next Slappy Cakes will be in Maui. Pan-Pacific pancakes!

Vox Populi: We asked 100 accountants…

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 08:00:00 -0700

TIE Oregon Fuels Portland Start-Ups

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 08:00:00 -0700

Image: Michael Schmitt

In 1994, Nitin Rai needed an eye checkup. To his surprise, his ophthalmologist used a Macintosh to check his history. “No one was talking about electronic medical records at the time,” Rai recalls. The then-29-year-old programmer—New Delhi native, schooled in Canada, veteran of the Bay Area tech scene and Oregon’s Mentor Graphics—launched a software start-up tailored for eye specialists.

Two decades later, Rai still leads First Insight and its 100 employees. But after shepherding the firm through several tech bubbles, he also understands the entrepreneurial soul: why people start companies, and how they succeed or fail.

“Entrepreneurs get caught up in their own technology,” he says, offering one pitfall. “They get stuck in ‘creation’ mode forever.”

Today, Rai helps guide other new ventures as president of the Oregon chapter of the Indus Entrepreneurs (TIE). This global nonprofit started as a network of Indian and Pakistani tech pioneers who united to advise start-ups in the early ’90s. TIE now includes about 2,500 members. The Portland-based chapter (which will open a second incubator space in the Pearl this spring) has 40 “charter” members including established CEOs, investors, and attorneys, among them Greg Rau of Upstart Labs and Diane Fraiman of Voyager Capital.

“It’s really a give-back opportunity,” Rai says. “We have some experience to offer, and maybe some money.

“Start-ups need their feet held to the fire. we provide adult supervision.”

—Nitin Rai

As its acronym suggests, TIE laces together start-ups with money. TIE-connected investors joined other venture players to fund Chirpify, which lets people and companies buy and sell stuff via Facebook and Twitter, with $1.3 million last spring. In 2011, members steered $300,000 to Geoloqi, an app that meshes mobile users’ location with the other apps they’re using; the start-up sold to a much larger firm last year for an undisclosed amount.

In the case of a start-up called GlobeSherpa, Rai started with a reality check. “I was banging my head against the wall, trying to get funding,” recalls Nat Parker, who developed an app that lets mobile phone users buy transit tickets. “My partner and I were working 9 to 5, then being GlobeSherpa from 6 to midnight. The first thing Nitin told me is, ‘Look, you’ve got to quit your job, or no one will take you seriously.’” Parker followed the advice—and TIE members then led a $500,000 fundraising round to launch the company.

“Mentorship is great,” Rai says. “But in the end it’s advice plus money that makes a difference.”

Portland Business Transforms the Sewing Pattern

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 08:00:00 -0700

Image: Dylan Harkavy

In 2009, Sarai Mitnick worked for Google, researching user interface—basically, how visitors navigate the search empire’s sites. One day, she found herself in a Silicon Valley conference room, discussing an upcoming meeting. For an hour. “I was literally in a meeting about meetings,” she says now. “My work wasn’t impacting the world in a way that satisfied me.”

In stark contrast to her high-tech day job, Mitnick nursed a passion for all things hand-crafted. As a home sewist, she had a lifelong fascination with sewing patterns—as well as a frustration with them. Major pattern companies, like Simplicity and Butterick, published confusing and intimidating instructions hobbled by awkward designs, in formats largely unchanged for decades. “They assume a lot of knowledge that people no longer have,” Mitnick says.

Thus an idea: combining her love of craft with her expertise on how people engage with information.“I thought it would be a fun challenge to design a better sewing pattern,” Mitnick says, “one that’s more of a learning experience, with ideas and resources for more help.”

Within a year Mitnick produced her first vintage-inspired designs. Her new company, Colette Patterns, tapped into a resurgence of home sewing in Portland and beyond, a trend Mitnick ascribes to a backlash against conspicuous consumption. Colette could be seen as part of a local-oriented, quality-focused “slow fashion” movement.

In addition to sharp and inviting graphic design, each Colette pattern booklet contains a “Getting Started” checklist, a page to write notes, and web links to online tutorials like “How to Sew an Invisible Zipper.” Mitnick personally interacts with customers through a blog, a Twitter feed, and Facebook.

“WE LEARN BY GRABBING SOME FABRIC AND TRYING.”

—SARAI MITNICK

After four years, Colette’s success suggests more people are sewing their own clothes than one might guess: stores in 15 countries stock Colette booklets, and its website draws 500,000 views a month. “People adore her patterns,” says Meredith Neal of Modern Domestic sewing studio on NE Alberta Street. “They provide detail traditional patterns lack.”

This spring, Colette releases its latest: a “beginner” ’60s-style shift dress and an “intermediate” shirt dress. At 32, Mitnick feels like she’s making a bigger difference running a three-person sewing company than she did working for one of the most important corporations in the world. “Many of us don’t have mothers that can teach us sewing basics,” Mitnick explains. “If patterns don’t describe things well, then you’re on your own.”

A Portland Disaster App Preps for the Big One

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 08:00:00 -0700

Two years ago this month, a massive quake unleashed a tsunami and nuclear crisis on Japan. Thanks to the Cascadian fault line, Oregon will get a similar shake—some say any day now—destined to devastate Portland’s infrastructure.

At least there’s an app for that.

“If Portland was hit by some sort of natural disaster or an earthquake, the likelihood of being able to communicate via cell is slim to none,” says Lindsay Bell, the president of Hillsboro’s Darkwater Studios. The firm created Survive!, a free app for iPhone, for a competition last year. A just-released version incorporates input from the city’s Bureau of Emergency Management. Key features for the quake prepper:

TEXT Users can create prearranged text messages and contact lists. A preset “I need help” alert even sends out GPS coordinates. (SMS puts less strain on networks than voice calls.)

10-4 Users can monitor police, fire, and weather services with the app’s built-in emergency and weather band radio scanners.

DOT DASH DOT The app includes an International Morse Code translation chart and allows users to tap out Morse messages with their phone’s “flashlight” mode.

NAVIGATE Survive! maps rally points set up by local governments, like the network of neighborhood emergency communication nodes launched late last year by the City of Portland. Users can map their own gathering spots, landmarks, or just where the wreckage of the Fremont Bridge has washed up.

Frightened townsfolk will, of course, have to plan their Survive! use strategically. Those iPhone batteries may not last much longer than civilization itself.

Fullbright Aims to Change the Video Game

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 08:00:00 -0700

Image: Courtesy The Fullbright Company

Steve Gaynor got his start in video games designing industry megahits like BioShock 2, a sci-fi shoot-’em-up that sold about 750,000 copies in its first month on the market. But after earning a sculpture degree from Portland State with a thesis project that was an entire video game level (rather than a physical sculpture), he aspired to deeper creative control.

“You need to say, ‘All right, I don’t want to do something that’s already been done,’” he says. “‘How do I do something really interesting?’”

He pooled his resources with two colleagues, and the trio united in Portland, a relative blank spot on the gaming industry’s map. The Fullbright Company’s debut game, Gone Home, set for release later this year, has already inspired feverish anticipation. The Sundance-esque Independent Games Festival shortlisted the game for several awards this winter. After a preview, a writer for the influential blog Kotaku opined that this “game steeped in mystery and atmosphere ... hits a rhythm that isn’t quite like anything I’ve recently played.”

The project may owe some hype to what it’s not. Instead of wielding futuristic weapons, Gone Home players quietly wander an abandoned house in a fictional Oregon town, combing through newspaper clippings, books, and crumpled flight itineraries, gradually teasing out what happened to a vanished family.

“I WANT MY GAMES TO KNOW WHAT THEY’RE ABOUT.” —STEVE GAYNOR

“Many games create a huge world and have the player touch all of it in a really shallow way,” Gaynor says. “Instead of building eight levels that players blast through, we wanted to create a small space that you inhabit for a long time.”

Image: Courtesy The Fullbright Company

Gaynor compares Gone Home’s virtual experience to Sleep No More, a groundbreaking performance-art adaptation of Macbeth staged in elaborate spaces (44 rooms in an old Boston school, for example), with audience members wandering from scene to scene. The game’s eerie vibe also draws on a long-standing Japanese fascination with “modern ruins,” or haikyo. “Every abandoned space gets explored,” Gaynor says, “but in Japan there’s an ethic of conserving and protecting them.”

Gaynor and his collaborators, Johnnemann Nordhagen and Karla Zimonja, went out on their own amid profound industry shifts. Game development costs have plummeted; independent designers can easily distribute games online. Video gaming’s future, they hope, will include artistic statements beyond what Nordhagen calls “18-to-24-year-old male power fantasy stuff.”

If so, this tiny Portland company is perched to pioneer a new creative frontier. “A game that has something to say in the voice of an individual creator is really exciting,” Gaynor says.