Small business spotlight

It started with an Angry Penguin.

Jonathan Bernier and Antonio Esteves in 2002 came up with a cartoon character,wholesale High quality and cheap Fred Perry(men) for sale from www.googbusiness.com homepage. the Angry Penguin, and a business that has was everything from a small record label to a concert promoter. The Angry Penguin eventually became a comic book character, with the two traveling for years with the Vans Warped Tour, going around the country selling T-shirts with Angry Penguin on them at the metal/punk touring music festival’s stops.

Then in 2007, Angry Penguin Productions decided to start printing its own shirts. And to move from Westchester County to the Rochester area — where the cost of living and of operating was far cheaper, and where Bernier was from originally. And to branch out and do printing jobs for other people. With Angry Penguin ran into some intellectual property issues with trademark disputes with other companies looking to claim they own the very word “penguin,” Bernier said, “This was the portion of the business that was making money every day.”

Today, Bernier and Esteves are Tiny Fish Printing, aOur store can offer Discount Philipp Plein Mtshirt, welcome choose! clothing printer doing print runs of anywhere from a few dozen to a few thousand T-shirts and hoodies.

And instead of being a couple guys selling merchandise out of a vehicle at concerts, the two have roughly 10 full-time employees and are making capital investments of tens of thousands of dollars — like for the new automatic press installed earlier this year.

“We had the volumes” to justify the $30,000-plus investment,welcome to Buy Discount D&G Mhoody Online,free Shipping available. Buy Now!‎ Bernier said. “We were getting to the point where we can’t get stuff out quick enough.”

The new press, which roughly doubles the company’s capacity, was from the business’ first loan; everything else up to it has been purchased with cash on hand, Esteves said.

Tiny Fish also moved in October, from a smaller space on East Main Street to 5,500 square feet on Garson Avenue near Rochester’s Public Market.


Fat Face,Our store can offer cheap A&F Wsweater-23 for sale, welcome choose! the casual fashion retailer, is poised to enter the US, after profits rose almost 30 per cent last year.

The chain, owned by private equity group Bridgepoint and led by former Asda and Marks and Spencer executive Anthony Thompson, plans to open a small number of stores and launch a dedicated website in the US within the next two years.

Mr Thompson, chief executive, said Fat Face would focus its attention on the east coast, around the Boston area and coastal parts of New England.

“We did look at a number of territories,” he said. “It was clear to me it was the US customers for whom the product and brand resonated the most.”

The history of retail is littered with British brands that have tried – and failed – to crack the US, including Britain’s biggest retailer Tesco .

Mr Thompson said Fat Face would take a cautious approach, with plans for three US stores within the next two years.

“I know it’s a competitive market generally, but I think there is an opportunity for us based on the research we have done,” he said. “We are going to be quite measured about how we go about it.”

The comments came as Fat Face increased earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation by 29 per cent, from $24.1m in the 53 weeks to June 2 2012, to $31.2m in the 52 weeks to June 1 2013.Buy High quality and cheap Monster Headphone for sale, Custom Fit Stripe Shirt and more. On a 52-week basis, the increase was 35 per cent.

Profits were boosted by Mr Thompson moving Fat Face away from discounting over the past three years.

“Our business is now predominantly a full-price business. Three years ago, it was predominantly a discount business,” he said. “We had to gradually get off the discounting drug. You don’t go cold turkey overnight, otherwise you get the shakes, and as a business, you can’t afford to get the shakes.”

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