Green Garmento Reusable Cleaner Bag

(Post: English)
" Man or woman, every one of us has experienced the frustration that drove Rick Siegel to become an inventor. He would be in his clothes closet, running late, wrestling with the plastic bags that encased - and the twist ties that entangled - his dry cleaning. Surely, he thought, those twist ties would drive him mad. "

"He'd freak out," said his wife, Jennie Nigrosh, recalling the typical harried morning. "Scream is a good word."

Familiar, too, is the guilt that Ms. Nigrosh felt when she tried to intervene. Her husband is 6-foot-4, meaning that if the artist Christo did an installation using the plastic film around just six of Mr. Siegel's suits, he could easily wrap your garage.

Ms. Nigrosh's father ran a cardboard recycling factory when she was growing up, so a trip to the closet made her stomach clench: Where did all this plastic go?

Suddenly Mr. Siegel, who was once a Hollywood talent manager, and his wife, a marketing copywriter in the music industry, had an idea: a reusable bag to transport your clothes to and from the dry cleaner.

After an initial investment of about $200,000, the Green Garmento was born.

"June 2008, we got our first prototype," Ms. Nigrosh recalls of the Christmas-morning-like feeling she had when they opened it. Then came disaster.

"It ripped," Mr. Siegel said, grimacing.

"Gi-normous rippage," agreed Ms. Nigrosh.

"We went from heaven to 'Oh, no!' in five seconds," said Mr. Siegel.

Two years and several design improvements later, they say they've sold about 40,000 Green Garmentos - priced at about $5 wholesale, $9.99 retail - and expect to sell an additional 300,000 more by July 2011.

And in March, they got their first outside financing, other than $100,000 that's come from friends: $350,000 from a small cap investment fund put together by the Progressive Asset Management Group, a brokerage firm that specializes in what it sees as socially responsible investing.

The fund, which Mr. Siegel hopes will eventually raise $900,000 for the company, promises investors a 30 percent annual return on their money until it is repaid - via the first 9 percent of gross revenue.

Just as important, Mr. Siegel and Ms. Nigrosh say, they've begun to alter how a very set-in-its-ways industry thinks about doing business.

For the Green Garmento to succeed requires not just a customer base, after all, but also a cultural shift within the dry-cleaning world. After all, a reusable bag, unlike disposable plastic, must be kept track of and returned to its owner.

The Green Garmento is not the first reusable cleaner bag. There's a nylon rival out there, for example, called the Converta Bag that Mr. Siegel says he didn't know about until they were already committed to their bag.

(The Green Garmento is made of polypropylene, a recycled product derived from oil sludge.)

Mr. Siegel, 53, and Ms. Nigrosh, 44, say they're glad for the competition. They're trying to do more than make money. They're trying to change the world.

"Single-use plastic at dry cleaners has gotten a pass," Mr. Siegel said. "We're not so much selling our bag as publicizing the concept of the bag."

According to an analysis of 2005 census figures by the Drycleaning and Laundry Institute, 1.4 billion pieces of clothing and other items are professionally cleaned in the United States each year.

If you figure that most cleaners wrap no more than two pieces in a bag, that's at least 700 million bags a year, or 131 million pounds of plastic gathering dust in the back of our closets.

At 5 to 8 cents a bag - plus twist ties and the like - that adds up, which is why even nonenvironmentally minded dry cleaners may be open to making the switch.

That means opportunity, said Mr. Siegel, who says hotels and cruise lines are Green Garmento's other target customers. "If we can make it the Q-Tip, Kleenex or Xerox of the industry," he said, "ours will be a $10 million-a-year company."

Here's how Jason Lafer introduced the Green Garmento to customers of his Linders French Cleaners in Bernardsville, N.J.: Last November, he informed his 730 pick-up-and-delivery clients that they'd be receiving no more plastic on their clothes. Instead, in a move he called "Greenvenient," customers received two Green Garmento bags emblazoned with the Linders logo (for which he charged them $7 a bag).

Of those 730 customers, only 29 objected. Mr. Lafer, meanwhile, said he got double that number of phone calls of praise, which he found refreshing. "You usually only hear from people when they have a complaint," he said.

In the months since, he's decreased his plastic consumption by 69,020 bags, or more than 35 percent.

"Imagine if you multiply that by all the cleaners in the nation," he said.

Mr. Siegel and Ms. Nigrosh are aware that as newcomers to the industry, they have much to learn. "We know we could be seen as Mr. and Mrs. Hollywood," Ms. Nigrosh said, explaining why she spends so much time talking to established dry cleaners. "They've taught us a lot."

But in this eco-image-conscious town, where the Prius is the car of choice for many an A-lister, they'd also be crazy not to reach out to entertainment industry players they know.

Mr. Siegel spent 19 years as a manager, helping to develop the careers of talk show host Craig Ferguson, among others; Ms. Nigrosh has worked for Warner Brothers Records.

Recently, the couple got word that the Green Garmento may have landed its first product placement. Unless the scene is cut, it will be seen on a bus bench in a future episode of the Showtime series "Weeds".

Talk about green.

Source: NY Times

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Borsette Scarpe by Fion Poon

(Post: English)
" Do you know that in Central Market, Kuala Lumpur, there's a shoemaker who was a student of Datuk Jimmy Choo? "

Fion Poon of Perak, who got acquainted with Choo through a mutual friend, spent eight years learning the art from him.

Later, she started two lines of shoes made of batik and songket, called Ferrelle and Borsette Scarpe respectively, that have since become her signature style.

Ferrelle, which means "dare to do something" in Irish, was launched in 2008 while Borsette Scarpe, which means "handbags and shoes" in Italian, was born just last year.

These collections include mules, flat pumps, wooden clogs, open toe shoes and round-toe heels. There are matching handbags, too.

Under Choo's guidance, Poon created shoes with just one aim - to make Malaysians proud. And they should be.

Even UK designer Julian MacDonald has fallen in love with her collections. He visited her shop in Central Market and bought some Ferrelle shoes. Tourism Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ng Yen Yen is also a customer.

Poon is bubbly in person. Chatting over a cup of tea, the 48-year-old displayed fine manners.

"During the recession, there were not many orders but I wanted to remain productive, so I had a discussion with Datuk (Choo). He told me to make something that was different and reflected Malaysia. In fact, he came up with the idea for Ferrelle and Borsette Scarpe," she says.

As these brands have a strong Malaysian flavour, they are a hit with foreigners.

"Many were surprised that these shoes and bags were made by a Malaysian. They never thought that we had such competency. We need top-quality products for Malaysia to be recognised for its craftsmanship," says Poon.

Once, a Taiwanese tourist was so besotted with Poon's shoes that she bought 15 pairs at one go.

"The shoes remind people of Malaysia," says Poon. "Batik and songket are a part of our heritage and we should be proud of them. There are so many things we can do with them."

While design is important, Poon says having the talent to make shoes is equally important.

"Good craftsmanship is rare. I don't just design the shoes, I hand-make them. You need to understand shoes thoroughly to make good pairs."

She draws inspiration from her surroundings, sketching designs daily.

Because of their designs, Ferrelle and Borsette Scarpe shoes are popular even with girls in their 20s.

"Our shoes can be worn by all, from celebrities to office workers. Datuk always emphasises on design, comfort and quality, and I follow these three rules strictly. He is critical of my designs," says Poon.

It's obvious that she has great admiration for Choo.

"I have to make a good impression with my shoes because they reflect on Datuk, too," she says. "It's a challenge, but it will make my shoes better."

So far, it's been positive comments from the guru.

Poon started working in her family's leather handbag factory when she was 17. There, she gained a flair for bag-making and fine craftsmanship, thanks to demands from the factory´s international clients.

She picked up shoe-making 11 years ago. But it was Choo who honed her skills.

She uses materials from Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan and Australia.

"I hope to be like Datuk in the future. He has done much to promote the country and I want to do the same," she says. "I hope in 20 years' time I will still be making good batik and songket shoes."

Ferrelle and Borsette Scarpe shoes can be custom-made. A Ferrelle goes for RM80 to RM600 while a Borsette Scarpe is from RM100 to RM2,000.

Source: Harum.my
Photo: Borsette Scarpe

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Wonderland Primary

(Post: Bahasa Melayu)
" Tertekan dengan bebanan kerja dan kerenah majikan yang langsung tidak menghargai bakti yang dicurahkan membuatkan tiga sekawan ini tekad meletakkan jawatan masing-masing walaupun tanpa ada kerjaya lain sebagai ganti. "

Melihatkan cahaya muka Leny Herlina Agus Syarif, 34, Jaszmyn Leong, 31 dan Joey Lim, 36, tiada langsung kekesalan terpancar daripada raut wajah masing-masing ekoran keputusan itu.

"Walaupun sudah berhenti kerja, kami tetap 'keluar bekerja' dengan lengkap berpakaian untuk ke pejabat walaupun sebenarnya ketika itu pejabat kami hanya kedai mamak."

"Di 'pejabat baru' itulah kami berbincang mengenai hala tuju karier dan masa depan kami bertiga," kata Leny Herlina yang kini menjawat jawatan sebagai Pengurus Pembangunan Perniagaan Wonderland Primary Sdn. Bhd. Syarikat itu ditubuhkan pada Oktober 2009.

Apa yang mengejutkan, tiada seorang pun daripada ahli keluarga mereka mengetahui bahawa penganggur tiga sekawan tersebut ketika itu sudah berhenti kerja.

Namun tempoh pengangguran lebih kurang dua bulan itu tidak dipersia-siakan kerana jangka masa tersebut diisi sebaiknya apabila ketiga-tiga wanita yang boleh dikatakan 'sekepala' itu berkongsi misi bersama untuk menubuhkan syarikat sendiri.

"Berbekalkan pengalaman masing-masing yang sudah lama dalam bidang peruncitan, kami sepakat mengambil keputusan untuk menubuhkan syarikat berasaskan perniagaan peruncitan."

"Kenapa kami memilih bidang ini? Sebabnya jarang anak-anak muda mahu melibatkan diri dalam bidang peruncitan barangan buatan Malaysia," kata Leny Harlina yang sebelum ini pernah menjadi kerani, penyambut tetamu dan setiausaha sebelum mendapat tawaran bekerja di syarikat peruncitan.

Di dalam hati penulis terdetik persoalan demi persoalan. Teruk sangatkah bebanan kerja mereka sebelum ini sehingga melakukan keputusan 'berani' yang mungkin menjerut leher sendiri memandangkan pada masa sekarang ramai yang diberhentikan kerja ekoran keadaan ekonomi yang kurang memberangsangkan apatah lagi mahu mencari peluang pekerjaan baru.

"Setelah betul-betul pasti dengan keinginan bersama itu, kami enggan membuang masa dan mula membuat kertas cadangan mengenai perniagaan yang bakal kami ceburi."

"Apabila segalanya selesai, timbul pula masalah modal yang tidak mencukupi untuk merealisasikan impian kami. Pada masa itulah kami berjumpa dengan Pengarah Urusan Ixora Corporation Sdn. Bhd., Jordan Ling yang merupakan kenalan perniagaan sebelum ini," celah Jaszmyn.

Tambahnya, selepas menunjukkan kertas cadangan tersebut kepada Jordan, dia berminat untuk membantu dari segi modal. Namun ketiga-tiga mereka masih buntu tentang produk apa yang mahu ditawarkan di pasaran sebelum timbul idea mengenai rangkaian produk penjagaan kanak-kanak.

Idea tersebut timbul apabila ketiga-tiga Charlie's Angels Wonderland Primary itu membuat analisis mereka sendiri melalui hasil pemerhatian di pasaran dan mendapati produk sedemikian mendapat sambutan kerana walau apa pun terjadi orang tetap akan mandi.

Ditambah pula dengan tiadanya produk penjagaan bayi dan kanak-kanak tempatan kerana terlalu banyak produk luar mendominasi pasaran.

Bermula saat itulah, Jordan yang menjadi 'sifu' kepada tiga wanita yang baru belajar bertatih dalam perniagaan tanpa lokek berkongsi ilmu perniagaan dan kadangkala menegur jika berlaku percaturan salah dalam membuat keputusan.

Populariti Upin Ipin

Bagi syarikat yang baru memulakan langkah, agak sukar untuk memperkenalkan produk baru dengan jenama yang jarang didengar pengguna sehinggalah timbul idea untuk memberikan nama produk berdasarkan karakter kartun tempatan terkenal Malaysia iaitu Upin Ipin.

"Kami berbincang dengan Les' Copaque Productions Sdn. Bhd. untuk mendapatkan hak kebenaran menggunakan watak kartun dalam semua produk keluaran selama 30 bulan."

"Sejak itu, kami bertiga bertungkus lumus memastikan apa yang dirancang di atas kertas menjadi kenyataan sehingga berjaya menghasilkan produk yang kini mula berada di pasaran," ujarnya yang merupakan Pengurus Komunikasi Pemasaran Wonderland Primary.

Kebanyakan produk di pasaran memerlukan kepakaran luar untuk membuat pemasaran, reka bentuk, promosi, jualan dan sebagainya, namun ketiga-tiga wanita gigih itu tidak mahu meletakkan masa depan perniagaan mereka di tangan orang luar sehingga mereka sanggup merealisasikannya dari A hingga Z.

Joey, individu yang menggalas tanggungjawab sebagai Pengurus Jualan dan Perkhidmatan, dan berpengalaman selama 10 tahun dalam bidang peruncitan memberitahu dia sangat teruja dengan hasil produk yang dilahirkan hasil cetusan idea bersama.

"Ia bakal mendapat sambutan yang menggalakkan daripada peminat kartun tersebut yang bukan sahaja digemari oleh kanak-kanak tetapi juga golongan dewasa."

"Memandangkan tempoh hak kebenaran yang diberikan kepada kami hanya 30 bulan, kini kami giat merancang jenama produk keluaran syarikat andai kata hak kebenaran tidak dilanjutkan," katanya yang agak pendiam.

Apa yang menjadi rahsia tiga sekawan ini sehingga berjaya adalah sentiasa berbincang mengenai idea baru, disiplin, dedikasi terhadap kerja, tiada hasad dengki walaupun adakalanya berselisih pendapat.

Malah, yang penting, semua merupakan ketua serta saling menghormati.

Sumber: Kosmo! Online

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Restaurants' Food Safety and Sanitation Consulting

(Post: English)
" The inspection was not going well for Doma, a cafe in the West Village. The visitor with the clipboard, Mark Nealon, noted that the front door had been left wide open - grounds for a two-point violation and a $200 fine - and that trash was bundled on the stairs leading from the street to the basement kitchen. "

Now, near some shelves, he spotted a gap, not even one-sixteenth of an inch wide, around a pipe jutting from new drywall.

"They'll cite you for that," he told a co-owner, Evie Polesny, explaining that holes in walls and ceilings, potential conduits for pests, are among the most commonly cited health and safety violations in restaurants. "So what you do is, you get that expanding foam stuff. You can just spray it in."

Mr. Nealon, an energetic, bright-eyed man, is not an inspector for the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. But he was for three years, before taking up his current profession as a food safety and sanitation consultant, helping restaurants get in shape for the sharp eyes and styluses of computer-carrying bureaucrats.

He is part of an almost entirely unregulated cottage industry that has evolved in New York to run interference with the health department, even pleading the restaurants' cases at the administrative tribunal where violations can be reduced or dismissed.

Mr. Nealon, 43, who has been doing business since 1993 as S.A.F.E. Restaurants Consulting, said that demand for his services had been steadily rising in recent years and that it always received a lift from changes in the inspection system.

The latest change came three weeks ago, when the health department voted to use letter grades to rate cleanliness in the city's restaurants and require owners to start posting them in July.

The new system is likely to raise the stakes for each inspection and prompt restaurateurs to try to improve their scores by seeking a repeat inspection.

Like the expediters who have long helped New Yorkers negotiate the byzantine requirements of the Buildings Department, many of the restaurant consultants are former city inspectors, familiar with the health code and the people who enforce it.

Others, with connections in immigrant communities, got their start because they were fluent in English, said Sylvia Feinman, an administrative law judge who has presided in the health department tribunal for 18 years. Still others have a background in restaurants.

The consultants say they are needed because owners can be overwhelmed by all it takes to run their enterprises.

"A lot of people get into this business without realizing the magnitude of it," said Judi Hill, who began consulting about nine years ago with a friend who had been a health inspector.

"Somebody had a friend with a bar or a restaurant, and maybe saw how much money they were making and decided to give it a try."

Across the country, restaurants are increasingly hiring sanitary consultants as concern over food safety continues to intensify, many people in the food service industry said.

But the emphasis in New York on preparing for inspections and challenging violations is unusual, they say - a result of how large the city's health department is and how actively it scrutinizes restaurants.

Though the number of consultants in New York appears to be rising, a precise figure is difficult to come by.

The health department began requiring that consultants register their names and contact information only last year; as of March 16, the department listed 104.

They typically represent about one-third of the restaurants appearing before the tribunal, and display varying degrees of competence in doing so.

"There's people we have a tremendous amount of respect for," said Thomas Merrill, the department's general counsel. "Some of them I don't know if we'd all hire if we had a restaurant."

In its efforts to protect New York diners from lax hygiene practices, like those exposed in 2007 at a KFC/Taco Bell in Greenwich Village overrun with rats, the department conducts surprise inspections at least once a year at each of the city's roughly 24,000 restaurants.

The inspectors issue punitive points for infractions like food kept at the wrong temperature, cutting boards with potentially bacteria-harboring grooves or a lack of proof that the croissants were made without trans fats.

The number of points, and the severity of the penalties, vary with the offense; according to the department's guide, a "woman in gray slacks carrying poodle on service line" is much less serious than a "woman in gray slacks carrying poodle on service line, man with mustache with a parrot on shoulder at the salad bar, a child with a rabbit at the dining table and a woman with a cat on a leash at coffee bar."

But the judges who sit on the tribunal have tremendous discretion, Judge Feinman said; they can combine violations, lower the recommended fines or dismiss them.

"When you need an intermediary to deal with a government agency, it means that there's something wrong with the way that entity operates," said Daniel J. Castleman, a former chief assistant in the Manhattan district attorney's office who is now a managing director at FTI Consulting, an investigations firm.

"The only reason you want one is because he or she can saunter up to an ex-colleague and say, 'Hey, can you do me a favor?' "

Legal experts said such a porous system opened the door to corruption.

Mr. Merrill, the health department counsel, said officials there had seen no evidence of corruption among the consultants, and had begun registering them to hold them more accountable in cases of misconduct.

But at least one consultant who played a role in a wide-ranging bribery scandal at the department is still representing clients there.

The consultant, Steve Vassilakos, was charged in a 1988 sweep of more than 40 department inspectors, supervisors and consultants that led to convictions, mass firings and a near-halt in restaurant inspections for more than a year.

Testifying in the trial of a health department official who was convicted of extorting money or meals from restaurant owners in exchange for a passing mark, Mr. Vassilakos said he had given that official "loans," which were never repaid, on behalf of the restaurants he represented.

Reached by a reporter late last month, Mr. Vassilakos was reluctant to discuss the matter, saying it was "20-odd years ago." But he did say he was never tried in the case. "It was a different time," he said. "There were different concepts. There were different people."

Consultants' fees can range from $200 to represent a restaurant before the tribunal to several thousand dollars to help a place closed for violations win permission to reopen.

Many restaurateurs say the expense is worth it, given the complexity of city rules and the idiosyncrasies of each inspector.

"It's very difficult to know all the rules, and it's very difficult to know what rules are going to be focused on," said Eric Bromberg, who with his brother, Bruce, runs the chain of Blue Ribbon restaurants and a consulting business designing and operating kitchens for others.

"Protecting the public is certainly correct, but some things contradict each other, and some things aren't necessarily easy to handle or sensible."

Doma, for instance, on Perry Street, received a failing rating last month after years of passing marks. The night before the inspection, Ms. Polesny said, some cooks had gotten drunk and left a mess. Workers from another part of the building left a door open, allowing the landlord's cats - as bad as rats, in the eyes of health inspectors - into the kitchen.

Then two inspectors arrived, one training the other. Two sets of eyes, leading to a potential $4,500 in fines.

Ms. Polesny and her husband, Michael, turned to Mr. Nealon, who has worked with them for years, to help prepare for the inevitable reinspection. They have now undertaken a costly renovation, going beyond the health code requirements, to ensure that they can pass and continue to operate.

But even Mr. Nealon seems flummoxed at times by the logic of the health department, which he says uses the inspections to raise revenue rather than educate restaurateurs - a charge department officials deny.

He said he knew of one restaurant that was cited for allowing kitchen workers to talk to one another. The inspector's fear, he said, was that the workers' saliva could end up in the food.

"The inspectors look at kitchens as if they were operating rooms," Mr. Nealon said, "and that's just not the way to do it."

Source: NY Times

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Gelombang Industri Kosmetik Halal

(Post: Bahasa Melayu)
" Pada Persidangan Antarabangsa bagi Kosmetik dan Kelengkapan Dandanan Diri Halal 2010 di Kuala Lumpur April lalu, Timbalan Menteri Perdagangan Antarabangsa dan Industri, Datuk Mukhriz Mahathir menyebut bahawa Malaysia berpotensi untuk muncul sebagai hab bagi produk kosmetik halal dunia. "

Ini berdasarkan persekitaran negara yang kaya dengan bahan-bahan herba semula jadi yang boleh dibangunkan sebagai bahan utama dalam pembuatan produk kosmetik.

Saranan tersebut seharusnya dapat membuka mata pengusaha-pengusaha tempatan untuk melihat potensi besar pasaran kosmetik halal sama ada di dalam mahu pun di luar negara.

Pengusaha juga harus sedar dengan senario pasaran kosmetik global pada hari ini yang semakin terbuka dan 'mengalu-alukan' keperluan kosmetik halal.

Data terkini yang dikeluarkan oleh Institute of Personal Care Science of Australia baru-baru ini menganggarkan pasaran kosmetik global ketika ini bernilai kira-kira AS$334 bilion (RM1,169 bilion).

Kosmetik halal pula berkongsi pasaran dengan jumlah AS$13 bilion (RM45.5 bilion) setahun - perkembangan yang dilihat selari dengan pertumbuhan pasaran makanan halal dan sektor kewangan Islam.

Berasaskan kajian dalam industri tersebut juga, pada 2005 industri kosmetik dan kelengkapan dandanan diri menguasai sembilan peratus daripada keseluruhan pasaran produk halal global.

Kajian oleh sebuah syarikat penyelidikan di Malaysia pula menganggarkan nilai perniagaan halal meningkat kepada AS$635 bilion (RM2,222 bilion) setahun dengan perluasan pasaran di negara-negara Islam dan Barat berikutan pertambahan penduduk Islam.

Di Perancis misalnya, yang mempunyai kira-kira lima juta penduduk Islam, jualan bagi makanan halal diramal mencecah hingga 5.5 bilion euros (RM25.2 bilion) pada 2010.

Kita juga perlu sedar bahawa hampir satu perempat atau suku daripada penduduk dunia beragama Islam, sekali gus menjadikan pasaran halal global antara yang terbesar.

Ini menunjukkan peluang sememangnya terbuka luas kepada pengusaha kosmetik tempatan untuk mengungguli pasaran produk kosmetik halal dunia dan seterusnya menjadikan negara ini sebagai hab pengeluaran produk tersebut.

Lagi pula di Malaysia sendiri industri kosmetik halal telah berkembang kukuh sejak 1980 dengan perkongsian 10-20 peratus daripada keseluruhan pasaran kosmetik tempatan.

Jika dahulu isu produk halal banyak tertumpu kepada makanan, namun akhir-akhir ini semakin ramai yang memperluaskannya kepada produk-produk lain termasuk kecantikan.

Bahkan konsep halal kini juga semakin diguna pakai pada hampir semua barangan dan perkhidmatan termasuk farmasutikal, pakaian, perkhidmatan kewangan dan pakej-pakej pelancongan.

Dalam Islam prinsip halal bukan sekadar tidak mengandungi babi atau bahan-bahan yang berkaitan serta haiwan yang tidak disembelih, tetapi juga kandungan-kandungan seperti alkohol yang haram di sisi Islam.

Para pengusaha produk juga harus memahami bahawa memartabatkan kosmetik halal tidak semestinya mereka berlawan arus pembikinan kosmetik konvensional.

Kosmetik halal seperti gincu bibir, produk penjagaan wajah dan wangian bebas alkohol masih boleh mengandungi bahan-bahan daripada haiwan tetapi ia mesti disediakan mengikut cara Islam iaitu disembelih.

Malah tanpa disedari industri kosmetik halal sebenarnya meraih kelebihan daripada 'gelombang hijau' (produk mesra alam) yang berlaku dalam industri kosmetik Barat pada hari ini.

Ini diakui sendiri Mah Hussain-Gambles, pengasas syarikat kosmetik halal pertama di Eropah, Saaf Pure Sincare, ketika menghadiri Persidangan Antarabangsa bagi Kosmetik dan Kelengkapan Dandanan Diri Halal 2010.

Dia dipetik sebagai berkata, prinsip 'gelombang hijau' mengutamakan produk yang tidak membahayakan tubuh dan semula jadi - sama seperti dalam prinsip produk halal.

Untuk itu tidak hairanlah apabila lebih banyak syarikat-syarikat antarabangsa yang mula mencipta jenama mesra alam iaitu organik, vegetarian dan halal.

Apa yang pasti lebih ramai para pengusaha akan terjun dalam bidang ini memandangkan orang Islam hanya memilih produk-produk yang dikenal pasti halal manakala yang lain lebih ke arah barangan produk mesra alam.

Sementara itu bagi pengasas produk kosmetik tempatan jenama RizReni, Norizah Yahya, apa yang menjadi masalah kepada pengusaha di negara ini ialah kurangnya pihak yang membuat kajian saintifik mengenai bahan-bahan halal yang boleh digunakan dalam pembuatan kosmetik.

Tumpuan katanya, lebih kepada makanan dan minuman.

Ia diburukkan lagi dengan sikap pengguna Islam itu sendiri yang tidak yakin dengan produk tempatan dan lebih berbangga dengan produk luar negara yang tidak diketahui status halal haramnya.

Norizah yang ditemui di pejabatnya di Wangsa Melawati, Kuala Lumpur, baru-baru ini berkata, tidak salah memakai produk kosmetik jenama luar negara, namun bagi pengguna terutama orang Islam penting untuk mereka membaca dan memahami bahan-bahan yang digunakan dalam produk itu.

Norizah mengakui, sebelum polisi halal bagi produk pemakanan dan kosmetik dikeluarkan, RizReni sudah terfikir mengeluarkan produk halal bagi kegunaan masyarakat Islam di negara ini.

Selain mengeluarkan kosmetik, RizReni yang mendapat pengesahan halal daripada Islamic Food Research Council juga merupakan pengeluar produk penjagaan kulit, tata rias, makanan dan minuman kesihatan.

Beliau menjelaskan semasa mula-mula hendak membuat produk, dia banyak bertanya terutama kepada ahli keluarga mengenai produk yang mereka kehendaki.

Ternyata pilihan mereka ialah produk yang halal, berkesan dan dalam masa yang sama, selamat.

Malah suaminya yang berkelulusan dalam bidang farmasi dari sebuah universiti di Amerika Syarikat turut membuat kajian terhadap produk yang dihasilkan di kilang milik syarikatnya di Taman Bolton, Batu Caves, Gombak, Selangor.

Untuk memenuhi piawaian halal itu, dia mementingkan penggunaan bahan-bahan yang suci sesuai dengan tag line 'Selamat, Suci dan Berkesan' supaya pengguna tidak perlu ragu-ragu termasuk boleh dibawa untuk bersolat.

Sementara itu pengasas produk De Wajah, Junaidah Kiting, berpendapat pengusaha dalam bidang kecantikan perlu peka dengan kehendak pelanggan khususnya masyarakat Islam yang kini semakin prihatin terhadap pentingnya kosmetik dan produk penjagaan kulit yang halal.

Junaidah yang telah 22 tahun berkecimpung dalam bidang kecantikan berkata, sebagai pengeluar produk kosmetik dan produk penjagaan kulit, adalah penting memenuhi kehendak pelanggan Islam.

"Selain mendapat keberkatan dalam perniagaan ia juga mampu menjadikan negara sebagai pusat rujukan dan hab kepada pengeluaran produk kosmetik halal."

"Selain suci dan halal, pengusaha produk juga harus bertanggungjawab dengan mengelak daripada menggunakan bahan-bahan yang berbahaya seperti raksa, hidrokuinon," katanya.

Justeru Junaidah, dia lebih mempercayai bahan-bahan semula jadi seperti ekstrak tumbuh-tumbuhan, bunga, pinang muda, delima dan buah-buahan sebagai bahan dalam produk kosmetik dan penjagaan kulit.

Walaupun ada yang menawarkan kolagen biri-biri Junaidah masih berpegang kepada kesucian dalam produk keluarannya.

Sumber: Utusan Malaysia Online

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Eylia Roselle

(Post: Bahasa Melayu)
" Adakah anda penggemar makanan tambahan untuk memperbaiki tahap kesihatan? Jika itu yang diinginkan, anda mungkin boleh mencuba produk daripada tanaman roselle yang dikeluarkan oleh ACF Food (M) Sdn. Bhd. (ACF Food). "

Pengurus ACF Food, Fakhariah Ishak, 44, berkata, kuntuman roselle mampu bertindak sebagai antiseptik dan tonik yang baik untuk kesihatan seseorang.

"Ia juga pernah dijadikan penyembuh secara tradisi untuk batuk, demam, kanser, kegagalan fungsi jantung dan hipertensi," katanya.

Menurutnya, tanaman roselle mula menarik perhatian pengusaha makanan dan minuman serta produk farmaseutikal kerana ia mempunyai kebarangkalian untuk dieksploit sebagai produk makanan asli dan pewarna bagi menggantikan pewarna sintetik.

Pemilik ladang roselle seluas 4 hektar di Kampung Seri Pantai itu mula mengusahakan tanaman berkenaan sejak enam bulan lalu secara kecil-kecilan.

Hasil kuntuman segar dan muda tanaman tersebut akan dihantar ke Lembaga Pemasaran Pertanian Persekutuan (FAMA) Rengit untuk dieksport ke Australia.

"Kami mengutip hasilnya pada setiap minggu, dua atau tiga kali dengan dibantu oleh lima pekerja di ladang ini," katanya.

Dengan moto 'Sekuntum Roselle Sejuta Khasiat', Fakhariah memberitahu, tanah paling sesuai untuk tanaman roselle adalah jenis pasir kuning yang tidak memerlukan air banyak.

"Penjagaan pokok roselle mudah. Ia boleh juga disiram sekali atau dua kali sehari," kata anak kelahiran Batu Pahat itu.

Beliau berkata, produk keluaran ACF Food yang menggunakan jenama Eylia Roselle terdiri daripada jus, teh dan halwa roselle.

Sumber: Utusan Malaysia Online

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Tweeting for More Customers

(Post: English)
" Many businesses are struggling to make sense of Twitter, but even if it strikes you as an enigma or hype, consider this: many of your customers are already there. "

Twitter has more than 100 million users and is becoming a free forum for business. Companies are using Twitter to engage in highly personalized interactions - sometimes right to the phones in our pockets.

Twitter recently introduced a program of "promoted tweets" that will display ads in some search results, although this program remains limited to a select group of Twitter partners, including Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull and Sony Pictures.

Eventually, Twitter plans to offer advertising more broadly, but until then small businesses can continue to make productive use of the service.

FIRST OF ALL, LISTEN

What are people saying about your company? Unlike conversations by phone or e-mail, Twitter conversations usually are not private, and listening is fair game.

One company that has built a sophisticated listening post is Avaya, a global communications provider in Basking Ridge, N.J. Avaya uses third-party applications to track mentions of its brand name and has automated alerts for dozens of keywords for products and competitors, said Paul Dunay, Avaya's global managing director of services and social marketing.

The company follows up to 2,500 Twitter postings a week, often from clients with technical issues, he said. "If we see those, we're on them in 15 or 20 minutes," Mr. Dunay said. "That's providing killer support and customer delight."

Avaya also looks for sales leads and opportunities to replace competitors.

One day, a company posted about its quest for a new phone system. Mr. Dunay replied, introduced himself and offered to put this person in touch with an Avaya strategic consultant. "Within 13 days, we were able to convert that one tweet into a $250,000 sale," he said.

DO NOT BE BORING

Humphry Slocombe is a 14-seat ice cream shop in San Francisco that has gathered nearly 300,000 Twitter followers - far more than giant competitors like Ben & Jerry's, Baskin-Robbins or Dairy Queen. Not bad for a small business that began posting on Twitter only last year.

"We started using Twitter just because we have zero money for any kind of advertising or promotion whatsoever," said Sean Vahey, co-owner and operations manager.

"We have a product that changes daily. Our customers were asking, 'How do you keep us up to date on the different flavors?' Twitter was the perfect answer."

But there was an issue. Mr. Vahey's first impression of Twitter could be summed up in six characters: boring. So he decided to make his account edgy, occasionally rude and always entertaining. The shop's Twitter bio: "ice cream with attitude."

The store posts updates to its menu, which features 100 ice cream flavors including prosciutto, milk chocolate tarragon and foie gras.

"As soon as we put it on Twitter it moves," Mr. Vahey said. "It's an instant response."

A LIVE VERSION OF A FAQ

Some companies use Twitter as a customer service desk. Whole Foods is one of the largest retailers on Twitter, with 1.7 million followers. Marla Erwin, a Whole Foods staff member who oversees the account, estimates that customer questions generate three-quarters of its Twitter traffic.

To Whole Foods, Twitter is a live version of a FAQ. The theory is that if one person has a question, others will as well. One sign of a company that engages with followers is a page filled with @ symbols (Twitter shorthand for a reply to a specific person).

"You absolutely have to remember you are part of a community and you have to offer value to that community," Ms. Erwin said. "It's not about you. If all you do is talk about yourself, your audience will be instantly bored."

CREATE A FOCUS GROUP

Twitter can be your portable focus group - one you do not have to pay for.

Chrysta Wilson owns the small Los Angeles bakery Kiss My Bundt. She likes to experiment with new recipes and use Twitter for customer feedback.

"It absolutely is like a focus group, except the beauty of it is I don't have to go and find people who are interested or knowledgeable about baking," Ms. Wilson said.

"My universe is already there - my Twitter followers and Facebook fans."

When Ms. Wilson wanted to try a new maple bacon bundt, she posted about it, put up photos and invited followers to stop by for free samples. Their feedback helped her perfect the recipe, which is now a favorite.

She has more than 1,900 followers. "It's great for getting input - they become your sounding board," she said. "It's a way to break out of the business owner's bubble and get an outsider's perspective."

SOAPBOX FOR THINKERS

For some, Twitter serves as a high-tech bully pulpit.

Tim Berry has an enviable job. The founder of Palo Alto Software, he stepped away from day-to-day management into an emeritus role of evangelizing about small-business planning and management.

He posts about interesting articles, blog links and anything that strikes him as surprising.

"The key thing is being interesting," he said. Mr. Berry said he believed that his Twitter stream generated 10 to 20 percent of the traffic that came to his company Web site.

If he can pique interest and establish himself as a trusted authority, he said, customers are more likely to buy his products and services.

"If you're just selling, it doesn't work," Mr. Berry said. "If somebody starts selling, I stop following them."

Mari Smith, a social media speaker and trainer who lives by the rule "always be marketing" and has amassed more than 68,000 followers, agreed.

Ms. Smith will not post a traditional "push" marketing message that explicitly advertises an event like a webinar. Instead, she might post something that arouses people's curiosity and include a link.

For Ms. Smith, Twitter is a way to maintain a personal touch - and scale it up. "Whether I'm chitchatting, retweeting, @replying, talking about my personal life, my products or services, it's all marketing," she said.

"People buy people before they buy products or service. They're buying into you."

The payoff: Ms. Smith said half her business came through Twitter.

STARTING SMALL IS FINE

Quick! What famous architect designed the pyramid outside the Louvre in Paris?

If you saw that question move across your Twitter stream (the answer is I. M. Pei), you must have been following La Boulange, a French cafe and bakery with 11 locations in the San Francisco area.

La Boulange has fun with Twitter posts, like a Twitter trivia bingo contest or daily posts of New Year's resolutions like "eat more chocolate."

La Boulange has about 1,000 followers, but for a local business, even a few hundred loyal followers can be extremely valuable.

"Twitter makes it possible for small business to retain that personal touch," said Anamitra Banerji, senior product manager at Twitter. "Interacting with a Twitter account is almost like walking into a corner store. There's a closeness and intimacy that small businesses have really leveraged on Twitter."

So it is with La Boulange. "It's not so much about the number of followers," said Emily Doan, La Boulange chief of operations and principal Twitterer. "It's about making that connection and relationship to people. It's keeping our company fresh in their minds each day."

Source: NY Times
Photos: Avaya , Humphry Slocombe , Whole Foods , Twitter

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Penjaja Kuih Putu Piring

(Post: Bahasa Melayu)
" Deretan acuan logam berbentuk bulat yang dilapisi dengan sehelai kain putih penuh terisi dengan adunan kuih putu piring. Apabila dilihat sudah hampir masak, seorang lelaki berusia 45 tahun dengan pantas menaburkan parutan kelapa di atas semua acuan yang terletak berhampirannya. "

Sambil tangan ligat mengangkat kepingan kuih putu piring yang sudah masak ke dalam bekas polisterin, peniaga bernama Amran Mohd. Ali itu tersenyum menyambut kedatangan penulis.

"Mahu putu piring kak? Panas-panas macam ni memang sedap dimakan," tuturnya sambil meneruskan kerja meletakkan adunan baru kuih tersebut di atas acuan yang telah kosong untuk dikukus.

Apabila memberitahu tujuan sebenar kedatangan penulis, Amran dengan senang hati bersedia menjawab soalan yang ingin dikemukakan kepadanya.

Menurutnya sudah hampir 10 tahun dia menjalankan perniagaan menjual putu piring secara kecil-kecilan di pasar malam sekitar Kuala Lumpur. Ia merupakan resipi turun-temurun keluarganya.

Proses membuat putu piring yang mudah dan ringkas serta hanya memerlukan modal yang sedikit menyebabkan Amran berminat mencuba nasib menjadi penjual kuih tradisional itu.

Ternyata, rezeki yang berasaskan bidang perniagaan itu dapat menyara kehidupannya sekeluarga.

Berbeza dengan penjual putu piring yang lain, Amran mempunyai keistimewaan tersendiri kerana tidak mempunyai pembantu untuk membuat kuih tersebut.

"Biasanya peniaga putu piring sentiasa mempunyai seorang pembantu untuk melancarkan proses menghasilkan kuih tersebut yang diketahui cepat masak dan perlu diangkat dengan kadar segera sebelum menggantikan dengan adunan baru."

"Tetapi, saya lebih selesa bersendirian. Bak kata pepatah, 'alah bisa tegal biasa' kini saya langsung tidak kekok melakukan rutin sebegini," jelasnya lagi.

Di samping itu, aroma harum yang terbit daripada kuih putu piring yang dimasak membuatkan ramai pelanggan di gerai Amran yang beroperasi di pasar malam Pandan Indah pada hari Khamis setiap minggu.

"Alhamdulillah, kadang-kadang saya mampu menjual sehingga 400 keping putu piring setiap hari. Mungkin rasanya yang lembut dan mempunyai inti secukup rasa menambat hati pelanggan yang membeli," ungkap Amran sambil memberitahu tiga keping putu piring dijual pada harga RM1.

Selain pasar malam Pandan Indah, Amran turut berniaga di beberapa lokasi pasar malam lain di sekitar Kuala Lumpur termasuklah di Putrajaya.

Sumber: Kosmo! Online

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Sweet Sensation by Pastry Chef

(Post: English)
" Before she knew how to bake, Olive Lo recalls being mesmerised by the beauty of the wedding cake at her aunt’s marriage reception dinner. While the other children played with each other, Lo, then 12, lingered near the cake, admiring the intricate designs of the sweet confection. "

So fascinated was she that within days she enrolled in a baking class comprising women twice her age.

Lo was unfazed by the "generation gap" - her mind was set on only one thing - mastering the rudiments of baking a good cake.

"My teacher Lucy told me to bake a good cake, all you need is to learn the basics," she recalled.

Under her mentor's guidance, Lo took to baking like a duck to water and in no time, produced cakes so tasty that she started taking orders when she was only 15.

"Those days, the cakes I made were simple - butter cake or butter cream cake. I was surprised people were willing to buy from a teenager," said the ebullient pastry chef whose modest cake-making business began flourishing as more customers heard of her delightful treats through word of mouth.

Today, Lo turns out whimsical birthday cakes, sensational cookies and some of the best savoury pastries in Kuching, making full use of the various techniques she picked up from baking classes.

"I believe in mastering good basic baking methods. Whatever I've learnt, I make sure I improve on and improvise," she said, adding that she also made it a point to attend short courses whenever she travelled to Australia and Japan.

"I have a sister living in Japan while my children are working in Australia, so visiting them gives me the opportunity to learn the latest baking trends there. Knowing something new each time allows me to keep abreast of the current trends and improve."

To keep up to date, Lo attends the Food & Hotel Asia (FHA) Fair - Asia's largest international food and hospitality trade event - in Singapore annually.

"I never missed this event since my first attendance in 1988. There's always something to learn and discover from the participants from all over the world," she noted.

As Lo's baking skills grew, so did her range of cakes and she now has in hand more than 30 different flavours - from all-time favourite chocolate to rich and creamy cheesecakes, all created from scratch with the freshest ingredients.

A stickler to taste and quality, she combines her cakes and pastries to create richly flavoured desserts but with just the right amount of delicate sweetness.

According to her, women are fond of walnut cakes for their light, airy and fluffy texture while men would generally go for black forest cakes and cheesecakes.

Lo's signature cakes are much like Japanese-style cakes with their light, melt-in-your-mouth texture but they are also as beautiful to look at as they are delicious to eat.

She hand-sculpts immaculate works of art on her cakes for all sorts of celebrations.

"My customers will usually give me a rough idea of how they want their cakes presented and from there, I will come up with the designs."

Lo particularly enjoys designing cakes for children as the process of creating the designs allows her creativity to flow.

"I have to be very precise with the designs, especially when it calls for cartoon characters. Other times, I would mould cute figurines out of fondant and use them as cake toppers," she said, adding that though challenging, it was always a joy to make children's cakes.

Apart from cakes, the passionate pastry chef also makes hold-in-your-hand desserts such as cupcakes and iced cookies prepared with unparalleled level of finely detailed craftmanship as well as savoury items such as chicken crepes and curry chicken in choux pastry, which are also popular with customers who often serve them during festive seasons or special functions.

Lo's customers like her cakes for their delicious taste and artistic designs.

She attributes her success to having a good teacher and mastering the basics of each baking technique.

"I was very lucky to have Lucy guide me from the very beginning. She really inspires me to become what I am today," she beamed.

CONTACT INFO:
Telephone: 016-8822199

Email: olivevalentina@yahoo.com

Source: The Borneo Post

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Dobi Lebuh Ghaut

(Post: Bahasa Melayu)
" Seolah-olah kembali ke zaman silam. Begitulah perasaan ketika berjalan di penempatan Dobi Ghaut di Pulau Pinang. Penempatan itu terletak antara Jalan Air Hitam dan Jalan York dan dihuni oleh mereka yang menyediakan perkhidmatan dobi tradisional sejak turun-temurun. "

Ampaian ratusan kain sari pelbagai warna seperti merah terang, kuning, hijau tua dan biru yang dijemur setiap hari mendominasi pemandangan.

Perniagaan yang dikatakan bermula sejak lebih 100 tahun lepas itu tidak banyak berubah dengan peredaran masa. Malah, cara dan peralatan yang digunakan masih kekal sama iaitu kain dibasuh menggunakan tangan dan digosok menggunakan seterika arang.

Itulah keistimewaan dan keunikannya.

Cuma sekarang ini, bilangan pengusaha dobi semakin berkurangan berbanding dulu dengan hanya tinggal 13 orang yang menyediakan perkhidmatan itu. Menurut seorang pengusaha dobi, A. Ramu, 65, pada tahun 1970-an, terdapat lebih 150 orang yang menyediakan perkhidmatan dobi di kampung itu.

"Tetapi kini hanya tinggal 13 orang yang menjalankan perniagaan ini kerana ramai yang telah meninggal dunia atau berpindah ke tempat lain," katanya yang telah 50 tahun menjalankan perniagaan dobi.

Ramu, yang merupakan generasi ketiga mewarisi perniagaan itu daripada keluarganya berkata, kini tidak ramai lagi golongan muda yang berminat untuk menjalankan perniagaan berkenaan.

Cuci Tanpa Mesin

Beliau tidak berasa terbeban mencuci pakaian tanpa menggunakan mesin basuh, malah berbangga kerana masih dapat mengekalkan tradisi keluarganya.

Kebiasaannya Ramu yang dibantu adiknya, Muniandy, 62, memulakan kerja mencuci pakaian seawal pukul 8 pagi dan meneruskan kerjanya sehingga pukul 8 malam setiap hari.

Menurut Muniandy, mencuci pakaian secara tradisional mengambil masa yang agak lama kerana terpaksa melalui beberapa peringkat. "Pada suatu ketika dahulu mereka menggunakan air sungai berhampiran kampung untuk mencuci pakaian," katanya.

Beliau menambah, bagaimanapun aktiviti itu kini beralih ke rumah masing-masing berikutan air sungai itu tidak lagi bersih untuk mencuci pakaian.

"Mulanya, pakaian direndam dengan serbuk pencuci dan kemudian dibasuh dan dibilas sebelum dijemur," katanya.

Setelah itu kain yang telah kering akan digosok sebelum dihantar kepada pelanggan menggunakan basikal.

"Saya dan abang saya mengayuh basikal untuk mengutip dan menghantar kain pelanggan di sekitar George Town dan Bayan Baru," jelas Muniandy sambil mencuci kain.

Beliau berkata, mereka mengambil masa dua hari untuk mencuci dan dua hari lagi digunakan untuk menggosok pakaian setiap pelanggan.

"Kami akan menghantar semula pakaian kepada pelanggan dalam tempoh seminggu selepas menerimanya," kata Muniandy.

Pada harga antara RM1 dan RM8 untuk upah mencuci sehelai kain mengikut saiz, mereka mencuci antara 100 kilogram (kg) dan 150kg kain setiap hari.

Seorang lagi pengusaha dobi, V. Manoharan, 42, yang merupakan generasi keempat mewarisi peniagaan mencuci pakaian daripada keluarganya berkata, kerja-kerja mencuci pakaian secara tradisional itu dilakukan dengan teliti bagi memuaskan hati pelanggan.

"Walaupun ramai yang menggunakan mesin basuh untuk mencuci pakaian, tetapi masih terdapat golongan yang suka baju mereka dicuci dengan cara lama," katanya.

Bagaimanapun, pengusaha dobi ini sedar akan nasib yang menunggu mereka.

Walau apa pun, Lebuh Ghaut akan terus diingati penduduk tempatan seperti ia dikenali sebelum ini sebagai Vannan Thora Tedal, yang bermakna daerah dobi dalam bahasa Tamil.

Sumber: Kosmo! Online

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Super Sized Cycles

(Post: English)
" A small bicycle company for big riders, Super Sized Cycles, manufactures and adapts bicycles for overweight riders who are too big for conventional bikes. The five-year-old business, which is based in Vermont, had sales last year of $104,000. "

The Challenge

Joan Denizot, the founder, has been agonizing over whether to manufacture bicycles in the United States or to import them from Asia at much lower costs.

The Background

Her business is at a crossroads. Though she has increased sales through her Web site every year, she remains barely in the black - and only by paying herself a pittance.

She has been seeking a marketing breakthrough that would enable her to expand her business and thereby aid more people like herself.

"I've come to peace with the word fat," she said. "I know for a lot of people that's still a sensitive word. But for me, it's not a taboo word. It's what I am. I weigh more than 225 pounds, quite a bit more. I have lost some weight, but for me it's more about being healthy."

Her enterprise might be considered a niche business, except that it is aimed at a growing segment of the population: the obese, who according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, number about one in every three adults.

Ms. Denizot started her company after trying in vain, while recuperating from gastric bypass surgery, to exercise by biking, but could not find a bike that was comfortable and safe. "I'd get on bikes and the tires would flatten," she said.

Ms. Denizot looked for alternatives in bike shops. She searched the Internet and the sites she found, she said, "talked about how much the bike weighed and the parts, but never about how much weight the bike could carry."

Ms. Denizot could have had a bike custom made for her and been done with it. But she wanted to help others her size get moving, get healthier and spend more time outdoors with their children. (She has four, all over 20 years old.)

Her bikes, which range from $699 to $3,395, feature broader, sturdier wheels and tires, wider seats and pedal placement, and strong steel frames.

She said one model can support riders weighing as much as 550 pounds. Over all, she sells about 100 bikes a year.

She has added electric assist bikes to her line and is especially fond of the model she rides on hilly dirt roads around her home near Burlington. Like several of the bikes she sells, this one is made by another American manufacturer and upgraded to her standards.

That is also the case with the Big 29er, which has wheels three inches bigger than on standard bikes and can accommodate riders as tall as 6-feet-7.

Still, Ms. Denizot is banking on two models of her own design, which are the standard-bearers for the company. These models, A New Leaf and Time of Your Life, sell for $2,070.

Until recently, she made these core models entirely in the United States. But that drove up costs and prices, prompting complaints from customers.

Last year, following the advice of an investor who provided the upfront money and the contact with an experienced overseas agent, Ms. Denizot had 70 of her New Leaf bikes manufactured in Taiwan.

That move has left her wrestling with whether to follow her heart (manufacture in the United States) or her head (build her proprietary designs overseas).

The Options

A former employment counselor with the state of Vermont, Ms. Denizot, 52, has not lost her social worker bent and would love to provide skilled manufacturing jobs and perhaps apprenticeships to Americans.

"There's a lot to be said for helping a community and creating jobs here, but I need to be competitive, and I need to make a quality product, too," she said.

She was extremely pleased with the workmanship on the first shipment of bicycles from Taiwan. And she was even happier with the per-bike price. Though one-time upfront costs tied to overseas sourcing pushed her costs up, Ms. Denizot says she believes she could soon be paying $550 per bike, fully assembled.

Currently, she pays $400 to $500 just for her custom bike frames, which are made in Iowa and then shipped to the Vermont workshop of her master assembler - where the manufacturing costs of her American-built bikes rise to $1,250.

On the other hand, manufacturing in the United States enables her to provide a level of individualized customer service not easily matched by producing her bikes overseas.

"As it is, people call and say I've got this issue and that issue, and Tim Mathewson is so good he knows what to do to make the bike right for that person," she said, referring to her Vermont bike guru.

The Decision

In the end, Ms. Denizot's decision had a lot to do with the size of her business ("still very much the Joan show"), which would render her talk of job creation moot. Moreover, the size of her business leaves her ill-prepared to stave off the competition she anticipates.

"Eventually, the big bike builders are going to wake up," Ms. Denizot said. "And when they do, they're not going to fool around with having them custom built in the U.S. They're going to go overseas and get them built. Will they be as good as mine? I don't think so. But I'll still have to be competitive on price."

Shifting manufacturing to Taiwan will position her to do that. Lower prices and increased sales, she reasons, will create other opportunities.

"Warehousing and distribution, marketing and telephone sales - those are the kinds of jobs I can provide, and they will stay in America," she said. "There are tons of things I want to do."

Source: NY Times

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Lantai Rumah Kemuning Kayu Keras

(Post: Bahasa Melayu)
" Apakah pilihan anda untuk menghias lantai apabila berpindah ke rumah baru? Adakah hiasan lantai berasaskan jubin, marmar atau kayu yang menjadi pilihan? Apa kata, jika menukar selera kepada lantai daripada kayu tempatan yang nyata berkualiti dan tahan lama. "

Biasanya, apabila kita mahu memasang lantai kayu kawan-kawan atau pihak kontraktor sendiri pasti mencadangkan kayu import. Yang selalu disebut ialah oak dan jati. Oak biasanya diimport dari Eropah dan jati pula dari negara-negara jiran.

Jarang sekali kita mendengar mengenai lantai daripada kayu keras tempatan sedangkan kayu tempatan jauh lebih berkualiti dan tahan lama berbanding yang diimport.

Lantai daripada kayu keras tempatan cukup tahan lasak. Ia mudah dicuci dan tahan kotor. Permukaannya tahan bertahun-tahun dan datang dengan corak yang berbeza serta menarik.

Berdasarkan kajian Institut Penyelidikan Perhutanan Malaysia (FRIM), kayu keras Malaysia lebih tahan lasak berbanding oak.

Kayu-kayu ini juga lebih sesuai dengan persekitaran cuaca negara ini berbanding kayu import.

Berdasarkan senarai yang dikeluarkan oleh FRIM, terdapat 11 jenis yang disenaraikan sebagai kayu keras di Malaysia.

Tetapi tiga jenis kayu yang sering digunakan atau yang popular ialah cengal, merbau dan tembusu. Satu lagi ialah keruing yang terletak dalam kategori sederhana keras.

Semua ini antara kayu yang dijadikan kemasan lantai dan dibekalkan oleh syarikat Kemuning Kayu Keras Sdn. Bhd. yang berpejabat di Bandar Sri Permaisuri, Cheras, Kuala Lumpur.

Jadi, jika berhajat untuk menukar lantai rumah kepada kayu boleh pilih pelbagai pilihan lantai kayu keras tempatan yang pelbagai jenis ini.

Pengarah Kemuning Kayu Keras, Abdul Samad Tajudin berkata, lantai kayu memang merupakan trend pada masa ini.

Selain kemasan daripada marmar, jubin dan permaidani, lantai kayu lebih praktikal dan cukup tahan lasak.

Tetapi katanya, jika memilih untuk memasang lantai kayu seeloknya pilih kayu tempatan.

"Yang paling penting ialah dari segi kesesuaian dengan cuaca negara kita."

"Malah lantai kayu keras tempatan ini cukup popular di Eropah dan Amerika Syarikat sebab ketahanannya," kata Abdul Samad.

Katanya, di Kemuning Kayu Keras, lantai yang digunakan adalah daripada kayu asli. Tidak ada penggunaan kimia atau bahan tiruan.

"Kita menggunakan kayu asli yang cukup lasak dan boleh tahan untuk beberapa generasi. Seperti rumah kayu yang lama yang mampu bertahan lama," jelasnya.

Lagi pula katanya, rumah yang mempunyai lantai kayu keras tempatan nilainya lebih tinggi.

Lantai kayu ini sesuai digunakan di ruang tamu, ruang makan, bilik tidur tangga.

Kayu lebih tempatan lebih berkualiti. Harga setiap kayu juga berbeza dengan cengal mendahului senarai sebagai kayu yang termahal.

"Kita mempunyai kilang di Besut Terengganu. Apabila ada tempahan daripada pengguna kita akan membawanya dari Terengganu."

"Saiz kayu untuk lantai ini juga bergantung kepada permintaan penggunaan," katanya.

Selain lantai katanya, hiasan kayu juga boleh digunakan untuk pelbagai kemasan lain termasuk dinding, siling dan tangga.

"Pada masa ini kami membekal dan memasang lantai kayu keras ini untuk beberapa projek perumahan di sekitar Lembah Klang."

"Kami juga sedia menerima permintaan atau tempahan daripada individu yang berminat untuk menukar lantai rumah mereka kepada kayu keras tempatan yang begitu berkualiti ini," katanya.

Seorang lagi Pengarah Kemuning Kayu Keras, Khir Johari Shafie memberitahu, pelanggan boleh memilih corak dan jenis kayu untuk hiasan lantai pilihan mereka.

Bagi yang bercita rasa tinggi boleh menggunakan kayu cengal dengan harga sekitar RM38 bagi sekaki persegi.

Cengal merupakan antara kayu yang paling keras dan tahan lasak untuk dijadikan lantai dan kemasan lain.

Pilihan lain ialah tembusu dan merbau dengan harga sekitar RM8 ke RM10 bagi sekaki persegi.

Bagaimanapun harga berbeza-beza mengikut ketebalan kayu yang dipilih.

Sumber: Utusan Malaysia Online

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mkDesigns Building Green

(Post: English)
" Michelle Kaufmann, an architect, remembers leading Laura Bush, the first lady, on a personal tour of one of her prefabricated homes, pointing out its on-demand water heater and explaining how the graywater system recycled waste water. "

It was May 2006, and a full-scale model of Ms. Kaufmann's Glidehouse design had been erected at the National Building Museum in Washington. It was, Ms. Kaufmann said, one of the high points for her design-build company, mkDesigns.

There were others. The company had its debut with a bang in 2004 when Sunset magazine chose to feature a model of the Glidehouse in its annual Celebration Weekend event in Menlo Park, Calif.

An estimated 25,000 people - builders, architects, potential clients - waited in long lines that formed even before the doors opened to see mkDesigns' modern take on the prefab home.

The overwhelming response jump-started the company, which until that point had been a one-woman operation. It seemed like the right idea at the right time.

Ms. Kaufmann immediately hired a client-services manager to handle the hundreds of customer inquiries she began receiving and set to work building her business.

"There hadn't been a precedent for a green preconfigured home,” Ms. Kaufmann said, "and ours struck a chord."

The firm, based in Oakland, Calif., rapidly earned a reputation for its streamlined modular homes and went on to build a total of 53, mostly on the West Coast.

Ms. Kaufmann built more homes than any of the other dozen or so boutique prefab-home companies that have sprung up in the past decade. These include Resolution 4 Architecture in New York, LivingHomes and Marmol Radziner in Los Angeles, and FlatPak in Minneapolis.

While most of the firms emphasized custom designs and high-end prices, mkDesigns aimed to reach a middle market with homes that cost $160 to $180 per square foot, not including the site.

Together, the green prefab companies represent a tiny segment of the home construction market, but with their focus on sustainability and affordability, they offer the prospect of genuinely green homes delivered to a mass market - an alternative to cookie-cutter spec houses and bloated McMansions.

"Before the economic meltdown, all builders were looking at prefab in one way or another," said Leo Marmol, founder of Marmol Radziner.

One reason was the success of similar firms outside the United States. Of all the new single-family houses built in Finland last year, for example, 68 percent were wholly or partly prefabricated, and the home building company Sekisui builds approximately 15,000 modular housing units a year in Japan.

Predictability is one attraction. Home parts are made in a controlled environment and assembled on site, often in a matter of days, meaning weather is less of an issue. And prefab buildings produce about 50 to 75 percent less waste than site-built homes.

Ms. Kaufmann's first challenge was to find factories that would produce the parts necessary to assemble her homes.

"Factories wanted high volume," she said. And some of them did not want to take on the liability of manufacturing green but untested features, like countertops made of recycled paper.

Even when Ms. Kaufmann found factories that would create what she wanted, the alliances didn't always last. "We found a factory in Canada that worked well for a while," she said.

"But they got a big order to build workers' camps in Alaska and told us we would have to add six months to our project schedule, and they doubled the fee. Here we were in contract with a client - it was not acceptable for us to pass that on to them."

In late 2006, Ms. Kaufmann decided she had no choice but to buy or build her own factory. With capital from one of mkDesigns's partners, the company bought a modular-home factory in Seattle that was rapidly reconfigured to put out 14 homes a year.

To run the factory, Ms. Kaufmann hired away a manager who had been in charge of laptop production and distribution for Hewlett-Packard in Tokyo. This was in line with Ms. Kaufmann's vision of creating a hybrid company that straddled the line between architecture and product design.

"You could compare one of our homes to an iPod - a really well-designed product that can be customized with different skins and applications,” she said.

Having a manufacturing plant changed the game. "It allowed us to design the elements we wanted and to grow," Ms. Kaufmann said. "We were wearing two hats and the clients were getting a better product."

The factory was so successful that within two years, it became apparent that the company needed another - larger and more sophisticated. "We didn't start off with the fanciest factory," Ms. Kaufmann said. "We were in bootstrapping mode."

At the height of its success, mkDesigns employed 60 people in the design studio and the factory. Ms. Kaufmann attracted a number of investors willing to put up $100 million to help buy half a dozen factories across the United States.

In early 2008, before the economy turned, the firm found a plant in Sacramento that it thought would be perfect. Ms. Kaufmann decided to sell the Seattle plant but leased it back and kept production going.

When the economy did turn, the mortgage collapse made it increasingly difficult for clients to obtain loans. With business declining and the housing climate increasingly uncertain, Ms. Kaufmann decided not to buy the Sacramento plant.

"We realized others could do the job much more cheaply than us," Ms. Kaufmann said. Things had changed. Factories that had previously been reluctant to risk manufacturing unfamiliar parts were now phoning Ms. Kaufmann, hungry for work and offering competitive bids.

But then, in quick succession, two factories she had chosen to work with went out of business.

One had taken payment of $700,000 for two homes whose parts they had committed to produce, but mkDesigns had to finance the completion of both homes. The other factory left mkDesigns to finish work on homes whose parts were only partly delivered.

In hindsight, Ms. Kaufmann says she believes that one of her company's main issues was an inability to create economies of scale.

She and her partners had hoped that over time, and as the volume of their output grew, they would create more production and time efficiencies and that their costs would fall. Other practitioners have had similar problems.

"Volume is still one of our biggest challenges," said Todd Jerry, chief operating officer at Marmol Radziner Prefab. Ms. Kaufmann concedes, too, that she was sometimes overly optimistic about production expenses and priced her homes for less than they actually cost.

Last May, she came to the painful realization that while the company might have been able to cope with one challenge, it could not handle all of its difficulties at once: the collapsing housing market, the closing of the two factories, the financial hits. "We need to close," she told her staff, which had been pruned to 25.

It was a difficult time. "We had all invested so much of ourselves into the mission of making thoughtful, sustainable design accessible," Ms. Kaufmann said. "Closing was heartbreaking."

Last September, a fledgling prefab firm, Blu Homes of Boston, bought the rights to build mkDesigns' preconfigured home models.

Bill Haney, co-founder of Blu Homes, said the company had technologies that would allow it to make the homes more affordable. So far, none have been built. Ms. Kaufmann has opened an architectural studio.

A full-scale model of one of Ms. Kaufmann's homes, an mkSolaire, continues to stand on the grounds of the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, a spot that had been occupied previously by only one other house, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Erected in May 2008, Ms. Kaufmann's home features a solar-electric generation system and a living roof. Its purpose, according to the museum, is to "show consumers what the future may bring."

Source: NY Times
Photo: mkD-Arc

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Ladang Tongkat Ali Felda Wilayah Jengka

(Post: Bahasa Melayu)
" Populariti tumbuh-tumbuhan herba seperti tongkat ali atau nama saintifiknya Eurycoma Longifolia Jack di negara ini memang tidak perlu dipertikaikan lagi. Boleh dikatakan semua restoran dan kedai makan akan menyajikan minuman mengandungi tongkat ali kepada para pelanggannya. "

Permintaan yang tinggi itu menyebabkan munculnya banyak syarikat pengeluar minuman tongkat ali bagaikan cendawan tumbuh selepas hujan dengan menawarkan pelbagai kelebihan terutama memberi kekuatan tenaga batin.

Keistimewaan tongkat ali menjadi kegilaan kaum lelaki kerana percaya khasiat akarnya boleh menguatkan tenaga batin yang menjadi lambang 'kehebatan' sebenar kaum Adam.

Namun, tongkat ali bukan sahaja dikhaskan kepada kaum lelaki kerana khasiatnya adalah lebih daripada itu termasuk memberi kesegaran kepada pemandu jarak jauh dan ahli sukan.

Jika dahulu tongkat ali perlu dicari di hutan tebal tetapi kini tumbuh-tumbuhan herba itu banyak ditanam di kawasan kampung, kebun atau ladang secara komersial.

Di Pahang, tanaman herba tongkat ali secara komersial dirintis oleh Felda Wilayah Jengka yang menyedari potensi hebat spesies flora itu kepada kesihatan manusia sejagat.

Pengurusan Felda Wilayah Jengka menambah satu lagi koleksi ladangnya dengan memberi tumpuan kepada tanaman herba tongkat ali selepas berjaya melaksanakan projek ladang kelapa sawit dan getah.

Matlamat Felda Wilayah Jengka adalah untuk mengangkat tanaman herba tongkat ali sebagai salah satu produk kesihatan lelaki yang setanding dengan akar ginseng yang diusahakan di Korea.

Felda yang peka terhadap potensi pokok tongkat ali telah mengambil langkah tepat untuk memulakan projek tanaman herba tersebut di beberapa tanah rancangan di Wilayah Jengka.

Sebanyak tiga tanah rancangan di Felda Wilayah Jengka diberi insentif memulakan projek perintis itu iaitu Felda Sena Jengka 16, Felda Tonkin Jengka 23 dan Felda Sungai Tekam Getah.

Ketiga-tiga tanah rancangan itu dipilih berikutan kesesuaian tanahnya bagi tanaman tersebut.

Penyelia Felda Sena Jengka 16, Azwadi Hassan @ Hussien berkata, herba tongkat ali mula ditanam di tanah rancangan itu sejak lima tahun lalu.

Menurutnya, sebanyak 11,000 batang pokok ditanam di kawasan seluas 2.2 hektar yang kini mula menampakkan kejayaan.

Beliau menambah, kesuburan tanah jenis 'literat' dianggap amat sesuai dengan pokok tongkat ali apabila tiada sebatang pun yang mati walaupun dalam cuaca yang tidak menentu.

"Saya sentiasa memantau kemajuan projek ini dari semasa ke semasa berikutan harapan dan perhatian Ibu Pejabat Felda untuk melihat kejayaan ladang herba ini," katanya kepada Utusan Malaysia ketika ditemui di Felda Sena Jengka 16, Kuala Krau.

Azwadi menambah, pihaknya melantik seorang penjaga, Sapot Rantau, 35, untuk menjaga ladang tongkat ali itu terutama dari segi pembajaan dan kesuburan pokok.

Beliau memberitahu, tempoh matang tanaman tongkat ali ialah selama lima tahun sebelum boleh diproses untuk kegunaan pelbagai jenis produk kesihatan.

"Projek ini dimulakan semasa pengurus Felda Sena Jengka 16 dahulu, Mohd. Yusof Salleh menyokong penuh projek khas itu sebelum tugasnya diambil alih oleh Pengurus sekarang, Abdul Rahman Ahmad," jelasnya.

Apa yang menarik tambah Azwadi, ladang tongkat ali Felda Jengka 16 pernah dijadikan lokasi penggambaran filem 'Lembah Bilut' beberapa tahun lalu.

Beliau menjelaskan, projek ladang tongkat ali di Felda Jengka 16 itu secara tidak langsung membuka mata sebahagian peneroka bahawa potensi herba tersebut boleh diusahakan secara komersial.

Sapot pula mengakui bahawa penjagaan pokok tongkat ali amat mudah kerana ia tahan lasak sejajar dengan kehebatan nama dan khasiatnya.

"Saya tidak menghadapi kesukaran untuk menjaganya kerana ia sukar diserang penyakit sebagaimana tanaman lain seperti cili dan sayur-sayuran," jelasnya.

Seorang peneroka Felda Sena Jengka 16, Hamzah Tawang, 50, mengakui bahawa tanggapannya sebelum ini bahawa tongkat ali hanya boleh diperoleh di hutan adalah meleset sama sekali.

Beliau tidak menyangka pokok tongkat ali boleh ditanam di mana-mana sekali pun di halaman rumah.

"Saya akan mengikuti langkah positif Felda untuk menanam tongkat ali di kawasan lapang berhampiran rumah saya kerana ia mampu menjana pendapatan sampingan yang agak lumayan," katanya.

Menurutnya, anak syarikat Felda, Felda Herbal Corporations Bhd. yang mengusaha jualan langsung produk herba pastinya memerlukan bekalan secara berterusan berikutan permintaan tinggi daripada pengguna tempatan dan luar negara.

Sehubungan itu, beliau mencadangkan kepada Felda supaya proaktif menyalur dan mengagihkan benih tongkat ali kepada peneroka yang berminat mengusahakan projek tersebut.

Ketua Kampung Felda Sena Jengka 16, Ismail Abdul Rahman berterima kasih kepada Felda kerana memilih tanah rancangan itu sebagai projek perintis tanaman tongkat ali di Pahang.

Katanya, jika dahulu penduduk hanya mengenali nama tongkat ali, namun kini mereka dapat melihat sendiri bentuk dan perubahan pembesaran pokok itu dari semasa ke semasa sehingga tempoh matang.

Beliau menambah, dalam usaha mempertingkatkan hasil pengeluaran tanaman herba seperti tongkat ali, Felda perlu memperluaskan projek tersebut di tanah-tanah rancangan lain di Jengka.

"Jika tanah di Felda Jengka 16 dianggap sesuai untuk tanaman tongkat ali, saya percaya tanah-tanah rancangan Felda lain di Jengka juga amat sesuai untuk tanaman itu," ujarnya.

Beliau yakin Felda Wilayah Jengka mampu menjadi pengeluar tongkat ali terbesar jika ia dilakukan bersungguh-sungguh dengan kerjasama semua pihak termasuk peneroka.

"Jika selama ini Felda Wilayah Jengka terkenal sebagai pengeluar terbesar hasil sawit dan getah, tidak mustahil suatu hari nanti ia menjadi pengeluar terkemuka tongkat ali pula," katanya.

Sumber: Utusan Malaysia Online

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Kit Pembelajaran Sains USM

(Post: Bahasa Melayu)
" Kesukaran guru-guru di pedalaman untuk mengajar mata pelajaran sains kini dipermudahkan dengan adanya kit pembelajaran khas ciptaan sekumpulan penyelidik Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). "

Kit berkenaan menumpukan aspek pembelajaran sains dengan cara lebih praktikal terutama kepada pelajar yang lemah.

"Modul kit pembelajaran sains sekolah rendah itu adalah hasil kajian yang dilakukan selama setahun terhadap corak pembelajaran murid-murid di beberapa sekolah di kawasan pedalaman Sabah," kata Ketua penyelidik, Dr. Hashimah Mohd. Yunus.

Beliau turut dibantu oleh Dr. Nooraida Yacoob, Dr. Norizan Esa dan Dr. Nordin Abdul Razak melalui geran serta peruntukan daripada Yayasan Sabah (YS) sebanyak RM2.7 juta serta kerjasama Jabatan Pelajaran Negeri Sabah (JPNS).

Hashimah yang juga pensyarah Pusat Pengajian Ilmu Pendidikan (PPIP) berkata, kajian itu meliputi pelajar luar bandar di kawasan pulau, persisir pantai, kaki bukit dan pedalaman negeri itu untuk dijadikan kajian dengan kerjasama JPNS.

"Tahap pencapaian dan kebolehan murid di kawasan-kawasan ini amat berbeza, kebanyakannya tidak mampu mengikuti sukatan pelajaran sains yang dibuat oleh kementerian."

"Sehubungan itu, kita cipta satu kit mudah alih yang berupaya menarik minat mereka untuk mengikuti subjek berkenaan menggunakan barang-barang yang biasa dilihat dan dekat dengan diri serta persekitaran mereka," katanya.

Kit tersebut direka untuk disesuaikan mengikut kebolehan murid-murid tersebut dengan memasukkan unsur-unsur persekitaran mereka sebagai elemen pembelajaran.

Kit pembelajaran tersebut juga telah dipertandingkan pada Ekspo Sains Malaysia 2010 di Kuala Lumpur dan mendapat pingat gangsa bagi kategori Inovasi Penyelidikan.

"Berpandukan sukatan sains sekolah rendah, kita hasilkan kit yang di dalamnya mengandungi empat komponen iaitu Panduan Guru, Aktiviti Murid, Penilaian Murid dan Kit Sains."

"Kit sains ini mengandungi pelbagai bahan mengajar untuk guru dan murid-murid misalnya termometer, anak patung, tin kosong dan klip kertas mengikut tema subjek sains yang dipilih," jelasnya.

Jjelas Hashimah, murid-murid akan diuji tahap kebolehan mereka terhadap mata pelajaran itu sebelum menggunakan kit tersebut.

Sementara itu, Dekan PPIP, Prof. Abdul Rashid Mohamed pula menjelaskan, barisan penyelidik terlibat mula mendemonstrasikan kit tersebut di sekolah-sekolah pedalaman Sabah bermula Jun sebelum ia dikormesialkan.

Kit yang dianggarkan bernilai RM696 setiap satu itu dibangunkan dengan kerjasama penuh Yayasan Sabah dan Jabatan Pelajaran Negeri (JPN) Sabah.

"Perkembangan masa depan bergantung kepada pihak berkenaan (Yayasan Sabah dan JPN). Namun sehingga kini kedua-dua pihak berbesar hati untuk tidak mengehadkan penggunaan kit tersebut kerana ia bersifat universal dan boleh digunapakai oleh semua," katanya.

Sumber: Kosmo! Online

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Young Food Entrepreneurs

(Post: English)
" This is my investment in the future right now," said Fabiana Lee, 26, an interior designer who lost her job in 2009. She has been selling at the Greenpoint Food Market, Brooklyn, since its inception in October. After experimenting with cookies (too much competition), she has pared her offerings down to two: gorgeously browned empanadas and irresistibly twee "cake pops", golf-ball-size rounds of cake perched on lollipop sticks. At the moment, they are her main source of income. "

Young, college-educated, Internet-savvy, unemployed and hoping to find a place in the food world outside the traditional route, she is typical of the city's dozens of new food entrepreneurs.

As the next generation of cooks comes of age, it seems that many might bypass restaurant kitchens altogether.

Instead, they see themselves driving trucks full of artisanal cheese around the country, founding organic breweries, bartering vegan pâtés for grass-fed local beef, or (most often) making it big in baking as the next Magnolia Bakery.

Joann Kim, 26, who organizes the market, cited the intersection of the economic downturn and the rise of the local artisanal food movement as reasons for the recent flowering of small culinary start-ups.

Aspiring cooks (and the adventurous eaters who love them) come face to face at markets like this one, which are opening and expanding at a brisk pace.

The Brooklyn Flea, the Hester Street Fair and the soon-to-reopen New Amsterdam Market have become tasting destinations, where handmade food is as much of a fetish as vintage Ray-Bans or bargello pillowcases.

The all-food Greenpoint market, which is open to home cooks of all stripes, is one-stop shopping: Mexican-Indian tacos, artisanal soda pop, roof-grown produce, exotic chili peppers, long-brined pickles, Taiwanese street food and retro-Southern snacks under one roof.

"I feel like I'm at a science fair and I get to eat all the experiments," said Erin Massey, a Chicago native who lives in Brooklyn. "It's like going to a music festival with all the different bands, only here it's different kinds of kombucha."

There were almost 50 vendors. Many had been up since dawn, rolling rice balls, filling containers with waffle batter, crimping pie crusts. In headscarves, retro-chic aprons and all manner of eyewear, they skidded around the crowded basement, jockeying for electrical outlets and space.

"We do whatever it takes," said Nicole Asselin, who brought tiny pies filled with organic rhubarb, chocolate chip cookies (to be warmed in the hot-pink oven) and logs of butter mashed with wild ramps that she had gathered in Vermont.

Each vendor had paid $25 to $50 for a table. The cash they earned was theirs to keep. At $4 an ice pop or $3 an empanada, the margins on many products seemed high, but some of the vendors who have been operating without official certification may soon see their profits shrink.

On May 28, the New York Department of Health confirmed that all food vendors in the city must have a food handling permit, and may use only approved commercial kitchens.

Renting space in a commercial kitchen costs about $200 for eight hours. For some vendors like Ms. Lee, who is in the process of getting her permit, that would mean the difference between making a small profit and just breaking even on a day at the market.

Some of the vendors were amateurs there on a lark, to earn brownie bragging rights and a little spending money.

But for many, the stakes were much higher. In these markets, cooks like Laena McCarthy of Anarchy in a Jar, who makes extraordinary preserves from local fruit, have a shot at developing a viable food business without working with a commercial processor, such as the large food companies that she deems "evil agribusiness warlords."

(Her company's motto is "The Revolution Starts in Your Mouth.") Ms. McCarthy's jams have recently been picked up for sale by a Whole Foods store in Manhattan; for her, and others, a national distribution deal is the dream.

But for now, most of the vendors have a "day job" of some kind. Ms. McCarthy works as a librarian and teaches library science. Ms. Asselin is a pastry chef at Marlow & Sons in Williamsburg. Jun Aizaki, who makes Japanese rice balls called onigiri, wrapped in and scented with banana leaves, has designed the interiors of New York restaurants such as Rayuela and Macondo.

Two eminent but unemployed pastry chefs - Fany Gerson and Hannah Goldberg - banded together to start La Newyorkina, making delicious Mexican-style paletas, or ice pops, in flavors like mango, guava and horchata (cinnamon-rice).

They have been selling outdoors at the new Hester Street Fair, and handed out mini-paletas to children to draw their parents in.

"If we first build a following at the markets and online," Ms. Goldberg said, "then we can get the money to open a storefront that much more easily."

Professionals like Ms. Goldberg say that a commitment to marketing, packaging and general hustling are as important - or more so - as kitchen skills. Twitter, Facebook, Etsy, Tumblr and Blogspot are important for spreading the word; so are the city's many new amateur cooking contests, like the Brooklyn Pie Bake-Off; so are food shops with a commitment to local artisans, like Blue Apron Foods in Park Slope and the Northern Spy Food Company in the East Village.

Ms. Lee is still deciding whether her business, La Tía Faby, will focus on empanadas or cake pops. Growing up in Buenos Aires, she said, she set her sights early on a life in New York City.

"I was used to being the only Asian girl at school," said Ms. Lee, whose parents were born in South Korea and now own a knitwear company in Argentina; she is fluent in English, Spanish and Korean.

"But I loved the mix of people and food in New York." Ms. Lee said that her mother, who served steak with kimchi on many nights, taught her the basics of cooking, both Argentine and Asian.

Ms. Lee's chorizo and kimchi empanadas with Korean glass noodles are pleated down the edge, like huge Chinese dumplings; the spinach and mushroom version is folded like a fortune cookie.

Ms. Lee moved to New York to study interior design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn; when she graduated in 2006, she quickly found a job at a downtown firm. But in early 2009, she said, the effects of the stock market downturn began to hit.

"It was almost a relief when I got laid off like everyone else," she said. "Better than sitting at my desk waiting for it to happen." Then she spotted an online open call for vendors at the Greenpoint market.

Ms. Lee is still unemployed, but she has never worked harder, she said, trying to build a viable business one bite at a time.

The day before the Greenpoint market, in her sixth-floor walkup in Chelsea, Ms. Lee folded hundreds of empanadas and painstakingly decorated dozens of cake pops to look like pale yellow chicks, using sprinkles and edible inks she orders from online candy suppliers.

(Cake pops and cake balls, made by mixing fresh cake crumbs with frosting, then dipping balls of the mixture into "candy melt" for a smooth, Ring-Ding-like coating, are up-to-the-minute successors to the no longer trendy cupcake.)

"Transportation is by far the biggest stress," said Ms. Lee, who must travel by subway or taxi to Greenpoint; there are many casualties among the empanadas.

But her wares have always sold out, so far. All day at the market, women exclaimed over the cake pops and asked about custom orders for baby showers and birthday parties; only a few of these inquiries have ever panned out.

She took home about $500 in cash, having sold out by 3 p.m.

One of the charms of the food-market scene is an Old World sense of cozy community: everyone seems to know one another. But this also means a race to capture shoppers before somebody else does.

At Greenpoint, two vendors of kombucha were stationed right across from each other, and there was more than one seller of pickles, fizzy drinks and gluten-free muffins.

"I didn't know there would be another granola," said Alex Crosier of Granola Lab, eyeballing the competition for her ginger-molasses and cranberry-cashew mixtures.

At the end of the day, said Ms. Asselin, the vendors are very tired, very thirsty (much of the food is very sweet, very salty or both) and not much richer.

"It's hard work," said Hannah Goldberg, speaking about her time at the Hester Street Fair. "Our ancestors came through the Lower East Side to find a better life, and our parents think it's crazy that we're back here selling from a pushcart."

Soource: NY Times

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