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Talk about a big idea and innovative product that this entrepreneur started!

Anthony & James Tiscione are the father/son inventors behind the ACM Wallet - a specially designed wallet that allows you to protect & select up to 12 of your favorite credit, ID and membership cards at the push of a button.

The idea for the ACM Wallet came to James while he was returning home from the supermarket. Up until then, James carried his credit cards wrapped in cash and held together with a rubber band. This often resulted in demagnetized credit cards and torn cash. James felt there had to be a better way - and with the help of his father, he created a prototype of his idea.

To date, the ACM Wallet has generated $5.5 million in sales…making it our pick for the MILLION DOLLAR IDEA OF THE WEEK.

CNBC

The evening was to be a launch, of sorts. The Durham Bulls were opening an eight-game home stand June 14. What better way to promote the wind-in-your-face fun of a pedicab ride than offering free pregame rides from the parking lot to the ballpark?

“A limited audience, I guess, ” Dana Di Maio said as he sat on his dark blue pedicab after the game started. “I took three rides total … no, four.”

Di Maio is the part-time pedicab coordinator for Greenway Transit, part of a Durham nonprofit pushing a variety of “green” initiatives ranging from its fleet of biodiesel buses and vans to biofuels to Third World fair trade.

Right now Di Maio is also the only driver for the two pedicabs that over time he hopes will become part of the streetscape linking the American Tobacco Historic District, downtown Durham, Brightleaf Square and Ninth Street. He’s looking for drivers and exposure, some of which the pedicabs will get Saturday in the parade that accompanies Durham Rising.

Di Maio’s first riders of the evening last week couldn’t pass up the free novelty, which came with their confession: “I’m lazy,” said both Curtis Walker, 18, and Michael Leathers, 19, before jumping into the pedicab for a brisk three-minute ride from the East Pettigrew Street parking deck around the corner to the ballpark’s front entrance on Blackwell Street. Among the other riders were a middle-aged couple and two younger women.

“The people seemed to like it,” Di Maio said. “One person said it was like New York.”

Durham News

Nine years ago, Seth Goldman walked into a Whole Foods Market Inc. store with an empty bottle bearing a mocked-up label and five thermoses of iced tea he brewed in his kitchen.

He walked out with a purchase order for 15,000 bottles, the first step of a journey that has transformed him from the marketing manager of a social investment fund to the chief executive of Honest Tea, a beverage company he said will have sales of nearly $25 million this year.

Honest Tea is one of many independent drink makers carving out space in the increasingly fragmented U.S. nonalcoholic drinks market, worth about $105 billion a year, to the detriment of established companies.

With hits including Glaceau’s vitaminwater, which comes in rainbow hues, and Red Bull’s energy drink, agile start-ups are gaining traction as consumers seek alternatives to the traditional soft drinks sold by the industry giants.

“Unfortunately, the consumer is not cooperating with big brands the way they have in the past,” said Charles Frenette, a former chief marketing officer for Coca-Cola Co. and Miller Brewing Co. Continue reading →

Ekwa Labs, recently announced the launch of their premier product ekwa (www.ekwa.com) which is the world’s first comprehensive online viral marketing tool. ekwa offers ekwa lite FREE for any one who wants a communication or viral marketing tool online to promote themselves or their business.

Ekwa lite comes to you equipped with excellent free marketing strategies developed by our industry specialists after extensive research. These features are designed to suit both individuals and businesses to grow their community and customers as necessary. Some of the free features of ekwa lite include;

• Free Blogs – By using blogs you can post interesting articles about you and your company and get customer feedback.

• Free Banners – You can upload banners for others to link to you and your products through other websites.

• News – Now you can manage all your news such as event marketing, product introductions, trade shows and grand openings.

• Photo Album – Photo Albums is a great way for you to share different photos regarding you and your company.

• Testimonials – Manage the recommendations you get from the satisfied customers which can ultimately be your best form of viral marketing.

“We wanted to create something completely new and totally free for all the people who wanted to carry out their viral marketing and reach their customers with a whole new experience” explains Continue reading →

Looking For Inspiration Today?

Check out this collection of videos about social entrepreneurs from around the world. It’s called the FRONTLINE/World series.

This special site will feature the stories of people whose ideas and organizations create new and sustainable markets and services that benefit underserved communities everywhere in the developing world.

In a nutshell, these are stories about individuals whose ideas leap beyond charity to find systemic solutions to poverty, education, health and social justice.

FRONTLINE/World has profiled a computer engineer in India who puts Internet kiosks in poor neighborhoods throughout his country, helping bridge the digital divide for thousands of children. In Kenya a world-class long-distance runner uses her prize money to start a training camp for poor village women, like herself, whose lives are changed forever.

In South Africa a business entrepreneur invents and installs a merry-go-round pushed round by children that pumps enough water for a village of 2,500, making the delivery of clean water child’s play. In Guatemala, an American coffee distributor helps develop organic growers among the region’s poor farmers, whose beans can be marketed as “fair trade” providing them a living wage.

In Uganda, two young social entrepreneurs develop a revolutionary model for microlending, using the Internet to connect borrowers with lenders, person to person, a venture that has grown from one small village in Africa to 11 countries around the world.

PBS

From the start, entrepreneur Kazumasa Terada had his eye on the global market.

Using celebrities like the Hilton sisters in 2002 to promote his handbag label, Terada has turned Samantha Thavasa into a household name in Japan, and is on the verge of bigger things abroad.

With the opening of the first outlet overseas on Madison Avenue in New York City in November, Terada, 41, has moved a step closer to his long-cherished ambition: to transform Samantha Thavasa into a world-class brand.

Terada’s promotional tactics of tapping famous fashion icons as ad models and designers for Samantha Thavasa have proved effective.

“We had a showroom in New York more than 10 years ago and the Hilton sisters were frequent customers,” Terada, president of Samantha Thavasa Japan Ltd., said in a recent interview with The Japan Times.

When they came to the reception, Terada approached them and asked if they would be interested in promoting Samantha Thavasa items.

Others on the list of worldwide celebrities who represent Samantha Thavasa products in advertising campaigns are Victoria Beckham, Beyonce, Maria Sharapova, Penelope and Monica Cruz, Tinsley Mortimer and, most recently, Sarah Jessica Parker.

Japan Times

Thought about an innovative new small business as a graphic designer? How about digital photo retouching services for a change.

A new online company called Pixilu Imaging Inc. provides professional retouching services as an online service. You upload digital photos and Pixilu’s graphic artists review each photo and perform color correction, acne removal, facial lines reduction, teeth whitening, and enhanced red-eye correction. The cost varies from $1.49 to $9.99 per photo.

They do pretty incredible work. Check out how they fixed (well, improved ever so slightly… sorry Guy) Guy Kawasaki’s picture.

What do you get when you cross online classified ads with web-based video? Realpeoplerealstuff.com is equal parts Craigslist and YouTube—a whole new way for customers to reach out to one another to sell their used appliances, automobiles, collectibles, concert tickets and countless other goods and services. “Realpeoplerealstuff.com combines the hottest internet trends in one, easy-to-use site: e-commerce, snarky writing, funny videos, everyone’s desire to be a star and video sharing.”

With a few clicks of a mouse, customers can upload their own video commercials, recorded on their camcorders, webcams, digital cameras or cameraphones. Ads are organized by category and location, and users can enter text descriptions, prices, thumbnail photos and tags along with their video clips. For best results, users are encouraged to engage their personality, creativity and sense of humour when filming their commercials. And who knows? One may well turn out to be the next average Joe or Jane launched into internet stardom. The service is entirely free—for now at least, though there may come a day when, like Craigslist, modest charges apply to select portions.

Realpeoplerealstuff.com improves on two of the top trends on the internet—videos and classified ads—by combining them. And it’s a smart new use of personal video, especially considering the number of people who are growing accustomed to using their cellphones or digicams to create and upload their own videos. With classifieds, videos obviously a useful extra layer of information, especially when it comes to renting apartments or selling cars and other large items. Definitely one to start up locally.

Vail Horton, the co-founder and CEO of Keen Mobility (keenmobility.com), likes to glide along the hallway of his headquarters in Portland, Ore., on his wooden skateboard, checking in with employees who might need an extra jolt of encouragement or a laugh with their morning coffee.

Wearing Dragon sunglasses and a dazzling smile, the man who runs this medical-device manufacturer might seem like any other brash, 30-year-old entrepreneur - with one striking difference: Horton leaves his legs behind in his office, propped up against his giant desk.

Horton was born without legs or a fully developed right hand, and doctors told his parents he would never be able to walk. But after consultations with rehabilitation experts and months of intense physical therapy at home, Horton took his first steps at age 4 with the aid of crutches and prostheses. He has been exceeding expectations ever since.

While still an undergraduate business major at the University of Portland, he developed chronic pain in his shoulders from the prolonged wear and tear of walking on crutches. Instead of resorting to a wheelchair, he came up with a new kind of crutch, using shock absorbers at the base to lessen the impact. Realizing that he had coincidentally discovered a promising market, Horton and his roommate, Jerry Carleton (now vice president of business development), decided to start a company that could help others overcome disabilities.

The two launched Keen Mobility in 2002, naming their startup for the grandfather who encourage Horton at every turn, and giving it a lofty goal: to better the lives of customers who are elderly or disabled.

Today Keen designs and manufactures about 35 “assistive devices,” from collapsable wheelchairs and pressure-relieving foam cushions to adjustable walkers that open wide to help stabilize patients as they try to rise from a bed or a chair. Supported by a staff of 17, Horton has built a profitable business with revenues of $2 million in 2006, up from $1.2 million in 2005.

CNN

With his rimless eyeglasses and natty suit, 35-year-old Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen looks like the kind of CEO who enjoys a fine red. Less likely is the image of him slurping that Bordeaux through a bright blue straw the size of a fat kazoo. But slurp he has, and not just wine: he’s also tasted soda, pond water, and water from a lake in Nairobi through the gizmo.

“You have to suck pretty hard at first to get it moist, but after that it’s easy,” he says of the LifeStraw, the portable water filter manufactured by his Danish company.

Most of the LifeStraw’s users will never drink anything fancier than plain water through the device. But its impact on their lives can’t be overstated. More than 1 billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water, and 6,000 people die each day of waterborne diseases like typhoid, cholera and dysentery.

In regions like sub-Saharan Africa, half of most people’s water consumption takes place outside the home—either while they’re working, or walking to and from school. Vestergaard Frandsen S.A.—which also produces mosquito nets and plastic sheeting coated with insecticide to fend off malaria—hopes that the $3 LifeStraw will drastically lessen their chances of getting sick. “It’s a product that can save lives without spare parts, electricity or maintenance,” says the firm’s CEO. So far about 2,000 LifeStraws have been sold, mostly to aid agencies. (The product is still being fine-tuned for mass production.)

MSNBC