Business

A new tech company is being called "an Uber for advertisers." Wrapify, which rolled out its product less than one month ago in San Diego and San Francisco, connects companies with drivers, wrapping their cars with branded, vinyl graphics and marketing messages. In other words, it acts as a vehicle advertising middleman. So far, Wrapify has nearly 10 brands on board and almost 2,000 drivers interested. Some of the brands already using Wrapify include Petco, Coldcock, Whisky, HomeHero, Captiv8.io, and Unreel.io. Thanks to its early successes, Wrapify is speeding up its plans to launch in Los Angeles, Orange County, and Atlanta by this Fall. The way it works is pretty simple. Wrapify's drivers download its mobile app, which only engages with their personal vehicles. GPS tracks the vehicle's...

When it comes to clutter, 80% of people think that it stops productivity right in its tracks --but what about clutter on your social networking sites? Anyone with a Facebook account knows how this story goes: You're scrolling down your newsfeed, looking for updates from friends and family, and suddenly you see a photo of a baby. You look to see which "friend" posted it and realize it's that girl you went to camp with for one week back when you were 12. Sure, it's cute, but you don't know this kid. It's downright irrelevant, and quite frankly, cluttering your Facebook newsfeed. According to the Journal Gazette there is, apparently, a reason to Facebook's seemingly senseless newsfeed rhyme; the social networking giant employs a software that compiles information based on a range of infor...

They say that diamonds are a girl's best friend. But what about $160,000 worth of stolen jewelry? On July 13th, Marie Anne Khanh Hodang, a JC Penney employee, was caught with $160,382 worth of jewelry from the store located in Jackson, Florida. Hodang stole the jewelry from the Avenue Mall department store over the period of a month, strategically paying for some items in-between with her employee discount. According to First Coast News, Jackson County Police Department was contacted after the store's loss prevention officer calculated that over $100,000 worth of merchandise had gone missing over the past month. Upon this realization, the store manager was alerted and kept an eyeful watch on his employees. The manager checked the security camera tapes and saw Hodang leaving the JC Penn...

Like many other Silicon Valley businesses, Apple is coming to Seattle. The tech giant has rented out about 30,000 square feet at Two Union Square, a downtown Seattle office tower. The tower is the third tallest in Seattle at 56 stories high. Apple has chosen spaces on part of the 45th floor and all of the 44th floor. Combined, they have enough space for between 120 and 200 workers, according to industry estimates. So far the company hasn't explained why they've expanded to this new location, but they did open an engineering office in Seattle back in November. Apple isn't the only company looking for permanent or temporary office space in Seattle. In addition to corporations like Microsoft and Amazon, Facebook and Google have also established a presence in the region. E-commerce giant ...

Economists have been calling it the Costco version of Amazon, targeting the budget-conscious consumers who typically shop at discount stores without sacrificing the convenience that e-commerce businesses, like Amazon, provide. But will startup company Jet.com be able to live up to its hype and actually become viable competition for corporate giants like Wal-Mart, Target, and even Costco itself? Jet.com finally opened its virtual doors at the end of July after “months of testing and tweaking,” according to Newsday. It isn’t so much about the products that Jet is offering, nor is it about providing customers with simple browsing and fast shipping. Instead, Jet’s business model is what has industry experts talking; the e-commerce merchant has combined a subscription service similar to Amazo...

According to a letter from FedEx to federal regulators, the shipping giant is no longer willing to transport packages containing research specimens of bioterror pathogens. FedEx communications director Melissa Charbonneau said in a recent statement that the decision came in response to concerns over the military's recent shipments of anthrax. Now, the company is no longer planning to resume shipments of "select agents," the federal government's term for 65 different types of viruses, bacteria, and toxins highly regulated because of their bioterror potential. In addition to anthrax, Ebola, and the pathogens causing plague and botulism are also considered special agents. FedEx's refusal to ship special agents concerns major laboratory officials, who say that they primarily used FedEx to sh...

The student loan debt crisis has hit its peak, according to many economists and education officials, and it almost seems like the crisis can't get any worse. Except that a business called Student Financial Aid Services, which "helps" people apply for financial aid for higher education, has apparently been taking money out of the accounts of its clients without their consent. According to the Washington Post, the company has taken out at least $5.2 million from the accounts of 100,000 people. After the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) accused the company of this practice, it didn't take long for the Sacramento-based service to deny the allegations yet agree to refund the money to "settle the charges." According to the Huffington Post, the federal government is not afraid to shut ...

Cleaning carpets isn't that hard when you consider the fact that 99% of all stains can be removed by one cleaning agent or another if they're taken care of in a few days. However, keeping carpets clean costs enough time and money for Olive Garden to scale back on its cleanliness. According to BloombergBusiness, Olive Garden's parent company, Darden Restaurants, has dispatched operations teams to the restaurants to pull "every single invoice" in an effort to find ways to trim about $100 million a year in expenses. Through this investigation, the teams have found that many locations are washing their carpets twice a month, which CEO Gene Lee thinks is far too often. The crazy part is, he's not entirely wrong. There are over 800 Olive Gardens. Paying a service to come in and wash each restaur...

More than two-thirds of home renovation businesses are seeing revenues and profits equal or greater to pre-recessional levels, according to a new analysis, and about one-fifth of firms are reporting that their revenues and profits are significantly higher. Online home design platform Houzz released on July 22 its Q2 2015 Houzz Renovation Barometer, which measures how confident home renovation professionals are regarding the strength of the industry. “A large majority of home renovation firms on Houzz report a return to pre-recession revenues and profits, irrespective of industry segment or firm size,” said Nino Sitchinava, Houzz principal economist, in a news release. The latest edition of the study also found that there have been very slight year-over-year gains and quite strong quarte...

Domestic violence hurts men, women, and families all over the world, but on Tuesday, July 21, one U.S. group offered up a solution to this serious problem -- providing victims with free domestic violence attorneys. The Institute for Policy Integrity is a nonpartisan think tank, and they recently released a new report detailing the financial burden too often placed on women in violent relationships. Female victims of intimate partner violence often miss work or incur expensive hospital bills after an injury. Such expenses prolong both the cycle of debt and the cycle of violence, especially if the victims become more financially dependent on their abuser. "From obtaining a simple restraining order to preventing a violent abuser from obtaining custody, the availability of a knowledgeable an...