Small Businesses Offer Alternatives to Gang Life

In Los Angeles, a corporation that runs several small businesses is demonstrating that the training and discipline of working in a small company can make a big contribution to changing the lives of former gang members.

The corporation, Homeboy Industries, runs a silkscreen business, for example, that produced revenue of $1.1 million last year from sales of custom T-shirts and other apparel for radio stations running promotions and college and private groups holding events. The business employs former gang members to make the T-shirts and uses the money to help offset the corporation’s expenses. Homeboy Silkscreen started 12 years ago in a converted warehouse under a freeway overpass near downtown Los Angeles and now has 18 employees.

Homeboy Bakery has a new plant that has $3 million in ovens and machinery and its managers hope to produce millions of dollars in revenue within a year or two, said the master baker, Alvaro Ocegueda. He supervises 25 former gang members who have become bakers under his guidance and with professional training at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College, a two-year community college.

There is also a Homegirl Café, that has a staff of 27 girls who were “gang impacted” either as auxiliary gang members or as residents of neighborhoods under gang influence. The cafe has brought in more than $220,000 in five months of serving breakfast and lunch six days a week, said Patricia Zarate, who cooks for and manages the business.

Homeboy Maintenance takes in about $6,000 a month, and a Homeboy retail store sold $25,000 in Homeboy shirts and caps in a recent three-month period.

Though it may sound like a budding conglomerate, Homeboy is a nonprofit charitable corporation that last year had a budget of $5 million and goals that emphasize rehabilitation over revenue.

“The aim of the cash-producing businesses is that they bring in enough to pay for the free services,” said the Rev. Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest who founded Homeboy Industries in East Los Angeles two decades ago and is now its executive director. Those services include mental therapy for former gang members, housing assistance, job development counseling and tattoo removal treatments.

The tattoo removals are not a fashion statement but a safety concern. Gang tattoos are a marker of the rivalries among the 26,000 members of Los Angeles’s 250 gangs, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. Many gangs have been in existence for decades, and, police department figures show, their activities in the last five years have resulted in 12,000 assaults, 10,000 robberies, 784 homicides and 500 rapes.

Twenty years ago, when he was assigned to Dolores Mission Church, the poorest parish in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles , Father Boyle decided to try employment as a way to break the cycle of gangs, crime and imprisonment for the neighborhood’s young men. He tried to persuade businesses to hire reforming gang members through a parish organization he called Jobs for a Future. Then, in 1992, he bought an abandoned bakery with a contribution from Ray Stark, the Hollywood producer (“Funny Girl,”, “California Suite,” and “Annie” among others). Father Boyle put a half dozen former gang members — “homeboys” in street parlance — to work cleaning up the bakery and producing tortillas for sale. Tortilla sales led to making bread for a large baking company that supplied restaurants.

That ultimately led to Homeboy bakers being trained at Mi Vida-My Life, a family bakery run by Mr. Ocegueda, who tutored them in the mystical tradition of baking. “You knead the dough by hand and all of the tensions and the spirit you are feeling go into the bread,” Mr. Ocegueda said in an interview.

Homeboy Bakery was offered a grant to buy an automatic dough mixer, Mr. Ocegueda said. “But Father Greg said no, it is better to have them knead by hand because we can employ more people.”

The assignment seems anachronistic because Homeboy Bakery, with its gleaming new ovens and storage bins, is now housed in the Fran and Ray Stark Homeboy Industries headquarters, an $8.5 million center built with philanthropic contributions and opened last October.

But Homeboy’s emphasis is on putting gang members to work. “Our most important task is job training,” Father Boyle said in a telephone interview from Italy, where he is on a three-month sabbatical to write a book on Homeboy’s work in reclaiming lives. Indeed, Mr. Ocegueda’s assignment is to double the number of Homeboy bakers to 50 next year. The jobs pay $9 to $10 an hour, with health benefits after the employee is on the job three months. The aim is to introduce gang members to the discipline of work and eventually to graduate them to jobs in the commercial marketplace.

The Homeboy organization conducts thousands of job development interviews every year, with Father Boyle seeing more than 50 people a day. In his current absence, the chief operating officer, Veronica Vargas, is taking on that work. The organization is now compiling a database of all the people who have been helped or treated through the years, said Mona Hobson, director of development.

The organization is also anticipating expansion. The new Homeboy headquarters, a few blocks from Los Angeles City Hall, “gives us a chance to reach out to African-American gangs; our focus is countywide,” Father Boyle said.

The new center has spurred ideas for growth among supervisors of the businesses, some of whom were once troubled youths but not gang members. “I was a tagger,” a graffiti painter, said Rosaliano Mendez, who heads the maintenance business. “I dropped out of school, but I went back and now I’m studying for an associate degree in business.”

Mr. Mendez sees opportunity for expansion in commercial office cleaning. Eric Bennett, who heads the retail operation, said he “met Father Greg when I was in some trouble.” Mr. Bennett said he was hopeful that “we can spread the Homeboy brand in off- campus stores not only in California but across the country.”

Homeboy Industries’ board, whose members are business and professional people, would like to see expansion. “I think the bakery should be bringing in $4 million to $5 million in revenue per year,” said David Adams, the chairman of real estate investment firms in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles and the chief fund-raiser for the new Homeboy headquarters.

At the moment, the bakery is close to signing a big order for bread and pastries from a chain of coffeehouse restaurants and is seeking other big customers.

Ruben Rodriguez, who with his wife, Cristina, heads the silk screen business, also says he believes expansion is possible. A big factor for Mr. Rodriguez, one of the longest-serving Homeboy supervisors — “I met Father Greg at a bad time in my life.” — is that “Father Greg does all the marketing” for Homeboy products and services.

A question for Homeboy Industries, which is common to all small businesses, is whether the company could go on and prosper without its entrepreneurial founder. Father Boyle, 54 and healthy today, survived leukemia six years ago.

“Several years ago, I might have doubted that it could,” said Michael Hennigan, president of the Homeboy directors and founder of a Los Angeles law firm. “But today I think the organization is large enough and talent from the Jesuit order and elsewhere would come forward. The organization will go on and prosper.”

[Via - New York Times]

Why Cracks Are Good For Business

The Crack Team is a home-service franchise, specializing in concrete crack repairs. Started in 1985 by Mike ‘The Ray Kroc of Crack’ Koder, The Crack Team was developed to address repetitive concerns of homeowners who were faced with the inevitable leaking cracks often found in basements. Koder, a homebuilder for over 30 years, began working with technology that was both a permanent and cost-effective solution to these leaky concerns. His methods were an ideal alternative to the otherwise costly expense of replacement or more in-depth repairs for concrete foundations and other concrete structures.

As Koder’s business grew to more than 1,000 customers a year, he moved forward and developed a line of exclusive crack repair products that are considered to be some of the best in the industry. He also paved the way for others to join the Crack Team by opening franchising opportunities to entrepreneurs in North America who are looking for a niche service company with year-round work availability, repairing basements, garages, sidewalks, and patios. The industry has little competition and the Crack Team franchise offers on-going technical training and support for both the proven system of crack repair, as well as the exclusive line of repair products.

The Crack Team has gained a national reputation as an innovative company with the highest standards for providing excellent customer service. The company mascot, Mr. Happy Crack, proposes the memorable company slogan, “A Dry Crack Is a Happy Crack”, has its own savvy marketing appeal and has spawned a line of successful and instantly recognizable apparel and novelty items which have been featured prominently on television, radio, and in the print media.

The Crack Team franchise opportunity is one of the fastest growing industries available. The company provides time-tested solutions in crack repair. Along with the training and support, The Crack Team also provides lead-generation programs to assist entrepreneurs in acquiring new customers. The exclusive line of products and other accessories are also part of the franchising package opportunity. Territories in North America are established selectively and are protected by the company. The Crack Team participates in industry association and provides access to a network of referrals on a national level.

eBay strike will be non-event

The strike by eBay sellers that is supposed to start at midnight already looks doomed to failure. Listings on the site are reportedly up 25% following a 20c cheap listing day in the US and a revision of listing fees for US media sellers to reflect those already in place for UK sellers.

To be perfectly honest I’ve never considered serious sellers as likely to strike in the first place, larger sellers have employees and business premises that need paying for and medium sized sellers rely on eBay for their income. The only type of seller that can afford to strike are those that use the site for pin money and don’t rely on it for their income.

Auctionbytes commenting “Is eBay Boycott for real” appear not to be talking to business sellers with their summation “What I’m hearing from sellers is not, can we afford to boycott eBay for a week, but rather, can we afford to continue selling on eBay once these changes roll out?” Quite frankly listing fees are down, final value fees are up, you’ll only pay final value fees if your item sells so setting your prices at a realistic level and making a real profit is the way to go.

For far too long many eBay sellers haven’t considered the real costs of running a business - think about the overheads you’d entail if you ran a high street shop and in comparison eBay fees pale into insignificance. If a seller can’t make a profit on eBay then quite simply you have to question if they could make a profit anywhere?

My predictions for the week ahead are that serious business sellers will carry on listing in greater quantities then ever before, in particular we’ll see a huge increase in listings from media sellers in the US. A few hobby sellers who use eBay for pin money will strike, list elsewhere for a week, and be back listing on eBay by the end of the month.

Alternative auction sites will report huge spikes in listings and a bump in conversion rates, but will fail to quantify hard numbers but report fluffy percentages. (Remember when eBid reported a sales increase of 57% in the UK and 221% in the US they were comparing Christmas sales with the previous June’s!)

Sellers will find that listing on alternative sites simply doesn’t bring in the volume of sales that eBay does. Sellers will happily buy from each other for a week before realising sellers buying from sellers doesn’t make money - more buyers than sellers are needed for a successful marketplace and that’s what eBay has and the other sites don’t.

In two weeks time it’ll all be forgotten and with the fee changes and pending feedback changes and volume discounts kicking in, eBay will have become a better place for all sellers.

Sofia Vassilieva May Be a Keeper

According to Variety, Sofia may have a new movie credit on her resume soon. The movie “Keeper” which is set to begin production in March has had a major shakeup. Both young actresses originally set to star in the movie about a girl who was conceived to give her sister a chance to fight off her illness have withdrawn. Dakota Fanning is said to have decided that there was no way she’d shave her head to play the sick older sister.

Sofia Vassilieva, who is pretty close to signing on in that role, must not have the same objection. She’d be fantastic in the role and it is probably a smart career move, but I’d sure hate to see all that lovely hair go. Maybe a Medium episode where Ariel gets a new hairdo is coming up? I guess she could also wear a wig on set.

Lindsay Lohan Recreates Marilyn Monroe's "Last Sitting"

In 1962, photographer Bert Stern shot a series of photos (2,571 in all) of Marilyn Monroe at the Hotel Bel-Air that are collectively known as “The Last Sitting.” The 36-year-old Monroe was in the darkest period of her life, having weathered two recent divorces, gallbladder surgery and sickness during production of the romantic comedy Something’s Got to Give, from which she was fired and rehired. Six weeks after the Stern photo shoot, Monroe died from a barbiturate overdose in her L.A. home.



46 years later, Stern has revisited the series with Lindsay Lohan filling in for Monroe in a NY Magazine shoot that fastidiously replicates the original poses, lighting, and clothing. “It was very similar, déjà vu you might say, like revisiting an old street,” says Stern, who adds that the project arose from his interest in “controversial women,” or “bad girls,” like “Britney, Paris, and Lindsay.”

Lohan, who owns a lot of Monroe “stuff”, including an apartment the doomed starlet once occupied, seems to be in denial about the parallels between her troubles and Monroe’s last days, instead pointing to Heath Ledger’s death as “both prime examples of what this industry can do to someone.”

When asked during a break in the shoot why that fate befalls some and not others (hint, hint), Li Lo “replied with a flicker of annoyance: ‘I don’t know. I’m not them. But I sure as hell wouldn’t let it happen to me.’”

Photo composite of Marilyn Monroe by Bert Stern.

F-35 lightning

Air Force Lt. Col. James Kromberg, a former Marine aviator, became the first service member to fly the F-35 on Wednesday at Naval Air Station Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base, Texas. Kromber is director of operations for the 461st Flight Test Squadron, Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. He served in the Marine Corps from 1987-2003 and has more than 3,200 flight hours on the AV-8B Harrier, T-38, F-15 and F-16. Attached to the F-35 test team since 2005, Kromberg has logged plenty of hours on the Joint Strike Fighter’s simulator. He also helped draft the aircraft’s initial flight manual, test plans and aircrew training procedures. “I have been smiling since arriving at the aircraft this morning and haven’t stopped,” Kromberg said on the day of the flight, according to an Air Force press release.

Kromberg’s initial test flight put the JSF through takeoff, handling qualities maneuvers, engine throttle transients, formation maneuvers with an F-16 and landing. He took off from Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth plant at 11:54 a.m. Central Time, flew to 6,000 feet and checked handling qualities at a 15-degree angle of attack, the release said. He then climbed to 10,000 and 12,000 feet, assessing the up-and-away flight-control response. Kromberg, whose call sign is “Flipper,” also tested the F-35’s engine performance and formation-flying characteristics. “The aircraft was responsive across all flight regimes,” he said. “The engine thrust response was excellent — accelerating very quickly. The aircraft was very stable during formation flight.” Further flight tests on the F-35 will include envelope expansion, flying qualities evaluations, subsystems testing and initial systems assessments, according to the release. Edwards will host further F-35 flight tests in the spring.

Forget Deval Patrick

From the Moscow Times:

In an apparent coincidence that has Tatar media outlets abuzz, the Obama slogan "Yes, We Can!" has the same meaning as [Tatarstan President Mintimer] Shaimiyev's favorite catchphrase, which in Tatar is "Bez Buldyrabyz!"

Apparent coincidence, eh? We're dispatching intern Amanda Erickson to Kazan to look into it.