Current Issue
June 2010 Issue
Cover Story
50 Colorado companies to watch 2010
The second annual 50 Colorado Companies to Watch features snapshots of businesses that are thriving - and growing - as selected by the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade and economic development groups and chambers of commerce statewide. Read more about the process and the upcoming event, and check out our business resource guide.
ADPERIO
SNAPSHOT: Adperio, founded in 1994, is a privately held online marketing and advertising agency based in Denver. The company offers a suite of Internet solutions for advertisers, market...
Articles
Resources for Colorado businesses
By Mike TaylorNeed some help? Check these out.
www.colorado.gov - By going to this site and clicking on the “Business” tab, you’ll find resources for starting a business including licenses and permits, tax information, and information to help you manage your business. Also on this page is a tab, “Colorado Business,” through which you can access Colorado’s Office of Economic Development and International Trade, as well as a link to help you register to be eligible to bid on Colorado contracts and a link to locate facilities for doing international business in Colorado.
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Fueling the economic fire
By Mike CoteThere’s nothing more inspiring in a rough economic climate than hearing about companies that are succeeding and even adding jobs. While the Not So Great Recovery continues to emerge from the Great Recession, entrepreneurs have continued to find ways to make their businesses work and prime themselves for the future.
Here are 50 tales of business success and innovation. These Colorado Companies to Watch are second-stage enterprises that will help the state regain its footing as a fertile ground for business growth. Here’s the complete list.
The 2010 class of companies...
Colorado’s Top 100 Public Companies
By Mike TaylorQwest Communications International is once again the state’s top-ranked public company based on 2009 revenues, but it could be for the last time. The Denver-based telecommunications carrier that was founded in 1996 by billionaire Phillip Anschutz announced in April it would be acquired by Louisiana-based CenturyTel in a $10.6 billion stock swap.
The merger is subject to approval by shareholders, the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice and is expected to be completed by early 2011. Assuming the combined company is headquartered in Monroe,...
The Economist: What will the next decade bring?
By Tucker Hart AdamsThe Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the group charged with dating recessions and recoveries, met in April and announced it did not yet have enough data to determine whether the recession is over.
Despite the common belief that a recession occurs when output contracts for two quarters and the recovery begins when output starts to grow, the reality is far more complicated. The NBER looks at dozens of indicators before making its determination, usually months after the turning point in the business cycle.
There are two...
Who Owns Colorado: Cherry Creek gets a makeover
By David LewisAnybody who has lived around the Denver area has “Cherry Creek” coming out of their ears.
Hereabouts we boast a Cherry Creek school district, state park, arts festival, marina, hotel, newspaper, florist and biking and hiking path, not to mention an actual creek.
This is only appropriate because Cherry Creek was where our forebears first struck gold and first went broke, thus establishing the pattern for Colorado business from then on.
Yet we must admit that amid all these historical associations the word that most readily springs to mind when one thinks “Cherry Creek”...
Sports biz: brand “T”
By Stewart SchleyHe hasn’t taken a snap from center, but Tim Tebow already has Bronco Nation wrapped around his throwing arm. You know, the one that used to have that weird little hitch in it.
Just listen in:
“In my heart, I believe he will go down as one of the greatest NFL players to ever lace ‘em up.”
“Please help me welcome the Mile High messiah.”
“The more I learn about this guy the more I love the pick.”
“Tim Tebow will raise the Lombardi trophy before his football career is over.”
Those are comments lifted from various online fan forums over the last few weeks as the reaction...
State of the state: Economy
By Mike Taylor
Economic recovery will be accomplished through free enterprise, not the government, said Thomas Donohue, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And contrary to what some in Washington have led us to believe, when it comes to business, failure should be an option.
Or as he put it, “How are small businesses going to deal with a government that doesn’t want any risks?”
Donohue was in Denver in late April promoting the U.S. Chamber’s “American Free Enterprise. Dream Big” campaign, an effort to spur the creation of 20 million jobs nationwide over the next...
State of the state: Education
By Mike Cote
Training a “green collar” work force has been one of the most pressing needs of the new-energy economy advocated by Gov. Bill Ritter. A new school dubbed the first of its kind in the country aims to fill that gap with a flagship campus in Aurora that will bring 76 jobs to the city.
The Education Corp. of America is launching the Ecotech Institute, a college that will focus solely on preparing workers for careers in renewable energy and sustainable design. The private company unveiled plans for the school in April at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science to local...
State of the state: brewing
By Jay DedrickA year ago at this time, craft brewers were looking at their production figures and breathing sighs of relief that the down economy wasn’t hurting them the way it was hurting others. Craft beer really was a product people were willing to pay a bit more for - an affordable luxury, even when the wallet’s a bit thinner than in past years.
With the newest statistics from the Brewers Association, there’s evidence it wasn’t just a fluke year. Again, with a down economy, small and independent brewers enjoyed a 7.2 percent increase in volume in 2009 (compared with 2008) and a...
Election 2010: Jane Norton
By Mike Cote
Jane Norton has far exceeded her Republican rivals in the race to secure funds to campaign for the Aug. 10 primary. But she had to split her front-runner status after Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck narrowly bested her in the Republican Party Caucus in March. She recently hired state Sen. Josh Penry to run her campaign.
We recently talked with Norton, 55, about the campaign at her Centennial campaign headquarters. The following transcript was edited for space and clarity. Watch the interview and read the complete transcript at www.cobizmag.com.
ColoradoBiz: How...
Small biz: brothers make Coda Coffee a company to watch
By Mike TaylorBrothers Tommy and Tim Thwaites were both in their 20s when they launched Coda Coffee Co. five years ago with a roaster built in 1984 in Brazil that they bought for $60,000, rebuilt and still use today. Their other major piece of equipment was Tim’s Dodge Dakota, which they used to deliver the roasted beans.
Tommy laughs when asked about the long hours they must have put in at the outset when it was just the two of them. “Well, in the beginning we’d stand around a lot more than we worked, just because there wasn’t much to do,” he says. “Of course, you could always...
Tech startup: Mojofiti Inc.
By Eric Peterson
INITIAL LIGHT BULB: Friends and colleagues for more than a decade, Dennis Wakabayashi and Alan Simon were discussing the state of the Internet a year ago. Then online director for a global ad agency, Wakabayashi lamented that the Web was segmented by language barriers, but pointed out to attorney Simon a number of solutions: software, crowdsourcing, traditional human translation, and any combination of the three. Simon conceived of a translation-oriented startup and brought the idea back to the table.
“Alan took the ball and ran with it,” Wakabayashi says. “He really...
Rundles wrap up: the new frontier of Colorado business—
By Jeff Rundles
Denver, and more broadly Colorado, has been my home now for 37 years, and while I have traveled extensively to many other U.S. locales, I can’t think of a better place to live or a better place to work.
The other day I saw a news report about a study from the Brookings Institute that labels Denver as one of nine “New Frontier” metro areas in the United States. In the study’s view, we are poised to handle the challenges of a new diverse society and could be a model for economic growth.
The story was scant on details, and these periodic studies, based on such things as...
Election 2010: Michael Bennet
By Mike Cote
Michael Bennet didn’t have to campaign to secure the U.S. Senate seat he’s held for the past year and half after Gov. Bill Ritter appointed him to fill out the term vacated by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. Now the 45-year-old former Denver Public Schools superintendent is campaigning in one of the most hotly contested races in the country and faces competition in his own party from former Colorado Speaker of the House Andrew Romanoff (featured in our April issue), who bested him in state caucuses.
We recently talked with Bennet about the campaign in Denver....
State of the state: innovation
By Mike CoteXcel Energy’s $100 million smart-grid system in Boulder and a taxpayer-backed Denver Public Schools initiative that provides incentives to teachers earned Colorado two spots in Fast Company magazine’s “Fast Cities 2010” roundup.
Fast Company singled out 12 cities nationwide in its May issue for embracing innovation: “Constructing the perfect city means blending the best and the boldest ideas from across the nation.”
The magazine noted that corporate giants like Cisco, Microsoft, IBM and Google are working on efforts to transform the power grid into a digital network...
Cote’s Colorado: Power in transition
By Mike CoteWhile headlines about renewable energy mandates usually focus on the state’s largest utility, Xcel Energy, Westminster-based Tri-State Generation is undergoing a similar shift. Tri-State supplies power to 18 member electric cooperatives in Colorado, 12 in New Mexico, eight in Wyoming and six in Nebraska, serving nearly 1.5 million people.
Tri-State is working with Xcel Energy on a $180 million transmission line over La Veta Pass from the San Luis Valley that is designed to improve reliability of service and export renewable energy from southern Colorado to the Front...
State of the state: government
By Mike Cote
While the Federal Reserve has continued to keep rates near zero, the president of its Kansas City bank says the Fed will have to begin edging rates back up so the economy can achieve long-term health and stability.
While Thomas Hoenig said he would never advocate a “sharp jump of policy rates,” the long-time Fed official told a group in Denver that the Fed will need to “normalize” rates so it can balance the economy, one that is driven by the supply and demand of the markets.
“If we don’t bring it back in balance ... our ability to have long-term, sustainable growth...
Planet-profit report guest voice
By Janna L. SixSustainability is booming in Colorado! Community leaders across all sectors and regions of Colorado are incorporating sustainability concepts and practices in planning and shaping economically viable, vibrant and quality places to live in Colorado. That’s the analysis from the authors of a report on a series of Sustainability Roundtable meetings in 2009 involving more than 350 business, nonprofit, government and education community leaders.
Staff for the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado collected a comprehensive list of successful sustainability initiatives that...
The great expansion
By Rob Reuteman
Tom Clark hung up the phone, baffled by what he’d just been asked.
The year was 2003. The executive vice president of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp. had fielded a call from a national site selection firm, hired by a large company to find a suitable area in which to expand.
The site selector asked Clark if he could provide a county-by-county obesity index for metro Denver.
“I’d never ever heard that question,” Clark recalled recently. “But immediately I sensed a sea change. We didn’t know where in the world to look for such a thing, but I said, ‘We’re...
Guest column: a statewide tour of the economy
News regarding the state of the economy has taken center stage since we entered the recession in 2008. The upside of this focus is that many Colorado businesspeople have become astute observers of the economy.
To supplement economists’ insights, we’ve gathered some thoughts from Vectra Bank Colorado market presidents and customers throughout the state. With 40 offices across the state, including the urban Front Range, mountain resorts, the Western Slope and the Four Corners region, we’ve been able to garner a unique and close-up look at how the economy is really...
Colorado cool stuff
By Eric Peterson
AARN BODYPACKS
New Zealand-based Aarn doesn’t make backpacks - the company makes biomechanic-friendly bodypacks. With front and back pockets, an Aarn bodypack balances perfectly on its wearer’s center of gravity and keeps the weight off the spine and on the hips. In other words: where it’s supposed to be.
New Zealand-based Mark Keown met eponymous founder Aarn Tate and contacted his Colorado Springs-based niece, Windy Haddad, and her husband, Dana Adoretti, about bringing bodypacks to the U.S. market; the trio inked a deal to become the company’s exclusive North...
On management: small crisis puts character on display
By Pat WiesnerIt started as a nightmare.
After being on the road for two weeks in a motor home on the way to this year’s Kentucky Derby, I scraped the back end of my rig along part of an auto-hauler trailer in a crowded Cracker Barrel parking lot.
I had been slowly following the signs to “RV and Truck Parking” when I was distracted by a car darting across my path ... and then I heard that awful scraping sound. In my mirror I could see what I had done. I was able to disengage simply by turning the wheel so I moved away and drove to the parking lot.
The damage wasn’t too bad, but a...
Election 2010: Tom Wiens
By Mike Cote
Former state representative and senator Tom Wiens, 58, is mounting what some might call a dark-horse bid to be the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, putting up $500,000 of his own money to fund his campaign. The Castle Rock rancher faces Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck (featured in our May issue) and former Colorado Lt. Gov. Jane Norton.
We talked recently with Wiens about the campaign at the ColoradoBiz offices in Greenwood Village. Watch video segments from the interview and read the full transcript at www.cobizmag.com. The following was edited for space...
Putting a price on the sun
By David Lewis
ColoradoBiz has analyzed the cost and potential of solar energy circa 2010, and some of our conclusions are going to play into the hands of the solar industry’s sales and marketing pitchmen.
This is because our analysis indicates that, when it comes to the economics of investment in solar today:
1. There is no time like the present.
2. There is no place like here.
3. Neither No. 1 nor No. 2 means you will achieve a positive return on your investment or attain any other goals, but still, see Nos. 1 and 2 above.
We will shortly go on to prove our case mathematically, via...
