It's hard to appreciate how hard it is to get a loan these days until you actually do it, and Tom Sesti can definitely appreciate it today. His start-up, Bandals International, looked near and far before finally landing $250,000 in much needed funding from Hennessey Capital.

"On a scale of one to 10 with one being easy and 10 being difficult it was 11.5 on some days," says Sesti, president of Bandals.

The Commerce Township-based company makes adjustable thong-style sandals. It plans to use the money to develop new products, conduct some marketing and manufacture more of its signature product.

"It's really very critical," Sesti says. "We have lots of sales but we need to fund additional growth."

Bandals is just one of the 10 companies Hennessey Capital recently financed the expansion of as part of $3.3 million in deals as of April. Most of those companies (seven) are based in Michigan. Some of the highlights of these financing transactions include $750,000 for a Michigan-based distributor of consumer electronics and $50,000 for a Michigan-based law firm specializing in real-estate title work.

Many of these deals also focus on manufacturing, ranging from a Michigan-based furniture manufacturer to a California start-up consumer products manufacturer. They also went from small $50,000 investments to $1 million in financing at a time when credit and capital have been drying up quickly, especially in the industrial Midwest.

Hennessey Capital is based in Huntington Woods. It specializes in providing financing for growing companies to continue to expand. Often that money helps pay for things like expanded payroll or equipment investment.

Source: Hennessey Capital
Writer: Jon Zemke

CircleBuilder didn't have to necessarily pray to continue its steady growth streak, but one can't help but think that a higher power is watching out for the Franklin-based start-up these days.

The 3-year-old firm just locked up $500,000 in venture capital, half of which came from Automation Alley, while the rest was from angel investors. The $500,000 is on top of $1.3 million CircleBuilder has already raised in seed money.

That's after the company added an employee, thereby expanding its staff to four people. It is working on hiring a few interns. CircleBuilder plans to use its newly found start-up funding to improve its software product, marketing, and even hiring a few more people.

"It will probably be just a couple to start," says Howard Brown, co-founder and CEO of CircleBuilder. "One support staffer and one salesperson to start."

CircleBuilder offers Yahoo Groups-like services to churches and faith-based organizations. Brown points out that most of these organizations lack any type of comprehensive online presence. It's a deficiency that plays against a church, making it harder for members to interact, share ideas, and even raise money in the 21st Century.

Brown, who was a veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur before moving to Michigan, has already done this successfully with PlanitJewish, an organizational website for Jewish communities. A number of Christian leaders, including Rick Warren of "The Purpose Driven Life" fame, asked him to do something similar for Christians.

Brown launched CircleBuilder as a free service last fall, and about 500 faith-based organizations are using it. The subscription version started in March and already has a handful of users signed up. Those include Metro Detroit-based St. Hugo of the Hills. CircleBuilder is doing everything from designing websites to creating software so users can link to popular sites like Facebook but still control what type of material comes in.

"We create what is called walled gardens for the church and monasteries and whatnot," Brown says.

Source: Howard Brown, co-founder and CEO of CircleBuilder
Writer: Jon Zemke

Between 50-60 percent of interns land a job with the company they interned at in Michigan. Those are hard numbers to ignore in a state with a pronounced brain drain and tough economy.

It's part of the reason why the Detroit Regional Chamber is launching its Intern In Michigan program. The $2.4 million initiative (funded by the feds and the New Economy Initiative for Southeast Michigan) is targeting universities, students, and local businesses to either take on more interns or start an internship program.

"Our goal is to get to the point where 20,000 to 25,000 students have some sort of internship," says Greg Handel, senior director of workforce development for the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce. "That's five years down the road."

Intern in Michigan is creating a central website to help facilitate this pairing of hungry college students with savvy employers. The website will act as sort of a social networking site where students and businesses can create profiles to both post and apply for internships. The goal is to have 1,000 internships posted within the first year and 25,000 within five years.

The Detroit Regional Chamber and local officials aren’t only positing this as a way to keep more of Michigan's young best and brightest here, but as a means of improving efficiency at companies. Many interns work for low wages or gratis, providing a cost-effective way for business to do more with less.

Source: Greg Handel, senior director of workforce development for the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce
Writer: Jon Zemke

Most of the time diversifying your business is code in Michigan for finding income streams from outside of the auto industry. Not so with ComSpec International.

The Bingham Farms-based firm has created customized software for marketing firms for years. It still does that today, but also creates software packages for institutions of higher learning that run everything but the academic aspect of the school, such as billing and housing.

It's a side business the 26-year-old company came up with 14 years ago. It's also one it couldn’t have come up with without a flexible staff of 30 employees and the occasional independent contractor. That's after the company just added four people and hopes to add another four in the near future.

"We have a lot of great people," says Bob Brender, president of ComSpec International. "They will bounce back and forth from the custom side to the higher education side."

ComSpec International has signed on 65 universities and colleges to its higher education package. They include some local schools, like Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit and Finlandia University in the Upper Peninsula. It just signed on the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.

"We have a fair amount of enhancements going into our new product," Brender says.

Source: Bob Brender, president of ComSpec International
Writer: Jon Zemke

Metro Detroit is receiving a big shot in its entrepreneurial arm, now that Uncle Sam is giving $6 million to the Economic Development Coalition of Southeast Michigan, a coalition of local economic development groups.

The coalition will disburse this money to economic development groups such as Automation Alley and Macomb County. NextEnergy, an anchor tenant in Detroit's TechTown, will use its share for alternative energy development. Wayne County is planning to use part of its share to open another business incubator on the west side of the county.

"Basically they're all going to provide programs and services to growing businesses," says Sabrina Kelley, vice president of Detroit Renaissance.

The coalition worked with Michigan’s Congressional delegation to secure this funding. It's a working relationship that has brought more than $10 million in federal funds to the region for business accelerators in recent years.

That money generally allows the business accelerators to continue providing services to high growth sectors, such as customized business planning, product development, business marketing and organizational development consulting. It also facilitates networking programs and facilities to incubate new business start-ups or joint ventures.

Source: Sabrina Kelley, vice president of Detroit Renaissance
Writer: Jon Zemke

Smart Grid is one of the buzz phrases being tossed around as the latest advancement in sustainability. Livonia-based Core Products Group thinks it is offering a similar program for computers that could prove just as efficient.

Smart Grid technology lets customers track how much energy is being used in certain places in buildings, allowing to them to adjust to minimize energy usage. Core Products' SysTrack Power Manager promises to do much the same, but focuses on computer systems.

"It's a hands-off, computer-power manager that can reduce the amount of power used by a computer by 40-60 percent," says Connie Lilley, director of sustainable products and initiatives for Core Products Group and its subsidiary, Core Energy & Automation. "It's designed to give a very good return on investment. It's really a unique product. We don't know of anyone else who has something like it."

Core Products is marketing the system both here in Michigan and abroad. It is running corporate pilot project system tests, and a few hundred companies and universities look at the results. Core Products is anticipating up to $5 million in sales this year.

That would allow it to expand its current staff of four people at Core Products Group and 11 employees at its subsidiary, Core Energy & Automation. That could mean another 5-6 people this year.

"We're very excited about the growth potential for this product," Lilley says.

Source: Connie Lilley, director of sustainable products and initiatives for Core Products Group
Writer: Jon Zemke

Parks equal green space, so they must be "green," right?

Negative.

Many of them waste a ton of resources with non-native plantings that require frequent watering and fertilizer. These plants can overtake native ones, meaning that land meant to preserve nature instead re-imagines it in a suburban-friendly palette.

One park in Oakland County is turning that notion on its head with an enhanced effort to consider park maintenance as a kind of environmental stewardship. The county hopes that its "green" effort at Independence Oaks County Park includes initiatives that are easily transferable to other parks in the area.

Independence Oaks is 1,088 acres. It has a 68-acre glacial lake and is home to the headwaters region of the Clinton River -- a watershed encompassing 760 square miles of land in four counties. Its ecosystem consists of wetlands, rolling grasslands and a large portion of wetlands that are hardwood-conifer swamp which has been identified as a rare natural resource in Michigan.

The parks department started its efforts in 2006. First up was combating invasive species including buckthorn, phragmites, honeysuckle and autumn olive. These efforts, which have included mechanical removal and chemical treatment, continue to the present.

Next up: a prescribed burn program, which began in 2007. "Our goal is to combat non-native species and give our native, fire-adapted grasses and wildflowers a competitive edge in landscape," says Brittany Bird, natural resource planner.

The burns, conducted in spring to minimize disruption to nesting birds and snakes, are part of a long-term strategy that aims to restore historical natural communities like prairies, oak-hickory woodlands and wet meadows. They take place under the supervision of both park staff and local fire departments.

The results: so far, so good. Increased abundance of native plant species has been observed, as well as nine species of butterflies never before seen at Independence Oaks.

The park has also instituted a Natural Resources Stewardship Program to conserve rare species, including the Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake. It conducts frog and toad and grassland bird surveys, butterfly counts and nest box monitoring programs as well.

It turns out that just 35 miles north of Detroit, in Clarkston, lies a real slice of nature.

Source: Desiree Stanfield, Oakland County Parks and Recreation
Writer: Kelli B. Kavanaugh
Photos by John Meyland

The young and the talented continue to flock to downtown Detroit.

Excerpt:

GiftZip.com is moving to downtown Detroit and bringing its six employees and two independent contractors with it. They will set up shop in part of the third floor office space in the Iodent Building, just above Centaur Bar.

GiftZip.com is just the type of creative, new economy start-up Detroit’s leaders want staking a claim in what they envision as Detroit’s Creative Corridor. The 6-month-old start-up specializes in providing and sending a large variety of gift cards primarily over the Internet.

Read the rest of the story here.

Dogs are definitely allowed in Ann Arbor's Inner Circle Media.

Excerpt:

The office that houses Inner Circle Media in Ann Arbor isn't just dog-friendly, it's dog-directed.

Dr. Norman, a middle-aged beagle-lab mix, serves as the Director of Happiness for the web development firm. He is on the verge of being promoted to CFO – Chief Fun Officer. His new duties would let him oversee the company's seven employees, 2-3 independent contractors and the occasional summer intern.

Read the rest of the story here.

Ann Arbor's Kennedy Care continues to take care of the elderly and its business from its Ann Arbor headquarters.

Excerpt:

Michigan wants more and more entrepreneurs like David Kennedy, the University of Michigan grad who started Kennedy Care.

Kennedy turned his passion for history and senior citizens into a fast-growing downtown Ann Arbor-based firm five years ago. He went from being on his own at the beginning to hiring fellow U-M graduates shortly after. Last year his company doubled its employee base to 130 people and a handful of interns and plans to do so again this year.

"That's our goal again," Kennedy says. "It will probably be 1.5-2 times bigger this year."

Read the rest of the story here.

Recent bad news about Michigan's venture capital environment isn't as bad as it appears if you look at it in the proper context.

The first quarter was one of the state's worst in recent years when it comes to venture capital investment. But Kelly Williams, managing director of Credit Suisse's Customized Fund Investment Group, points out that venture capital statistics can be misleading from a quarterly view point, and even from a number of dollars invested perspective.

For instance, the recent $36 million venture capital investment into Ann Arbor-based Lycera happened three days after the first quarter ended. Had it been a week earlier, the first quarter would have been hailed as one of the best ever for Michigan. Williams suggest looking at such numbers on an annual basis to get a better view of where Michigan stands.  

Not to mention, consideration should be given to the number of companies invested in, rather than just the dollar amount. Investing in start-ups is much cheaper today compared to a year or two ago because of the economic downfall.

"The same number of companies were funded this year as were last year," Williams says. "The dollar amount is different."

She also pointed out that there has been significant progress in developing Michigan's venture capital community and that doesn't show up in investment statistics. The number of venture capital managers in the state has doubled, and their track record is growing. That will give bigger venture capital firms in California and Massachusetts more reason to invest in Michigan.

"When they know there are really quality, smart sophisticated investors in the state, they don't need to pull the companies out to the coasts," Williams says.

She adds that there is still some dry powder in the Michigan 21st Century Jobs Fund, including $33 million in the Venture Michigan Fund and $35 million in the 21st Century Fund. She expects another round of venture capital investments from these state funds to be announced within the next 4-6 weeks.

Source: Kelly Williams, managing director of Credit Suisse's Customized Fund Investment Group
Writer: Jon Zemke

The guys behind Midwest Illumination were green before the color became an adjective for sustainability.

The two brothers worked for a company that helped pioneer energy-efficient lighting before starting their energy efficiency firm in 1993. Today the Clarkston-based company has a staff of 100 people, with satellite offices in Chicago and Atlanta. About 90 of those people work in Metro Detroit.

The company really started to catch fire last year when the perfect storm of high energy prices and public awareness hit. It hired about 30 people to keep up with demand before the bottom fell out of the economy last fall. Midwest Illumination has been holding the line since then, but expects to go on another hiring spree once the economy starts to rebound. That could mean an additional 50-70 new jobs.

"We see a lot of growth in the near term," says Greg Summerlee, vice president of business development for Midwest Illumination.

The company specializes in more than just energy-efficient lighting. Its fastest growing segment is analyzing energy usage and finding places to save large amounts of wasted electricity and gas. Summerlee thinks this, more than anything, will drive the alternative energy push.

"We are the workhorse of what has to happen," Summerlee says.

He also thinks Metro Detroit is poised to become a leader in the alternative and green energy economy, one that could lead to a lot of new jobs in the near future.

Source: Greg Summerlee, vice president of business development for Midwest Illumination
Writer: Jon Zemke

Classic Computer Recovery is on a nice little growth kick now, but hopes to really go gangbusters within the next year.

The Garden City-based firm has hired five people in the last three months, bringing its staff to 23 people. That doesn't include the 6-8 positions it has open right now. The company expects to add up to 200 people within the next year if its business plans pan out.

Classic Computer Recovery specializes in recycling electronics, such as TVs and computers. It started seven years ago when Linda McFarland started to make the switch from asset recovery in electronics to recycling.

"It was a brand new area to plug my background into," McFarland says. "It keeps me very busy."

The company makes more money by recycling things like computers, rather than TVs. Metro Detroit households have old versions of both sitting in their garages, attics and closets. If it offers to recycle both at the same time, it will gladly take the money-losing TVs in exchange for the profitable computer systems.

It's holding one of these electronic recycling events from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at L’Anse Creuse High School, 38495 L’Anse Creuse Street in Harrison Township.

Source: Linda McFarland, president and CEO of Classic Computer Recovery
Writer: Jon Zemke

In a time when business is quickly and erratically shrinking, Royal Oak-based Innovative Learning Group is slowly but surely growing.

The training firm just hired its 10th employee, upping its count by one person since the last time we checked in with them last fall. The company hopes to add more people as the demand for their product grows in the near future.

"We anticipate the economy will refresh a little," says Roger Blair, spokesman for Innovative Learning Group. "More and more companies will look at bringing more employees back and making them more productive."

The company creates curriculum for firms to teach employees to be more productive and efficient. It counts about 30 Fortune 500 firms among its clients today.

Source: Roger Blair, spokesman for Innovative Learning Group
Writer: Jon Zemke

Flexibility. It's the inexpensive way that Oakland County officials are pushing to make their local communities friendlier to new economy companies.

Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson released a new report today aimed at making local governments friendlier to knowledge-based firms. The idea is that streamlining the old bureaucracy will make it more attractive for new economy start-ups and the jobs they create.

"It's to help review and revamp the community plans for the knowledge economy," says Brett Rasegan, planning supervisor for Oakland County.

For instance, lots of small, older manufacturing facilities stand vacant today and are specifically zoned for the office in the front and industrial space in the rear. One of the report's recommendations calls for communities to give these spaces more flexibility by allowing either office or commercial use.

Rasegan gives an example of an Internet retailer which may need lots of space for warehousing products and only a small out-of-the-way space for a storefront. An older manufacturing space could prove to be a perfect fit.

Such flexible rezonings and redevelopments have already been successfully undertaken in Oakland County. An old factory is being turned into loft-style office space on the edges of downtown Royal Oak. A similar thing has been done with the Zicor building, an old manufacturing facility in Ferndale that's now home to several growing new economy firms.

Source: Brett Rasegan, planning supervisor for Oakland County
Writer: Jon Zemke

Festivals, weddings, birthday parties... These are the things that haunt an environmentally-minded person's sleep.

Why would these "fun" things do that? Because of the horrific amounts of waste they generate. In a throw-away society, these temporary happenings are oftentimes the greatest wasters of them all.

The good news is that things are taking baby steps to get better, and here are just a few of them to look for in the coming months.

Thanks to rider requirements of headliner Willie Nelson, the Downtown Hoedown held at Hart Plaza from May 15 to 17 will have its beverage containers recycled by Recy-Clean, and Michigan Green Safe products will be used.

The same deal is in place whenever Whole Foods sponsors an event -- such as this weekend's Veg Fest and the June 9 Motor City Pride Festival, both held in Ferndale.

Recycle Detroit handles recycling at Dally in the Alley and Movement. This year's CityFest will have a bike corral and recycling as well.

If you are planning something a bit more small-scale, say a fundraiser or wedding, a local company, Eco-Posh, can help. Can't afford an event planner? Their blog offers lots of tips on things like cakes, invitations, even confetti, that are more sustainable than the typical options.

It's good to keep in mind your environmental resolutions when hosting an event -- even though it becomes much harder. Paper plates and plastic cutlery became popular for a reason!

Writer: Kelli B. Kavanaugh

GMAC is going on a hiring spree in Detroit and elsewhere.

Excerpt:

GMAC has a lot of jobs posted in Detroit these days. About 50 positions are open right now, ranging from legal to finance to IT.

"We're planning to fill every one that is advertised," says Jeannine Bruin, executive director of marketing and communication for GMAC.

Read the rest of the story here.

Michigan's venture capital investment came back in a big way through Lycera.

Excerpt:

Just when the local venture capital landscape looks its bleakest, a big silver lining appears. Right now that’s the $36 million Ann Arbor-based Lycera recently locked down.

The pharmaceutical company plans to use that cash to continue research and development of small molecule drugs for treating autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. It won’t take the firm to commercialization of these items, but at least to the next step of FDA approval.

"It takes us to the next steps probably," says Gary D. Glick, founder and chief scientist of Lycera.

Read the rest of the story here.

Hollywood isn’t coming to Allen Park any more. Allen Park is becoming Hollywood after it announced plans for a $146 million studio.

Unity Studios plans to build a 750,000-square-foot film, TV and media production studio factory and village on 104 acres of land at Southfield Road and Enterprise Drive. All of those numbers add up to about 3,000 union jobs.

"I am hoping this will improve property values," says Gary Burtka, mayor of Allen Park. "I'm hoping some of these employees will fill some of our empty buildings and some of the spin-off businesses will occupy some of our empty commercial buildings."

Veteran Hollywood film executive and native Southfield resident Jimmy Lifton will serve as president. Lifton has a long resume padded by 30 years in the entertainment business. During that time he owned a record label, produced 13 feature films, and became principal of one of the largest independent post-production audio studios in Los Angeles, Oracle Post, which services the likes of HBO, NBC, Dreamworks and MTV.

Lifton wants to turn the Unity Studios into a factory town in the tradition of Henry Ford. There, the Lifton Institute for Media Skills will retrain out-of-work skilled and unskilled labor into film production. There will also be a village where people can live, shop and find entertainment options.

Unity Studios will utilize brownfield tax credits to create the facilities. Construction times and other details are set to be released later this spring.

Source: Gary Burtka, mayor of Allen Park
Writer: Jon Zemke