Small Business Archives

Nice article from New York Times Technology News regarding small merchants gaining a larger presence online. Bust Out currently does quite a bit of work in this area, most recently with several Shopify implementations. Drop us a line if you need any help doing anything similar.

Cheers!

Great article today in the San Francisco Chronicle that addresses some interesting aspects of project management, including some thought-provoking questions around estimation and bidding - frequent topics of conversation here at Bust Out.

More on this later…

Congratulations to all the folks over at Shopify for being chosen as a finalist for the Webware 100 Awards. Based on our recent implementation experience, I think the distinction is well-deserved. We’ll be sure to cast our votes.

We recently launched an e-commerce section of the Point Clinic website. Play handled the graphic design and photography, and Bust Out Solutions implemented the e-commerce functionality. We used Shopify, a Ruby on Rails e-commerce engine built by the folks at Jaded Pixel. Shopify allows you to create a full-blown e-commerce store in literally a few minutes if you use one of their pre-built templates. If your company is like Point Clinic and has a specific look and feel to your website, Shopify provides a template engine called Liquid that allows you to create custom designs. The learning curve for Liquid is rather shallow so I was able to run through several design iterations with Play.

Shopify also comes with an impressive admin interface that allows users to maintain items and item attributes, set stock on hand, create collections, set promotions, define shipping and handling rates, manage orders and backorders, track demand, and even create a blog. All basic retail functionality is available via the Shopify admin pages, giving you full power to run your online store.

We’re now offering Shopify design and engineering services to anybody who wants to get a relatively cheap e-commerce site up and running in no time. Contact us if you’re interested in hearing more.

Lately I’ve had the pleasure of working with a spinoff of Best Buy called CultureRx, the innovators of the Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE). The idea is simple: work is about getting things done, not about spending time in an office or in meetings. Employees at the Minneapolis-based Best Buy headquarters are free to come and go as they please. Different from the classic flextime structure where employees coordinate their own schedules with their managers, ROWE workers can work whenever and wherever they want without answering to anybody — as long as their work gets done. Say goodbye to 8:00 am meetings and one-hour lunches. Sleep when you’re tired, eat when you’re hungry, work when you can get things done.

Small businesses like Bust Out Solutions operate 100% on the ROWE principal just by the nature of the company. Our success model is simple: when work gets done the business succeeds. Naturally this requires a certain level of initiative and self-discipline, and it doesn’t always mean you have the freedom to what you want when you want. Customers still come first and deadlines are still real. So far, it’s working. I figure if the Results-Only Work Environment is good enough for Bust Out Solutions, it’s gotta be good enough for Best Buy.