All posts in August 2019

How To Start A Floral Design Business 1-2-3

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Floral arrangements and delivery service is in demand year round. I guess you could say they are seasonal products for all seasons. This makes floral design a profitable business to get into. Yet, if you don’t have the funds or desire to open a shop, but still like working with plants and have a creative flair, you have options. You even can work out of your home!

For example, you could offer a floral arranging service for flower shops, grow the flowers at home selling to stores or produce and sell floral arrangement accessories such as vases, cards or other trimmings. If you decide not to have a storefront, you may be able to cheaply lease outdoor space in a popular downtown area with lots of traffic. You can also work from home. With a delivery service, you can easily operate out of your house with a vehicle. To get started, you’ll need the items used to create your arrangements and a few basic tools.

With events and holidays happening throughout the year, the opportunities to make money are all around you. You can work with individuals to provide arrangements for holidays, birthdays, special events like weddings and graduations, etc. In addition, you can look for longer-term contracts with churches, hotels, restaurants and other businesses who need flowers delivered or arranged on a regular basis. These clients can provide a more stable and consistent income flow. It’s also an easy way to showcase your designs to other prospective flower-buyers (for free!).

As a floral designer, you can charge a certain hourly rate, and also have established prices for certain arrangements or orders that clients place. What you charge will depend on how much you pay for your wholesale supplies and also what other flower shops are charging, so you can stay competitive with the market yet still remain profitable.

Finding customers: Whether you are working from home or out of a shop, start with people who know and trust you. Offer special discounts for free flowers in exchange for referrals, and you’ll be surprised at how your prospect list will grow. If you really want to make a statement, create mini-arrangements and deliver them free-of-charge to local businesses you think could be interested your service (i.e. wedding planners, funeral homes, party supply stores). Attach a business card with a simple brochure of your services and rates. Make sure you include a coupon or special introductory price to have them like you even more. Don’t forget the advertising opportunities you have in the yellow pages, local newspapers and radio stations

Donating a flower arrangement for a large event is another inexpensive way to get your business name out there – in front of lots of people. Submitting a press release is a great example – the media will promote you for free if you send them a great news story about your business. This could be as simple is having your friend write a review about your “Store Opening” and sending it to your local paper.

So how do you actually start your floral business?

1. Learn your business. If you don’t have experience arranging flowers, get some! Take a flower arranging class, learn about plants – you want to know a lot more about your product than your customer does. Get an inexpensive start-up guide on how to start a floral business or interview a floral designer or flower shop owner who can give you helpful advice.

2. Find out who your customers are. Who is buying flowers in your community – and what for? What extra service can you provide that they are not already getting, and how much is it worth to your potential customers (what are they willing to pay)? What are other flower shops charging for their designs? As long as you offer more value (i.e. unique products, faster service, weekend or evening hours, etc), you don’t necessarily need the lowest price to gain market share.

3. Find out which licenses or permits you need from your local government office. Talk with an accountant, insurance agent and banker (you can get referrals from other local business owners or friends) to get helpful tips on financing, tax issues, insurance and business management that will save you time, money and hassles in the long run.

Get Started!

Owning a floral business can be very rewarding. Working directly with customers will help you learn the ropes faster and grow your company. Use your creativity to offer a truly unique service that you really enjoy – after all, it’s YOUR business.

Reasons To Hire A Small Business Marketing Consultant

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Many business owners operate under the false assumption that marketing consultants are only affordable for larger companies. In truth, there are many benefits to hiring a small business marketing consultant, as outlined below.
What Marketing Consultants Do
First, here’s a look at just what a small business marketing consultant does for organizations:
Overall business evaluation. It’s hard for new business owners to evaluate their young organizations. A small business marketing consultant can pull from years of business experience to assess the weaknesses and strengths of a fledgling business.
Strategic planning. Business consultants must have:
1. A strong educational record in business.
2. Extensive experience as a business leader.
3. Exceptional understanding of how business trends work.
These features allow consultants to provide suggestions on how a business can succeed. After learning about an organization and identifying major opportunities and obstacles, a small business marketing consultant should be able to create a strategic plan to lead the firm to success.
Marketing design. Chances are your small business marketing consultant can write excellent ad copy to draw in new customers. Beyond designing small business marketing strategies, consultants can construct complete marketing campaigns. From graphic design to copywriting and editing, a small business consultant can wear many different hats while helping your business succeed.
Project and process management. The consulting lifestyle appeals to many leaders in the business world. Indeed, most small business consultants are top business performers who have decided to shift to a different way of life. This means small business consultants usually have project management and process design skills, which they can employ to improve your business’s performance.
How Small Businesses Benefit
Now that we’ve reviewed just what a small business marketing consultant does, let’s explore the benefits of hiring such consultants:
A fresh perspective. Contracting with a consultant as one of your small business marketing strategies will bring you an unbiased, fresh perspective. Internal conflicts and ongoing office politics can limit one’s vision. Outside consultants are free of preconceived ideas about your business, so they can provide a fresh perspective.
High-quality help. As mentioned earlier, most business consultants have transitioned to consultancy from a star-studded business career. In other words, you’ll likely receive top-shelf advice from your consultant – and for less than the cost of a single employee.
Peace of mind. Partnering with a small business marketing consultant can help you feel calm and confident about the future of your business. With peace of mind, you can better focus on your organization’s core offerings and drawing in new business.
Cost and time efficiency. You get great bang for your buck when you hire a small business marketing consultant. Since most marketing strategy planning consultants charge hourly rates, you avoid paying employee-related taxes by hiring them. Moreover, consultants are experienced, versatile professionals capable of handling everything from social media to long-term strategic planning. Rather than bringing in a new crew of writers, marketers, project managers and designers, you can pay a trusted advisor on an as-needed basis. Hiring a small business marketing consultant maximizes cost-efficiency.
Clearly, there are multiple benefits to partnering with a small business marketing consultant. From creating comprehensive small business marketing strategies to performing overall business check-ups, marketing consultants can help your company shine.

Enter In China And See Your China Business Prosper With Profits

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Take a leap forward in China and head toward the market instead of its mighty walls what today’s offshore import and export China business enthusiasts do. Follow the footsteps of leaders to discover the enormous business opportunities lies in China’s import and export industry. Already small and mid sized import and export companies from various parts of the world are keen on venturing China business and global sourcing. Numerous legendary companies of US like United Technologies, GE, Motorola, DuPont etc., have established deep penetration in China market. As per an estimation taken in 1992, 3,100 small and medium scale import and export companies have landed in China and later the number rose to more than 20,000. From manufacturing to exporting and servicing, China business opportunities are burgeoning and attracting all size of import and export businesses from the rest of the world. Over the last decade, number of US import and export companies taken up China business has raised at an astronomical rate more than five times faster than other parts of the world.

-Scope of China Business Broad Market Range and Manufacturing Potential

Attractive China business opportunities are growing and the growth is spanning through diverse industries. The growth is already evident in a series of industries, like medical, construction, energy exporting China business, telecommunications, agribusiness, machine tools, security and recreational products and service market, infrastructure etc. These are just to name a few of the vast import and export market where overseas China business owners are venturing in.

-China Business Partnership of Us Companies

China and Hong Kong together has become the third largest export partner of USA Canada and Mexico have taken the first and second position. China continues encouraging US based import and export companies to venture and fortify greater business partnership. To generate further enthusiasm amongst more US business owners, Hu Jintao, the president of China, sent two hundred Chinese executives for a buying tour to US. US companies’ trade offices being located in China and fostered by China speak how US companies are deepening their penetration in China business and import and export industry.

-Haven for Import and Export Companies and Investors

Besides immense potential found in import and export China business, China has become the heaven for overseas investors. USA companies alone have invested over three billion dollars annually, making China the third largest investing area in the world. China is yielding sumptuous returns on investment, also profits at an expected ratio to the overseas investors. US companies are reaping myriad benefits by investing in manufacturing China business. The list of benefits includes competitive labour resources in China, incentives on investment and extensive local markets of China.

-Investment in Locally Manufactured and Imported Products in China

China now allows foreign firms to invest in China’s locally manufactured products as well as to support in products brought through global sourcing. Small and medium sized companies can secure huge benefits for trading different types of China business ventures in locally manufactured products, imported goods and import and export of both locally manufactured and goods accessed through global sourcing in China.

Translation Ethics Moral Issues In The Translation Business

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Clients rely on the translator to provide a translation that does full justice to the source text. This means that the translation should cover every aspect and connotation in the source, and should not add any material or connotations extraneous to that source, nor hints of the translators personal opinion with respect to the subject-matter. Clients that are particularly keen on ensuring that this practice is adhered to will ask for a sworn translation, but most professionals would agree that the general principles underlying sworn translations also apply to translation in general, and should be used accordingly. This is easier said than done, however. While it is true that translations should be reliable and undistorted reflections of the source in a different language, clients will also expect an attractive text that is pleasant to read and effective in achieving its purpose. It is impossible to simply convert the content of the source text into the target language: the requirements of register, stylistic authenticity and readability inevitably entail some degree of modification of the original.

Having said that, there is general consensus that clients can rightfully expect a translator to possess professional skills, which entails that the translator should not accept a translation job if he feels incapable of providing a high-quality text, for instance because the subject-matter is not within his field of expertise.

Another interesting issue is that of errors in the source text. The requirement of faithfulness dictates that any errors found should simply be copied into the translation, but this obviously clashes with every serious translators common sense and desire to produce a text that is free from error and, if at all possible, even better than the original. Sometimes a translator might even feel the urge to protect the authors reputation if he suspects that the content or tone of voice of the source text would open its author to ridicule. One example is that of a CEO whose deputy speechwriter had come up with a New Years speech in a raving populist style. The translator in this case had decided to somewhat neutralise the invective, while of course pointing out to the client that he had taken liberties with the text in order to adapt it to the tastes of the target audience.
The obvious strategy in these cases is to highlight errors or problems and ask the client to reconsider his text, and while many clients will indeed appreciate such perspicacity, others will condemn the translator for being pedantic. Clearly there is no ideal remedy.

These, however, are all technical issues. The real dilemmas are found at a different level, for example when a professional is asked to do a translation of a text whose contents clash with his or her personal moral beliefs. One example from professional practice is that of a website for a womens rights organisation, which several Arab translators refused to translate because one section concerned womens sexual freedom and the rights of lesbians. While the obvious an only acceptable response to such refusal is to respect it, this issue does raise interesting questions about the translators relation to the text he translates and the extent of his responsibility for its contents, or his complicity with its objective. The latter would apply, for example, to a person agreeing to translate the election manifesto of a political party whose views he does not subscribe to. In some jurisdictions, a translator working on the translation of a hate speech might even be committing a criminal offence. Generally speaking, however, decisions in this category very much depend on the translators personal orthodoxy. People who depend on translation for their livelihood can be expected to be slightly more liberal-minded than those who can afford to refuse unsavoury orders thanks to alternative sources of income.

There is also a category of texts which, at first sight, appear to be positively illegal. If a translator agreed to translate bomb-making instructions, would he be responsible for attacks committed with the bombs produced with the help of such instructions? He certainly would, in our view, if he did not take the trouble of finding out who needed the translation, and for what purpose it was required. If the nature of the client were sufficiently obscure to raise even the slightest concern, no translator in his right mind would accept such an order. However, if the translation was commissioned by a government authority as part of efforts to study terrorists practices, the translator might actually contribute to a good cause by translating even the most reprehensible texts.

To sum up, it is clear that translators in addition to grappling with the technical content of source texts may be up to some morally challenging tasks as well. While guidelines and codes of conduct exist to help translators formulate their stance in general ethical issues, in many cases the approach to practical moral dilemmas in translation will be a matter of personal consideration and assessment, aided by the translators knowledge of the client.

About translation agency beedigdevertaling.eu
Beedigdevertaling.eu, established in the Netherlands, is a professional translation agency with a primary focus on the Dutch and international business community, and on public and semi-public institutions. Our principal strengths lie in the financial, legal and medical sectors, as well as in commerce, advertising and media. Our client base includes some of the largest corporate enterprises in Europe.

Html5 – Not Designed For Business Applications

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HTML5 – Not Designed for Business Applications

HTML5 is the next version of HTML to come along since version 4.0 in 1997.

HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language and HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of web pages. The Internet would not exist as we know it today without HTML.

But HTML is not a programming language at all. This concept is confusing to some people. Web pages rely on a scripting language such as JavaScript in order to respond to user input. Think of it as HTML being a car and JavaScript being the engine.

JavaScript was introduced in 1995 by Netscape and coincidentally, that’s when the web started to really “take off”. This is an important fact to consider before we dig deeper into HTML5.

The open source nature of HTML and JavaScript has contributed to the growth of the Internet as a whole. Source code and design ideas are often borrowed from around the web and even from competitor’s web sites. This is facilitated by the fact that HTML and JavaScript are impossible to hide or protect.

HTML5 is no different!

There has been a lot of talk about HTML5 over the past couple of years and developers think that HTML5 is “cool” and “fun” to work with. But the logic ends there.

As usual with most new technologies, there has been confusion and misinformation over when HTML5 should be used and for what purpose. We aim to enlighten you about what HTML5 can and can’t do in this article.

New Features Same Old Concept

HTML5 includes new features such as the “Canvas” element, along with audio, video and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) content, some of which replace the “object” tags of HTML4. There have also been some modifications and standardization of tags such as (a, cite, menu) but the basic concept of HTML remains the same in HTML5.

Who’s Promoting HTML5?

HTML5 was originally proposed by Opera Software (makers of the Opera web browser) and designed by the World Wide Web Consortium, also known as W3C.

An important point is that the W3C has been criticized as being dominated by larger organizations and thus writing standards that represent their interests.

The large organizations (Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Google and Facebook) have promoted HTML5 as the most up to date technology for web development. In fact the late Steve Jobs termed HTML5 as the win-win solution for consuming any kind of web content on all types of web platforms. But it is important to note that Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook each have an incentive for promoting HTML5; each own and operate very profitable “app” stores such as the Windows Marketplace, Google App Store, iTunes App Store, Facebook Canvas Apps, etc. Protection of intellectual property and trade secrets is of little or no concern to those companies and in fact it is almost a conflict of interest.

Fact #1: HTML5 is based on JavaScript, which is impossible to protect. Yes, that’s a fact!

As we discussed a moment ago, JavaScript is the core “language” of HTML5, whose source code is impossible to protect. The most evident reason is that anyone can view HTML5 and JavaScript source by just a simple click. JavaScript was never intended to be anything more than an engine for client-server communication and re-useable web content, including menus, buttons, tabs and the like.

Developers may argue that they can mangle JavaScript source code by obfuscation and pseudo-encryption (such as “minification”, where the code is compressed and “minified”). But this is a dangerously false sense of security. Any skilled developer can reverse engineer a “minified” or “obfuscated” JavaScript application. By design, JavaScript cannot be encrypted and it cannot be hidden. JavaScript files must be downloaded in order to run in a web browser.

To make matters worse, JavaScript also cannot be locked down to a specific web domain.

The code is accessible to be hacked by any competitor. No matter how many steps are taken to hide the JavaScript, the web browser eventually downloads the JavaScript file to run it within the client’s web browser.

For comparison, hacking a Flash or Silverlight application just by viewing the source is not very easy but anyone with a little knowledge of HTML5 can do it in minutes.

The hacks of famous HTML5 games like AngryBirds, Texas Holdem and many others are excellent examples of the insecure techniques employed by HTML5 developers. All security measures are useless once the code has been obtained and reverse engineered. No matter what any HTML5 or JavaScript developer may claim, these facts are true and irrefutable!

Fact #2: The concept of HTML5 Canvas is nothing new.

As we discussed already, HTML5 is based on the same concepts of HTML4. The most useful and talked about feature of HTML5 is the new “Canvas” object. Canvas makes it easy for JavaScript developers to “paint” within a web browser, simplifying the design of applications that utilize graphics. But you may be surprised to know that this functionality has been available in a simulated manner with very little attention since the release of HTML4.

Fact #3: There is a widespread misconception about HTML5

HTML5 has been labeled as a “cross platform programming language” which is a serious misconception. It is true that HTML5 is capable of running on all types of platforms such as Windows, Linux, Android and other mobile operating systems but let’s not forget that HTML5 is nothing more than web page markup, which is controlled by JavaScript. Classifying HTML5 and JavaScript as a true programming language would be incorrect. It is a browser integrated language that cannot utilize all the features of the underlying operating system.

When Should You Use HTML5?

The answer is quite simple. Use HTML5 when you do not care about your source code, intellectual property, or trade secrets. If you do not care that a competitor may steal your source code after it has been uploaded to your web site then use HTML5. As you can see, HTML5 is perfect for buttons, menus and website specific content, for which it was designed.

The Bottom Line – Better Options Available

The bottom line is that HTML5 and JavaScript are great for a lot of things, but you can’t effectively protect anything that you develop with them. This clearly doesn’t add up if you are using these technologies for developing business applications, which they were not designed for.

If you are developing a web application then consider using Flash or Silverlight, both of which run in all popular web browsers for desktop operating system, including Windows, Mac and Linux.

If you are developing a mobile application, there are far better options for iPhone, iPad and Android development that afford better protection of trade secrets, better security, performance and usability for the end user and also allow you to take advantage of the native features of the underlying operating systems. For iOS (iPad and iPhone), use the Object C programming language. For Android, use the Java programming language.

For Windows development, consider C++, C#, Delphi or other proven languages.

Although slightly more difficult to develop with, Objective C, C++, C#, Java and other low level languages are always the best option no matter if you are developing desktop, web, or mobile applications.

Permission to Redistribute

Copyright (c) 2012 by Modulus Financial Engineering, Inc. http://www.modulusfe.com All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to redistribute the article providing this copyright notice remains in place.

About the Author

Richard Gardner is Founder/CEO of Modulus Financial Engineering, Inc. In addition to his leadership role of the firms team members, Richard is an influential member of the financial technology industry at large, a globally-respected professional trader and software engineer, a guest speaker at industry conferences and among the inventors on over 70 technology patents.