Regional Retail Rumblings

Gurtrude's House of Hair will be expanding its operation into a second storefront on East Bijou Street next week. The hair salon will remain in its current location at 31 E. Bijou St. while Gurtrude's will open a day salon at 17 E. Bijou St., former home of Bijou Books ...

The "Gutbuster" is in town. Big City Burrito, with its hearty brand of Mexican cuisine, has opened its first Colorado Springs location, at the corner of Bijou Street and Nevada Avenue. ...

Coca-Cola's local business office is moving from 415 W. Pikes Peak Ave. into a new building at Vapor Trail and Newport Road off Powers Boulevard in mid-December. At 65,000 square feet, it is 50 percent bigger than the current location and it will have 30-40 foot high ceilings to increase storage space ...

Springs student 2nd in direct marketing competition

Sara Betts of Colorado Springs was part of the student team from the University of Northern Colorado's Monfort College of Business that finished second in the Direct Marketing Educational Foundation's annual Leonard J. Raymond Collegiate ECHO Competition. This marks the eighth time a direct marketing team from UNC has placed in the top three. The Monfort team's campaign, one of 120 entered in the nationwide competition, was titled "It Starts Here" and targeted marketing and advertising professionals with a brand identity for direct mail on behalf of the U.S. Postal Service. First place in the undergraduate student competition went to the State University of New York (SUNY), Plattsburgh.

Enter your small business to win national recognition

Diversity Business, the nation's leading small business Internet portal, will be conducting its 7th annual "Top Small Businesses in America" survey.

This year's survey will determine the top 500 business in the United States for small business, diversity owned businesses and women owned businesses.

The survey also will determine the top 100 businesses for disabled veteran owned business, Native American owned businesses, African American owned businesses and Hispanic American owned businesses in the United States

The top 50 small businesses, women owned businesses and diversity owned businesses of every state will be recognized.

The winners will be honored at the 7th Annual Multicultural Business Conference in March 2007 in Las Vegas. To participate, businesses must register their business profile at [ http://216.117.129.34/bawards.asp ]DiversityBusiness Business Awards Registration

This follows similar findings on medicine, car repair and police work

In the first study to look at self-assessed Internet competence and its relationship to actual online ability, women and men are found to have equal skills. Yet women rank their skills significantly lower than men do. The findings from Northwestern University are consistent with research on math and science ability and may have serious implications for women. “By underestimating their ability to effectively use the Web, women may be limiting the extent of their online behavior, the ways in which they use the Internet and, ultimately, the career choices they make,” said Eszter Hargittai, the assistant professor of communication studies at Northwestern and co-author, with Princeton University researcher Steven Shafer, of the article titled “Differences in Actual and Perceived Online Skills: The Role of Gender.” “Not a single woman among all our female study subjects called herself an “expert” user, while not a single male ranked himself as a complete novice or ‘not at all skilled.’” http://www.eszter.com/

Let up on the gas

Gas prices soon may topple the record highs set last September after Hurricane Katrina.

Here are some fuel economy tips from AAA Colorado:

• Use the lowest grade of gas your car can take. Unless your vehicle owner's manual calls for premium gas, there's no reason to use it.

• Slow down. For every mile you drive above 55 mph, your fuel economy drops by 2 percent. And gas mileage tends to drop quickly at speeds above 60 mph. The EPA offers this rule of thumb: Assume that for every 5 mph you drive over 60 mph, you mightas well be paying an additional $0.20 per gallon for gas.

• Drive in the highest gear you can, at the lowest possible speed. The slower your engine turns, the less gas you use.

• Don't accelerate when driving uphill -- it makes your mileage per gallon plummet. Instead, try to drive at the same speed, or even a little slower.

• Try to brake less by anticipating stops. When you brake, you waste the acceleration you've already used. Instead, try to accelerate slowly when leaving a stoplight, and then coast to the next light.

• Ditch your car's luggage rack, roof rack and related outdoorsy gear and put it away until you actually need to use it. The drag created from this gear can reduce your mileage per gallon by up to 5 percent.

• Get rid of the junk in your trunk. Every 100 pounds in the trunk can reduce your fuel economy by 1 to 2 percent.

DIA vs. COS

In 1995, newspaper headlines read "DIA slipping as Springs airport soars," and "DIA market is fare game for Springs."

The articles go on to describe travelers driving an extra 60 miles south and by-passing Denver to fly out of Colorado Springs to capitalize on cheap flights, mostly from Western Pacific. The airline, which has since gone bankrupt, was advertising one-way fares from Colorado Springs starting a $39 to major hubs such as San Francisco, Chicago and Dallas. Passenger traffic at the Colorado Springs Airport was up 28 percent and there were talks of adding a $50 million (in 1995) new concourse with as many as 12 new gates.
DIA could not compete since they had per-passenger costs four or five times higher than the costs out of Colorado Springs.

Now, it seems many people are making the drive north to fly out of Denver and capitalize on cheap air fare. So when did every thing change? Perhaps it happened when Western Pacific went belly up and left Colorado Springs, or maybe when Colorado Springs lost Southwest to Denver? The Gazette wants to know what you think? What airport do you decide to fly to and from? And why?

How to increase productivity by understanding the workforce

Maximizing the potential of each employee seems impossible, but Deborah Hendrix will outline how to create an environment that works for all at a half-day workshop July 21, 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Penrose Library, 20 N. Cascade Ave.

The cost is $99 per person.

Hendrix is a multi-course instructor for Dale Carnegie Training and has trained thousands of people in management, customer service, project management, sales and other topics.

To register, call her at 271-2411.

Hampton Inn adds nine hotels in June

Hampton Inn and Hampton Inn & Suites opened a new hotel in Colorado Springs as part of nine new properties opened in June. There are now four Hampton Inns located in Colorado Springs.

The new Colorado Springs is located on Interquest Parkway. Other Colorado Springs Hampton hotels are located on Harrison Road, Aerotech Drive and Commerce Center Drive. Hampton also opened a hotel in Denver on Speer Boulevard.

Other new hotel locations include: Pine Grove, Pa.; Easley S.C.; Los Angeles/Orange County/ Cypress, Calif.; Manning, S.C.; Burlington, Wash.; Waxahachie, Texas; and, Chesapeake, Va.

Let 'er rip day

No, it's not an invitation to inappropriately pass gas at work. The Better Business Bureau of Southern Colorado is hosting a free document shredding day on Friday, July 14 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the parking lot of the First Baptist Church at 317 East Kiowa Street .

KKTV-11 News and docuVault, a nationally-certified document destruction company, are co-hosting the event known as "Letter Rip" Day. The three organizations created the event in 2005 to give the public an opportunity to safely dispose of personal and financial documents in order to prevent identity theft.

The public is invited to bring as many as five boxes of documents to be shred by docuVault's shredding truck. Plastics, cardboard, newspapers and magazines cannot be accepted.

Sinton Diary will provide complimentary ice cream, while supplies last. For more information, call 636-5076.

Baring it all for 31 years

This week, July 10-16, marks the 31st anniversary of Nude Recreation Week The purpose of the week is to inform and educate people about "all the fun they are missing out on by not taking nude vactions," according to
The American Association for Nude Recreation. (Yes, there is a national association for nudists.)

Nude recreation is one of the fastest growing segments of the travel industry, according to travelwirenews.com. Nude vacationers now have choices such as cruises (on such lines as Holland America, Carnival, and Star Flyer sponsored by The Nude Cruise Company Bare Necessities of Austin, Texas), upscale resorts, and rural campgrounds and clubs.

The most popular clothing optional resorts are located in warm parts of the country; most notably Palm Springs, Calif., and Florida. But there are some Colorado locations where you can bare all.

Resorts, clubs, camps:
Mountain Air Ranch - Littleton
Wild Woods Resort - Calhan

Natural hot springs:
Dakota Hot Springs - Penrose
Orient Land Trust (Valley View Hot Springs) - Villa Grove