Oregon Business Team

Surveys reveal support

It was a classic dotcom deal. ISITE Design co-founders Paul Williams and Jeff Cram were on the 70th floor of the Trump Building on Wall Street in 2000, entertaining a tempting offer from an investment firm pushing a reverse merger with a publicly traded company. Everything was first class, including the meal cooked by the chef flown in from Italy to celebrate the birthday of one of the firm’s partners.

Craigslist forever changed the world of classified advertising, but anyone who uses the site is aware of its shortcomings. “Buried in the 500 replies you get from India and everywhere else maybe you get 10 people who follow directions and are local,” says Ethan Smith-Gillespie, co-founder of The Program, a Portland design firm. So he and Program co-founder Coe Lottis decided to do something about it.

The shortest summer in recent memory has left once-mighty private wildfire fighting companies struggling to survive amid massive layoffs.

Roberta Shoemaker runs a family-owned company that has produced rugged men’s work boots for 92 years. But as the first woman to run West Coast Shoe Co., she has itched to produce a feminine boot line.

James Martin has his hands full these days. On the heels of an ambitious redevelopment of a downtown historic flour mill into a new wine-tasting room and cultural center, the 46-year-old entrepreneur from The Dalles is pushing a first-of-its-kind new product into the California market, hoping to pioneer the largely untapped “ready-to-drink” market for wine.

Three navigation locks along the Columbia and Snake rivers will close in December for the longest period ever, prompting the grain industry to adapt and the barge lines to plan layoffs.

Oregon Business magazine has been named one of the top 10 small business publications in the country by the national American Society of Business Publication Editors, which also awarded five additional honors to the magazine for excellence in writing and design.

The IFC TV show Portlandia will do more than parody and exalt the city’s quirky nature: Its production has created jobs and further raised Portland’s status as a film-friendly city.

The list of billionaires agreeing to give the bulk of their fortunes away to charity is growing: Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Paul Allen.  Bryan Sims. If you’re unfamiliar with that last name compared to the ones preceding it, that’s understandable.