We’re pleased to announce the results of this year’s Small Business Super Hero contest. While we intended to only award a Grand Prize, we found ourselves also giving Runners-Up awards to three very deserving other small businesses.
Read their stories and meet the super heroes themselves over on the Super Heroes Winner’s Page.
Small Business Super Hero Grand Prize Winner:
The Secret Chocolatier
Handmade chocolates made with love by a family using local, organic ingredients.
(Also Super) Runners-Up:
OMUNKY
Eco-friendly t-shirts.
Tutuma Social Club
Afro-Peruvian jazz club grows a community in NYC.
Verlo Mattress Factory Store
An entrepreneur lives the American dream, gives back to his adopted country.
Thanks so much to all who entered! We loved reading your entries and wish you the best for your business in the upcoming year.
Tags: Community, Contests, small business, small business super hero, small business week
This week is National Small Business Week and to celebrate and show our support of small business owners everywhere, we are once again hosting a Small Business Super Hero contest. This contest encourages small business owners to cast off their civilian garb and show off their true super powers so that we can recognize them for the everyday heroes that they are.
You can submit your own story or nominate a business you admire. The entry form is brief and the prizes are many (including a build-your-own custom bike from Republic bike!) so go ahead! Share your story and you just might become a real live Small Business Super Hero.
Other prizes include:
Enter here before June 1st. The winning entry will be posted on the BatchBlog. Good luck, Super Heroes!
Tags: batchblue, chris brogan, Contests, mailchimp, MOO cards, small business, small business super hero, small business week
Editor’s note: One of the things we’re most grateful for is our awesome and amazing customers. To celebrate, we’re kicking off a new monthly series where we profile some of these folks and their cool companies. If you are a BatchBook customer and you’d like to be featured, drop us a line – we’d love to share your story! — MRR
Name: Carolyn Gatto
Company: WeJustGotBack.com
Tell us a little bit about what your company does and what services you provide: WeJustGotBack.com is a family trip-planning resource. We provide in-depth reviews of family-friendly hotels and resorts, reader-contributed tips and recommendations, consumeristic travel advice, and the latest family travel deals. We also provide consulting and spokesperson services to businesses that want a bigger piece of the lucrative family-travel pie.
How did you get started? While trying to plan a trip for her family in 2005, our editor in chief, Suzanne Rowan Kelleher, identified a significant weakness in the quality of family travel info on the web. We knew we could use our journalistic backgrounds to create a site that would be genuinely helpful to parents who were planning family trips. We researched the market, established an action plan, assembled a top-notch team with complementary–but not duplicate–skills, and quickly moved forward. Within ten weeks of our launch, a writer from the New York Times called to interview us for an article. His description of our site, an authoritative voice on family trip planning, helped put us on the map.
How long have you been in business and how many employees do you currently have? We launched the site in February 2006 and currently have seven employees, two full-time and five part-time.
Who is your target audience? We target North American-based parents who travel with kids up to the age of 18. Right now our content covers only destinations in the US, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean because that’s where the majority of our readers bring their families.
How does your company stay connected with clients and your business community? We use Twitter to raise awareness of our site and our brand and to meet potential readers and people in our industry. We’re also active on LinkedIn and use it to make announcements to the business community about our site’s evolution and our professional achievements.
What advice for anyone else looking to start their own company?
1) Be an evangelist about your business.
2) Perfect your elevator pitch.
3) Know your competition’s strengths and weaknesses. Learn how to succinctly articulate the differences between your business and theirs.
4) If something isn’t working, switch gears. Find another way to approach it.
5) Don’t overcomplicate anything. Just get it done.
6) Always be a person of your word. It will serve you well.
Tags: small business super hero
We love what’s now become our annual Small Business Super Hero contest. Once again, we were 
impressed by the diversity of small business super heroes out there and the incredible entries we received. After much thoughtful deliberation, vote-tallying and donut-cake eating, we’ve chosen our winners!
First place: RetroRazor
One man’s noble effort at greening up the facial hair industry? A romantic Italian backstory? And…his wife nominated him (calling him her Safety Razor Super Hero Husband)! Chadd Bennett’s cool vintage-style razor business won by a whisker.
Second place: KitBook
At BatchBlue, we love kids, we love science, and we love kids who love science. Kudos to Ed Basconi and his sidekick David Jones for their efforts in improving science teaching and learning, turning both kids and teachers into Science Super Heroes.
Third place: jitterbug.tv
We confess, some of us BatchBlue parents have been fans of this cool music site for kids for a while. So when we received their contest entry, we were very excited. We could also relate to the problem co-founders Dan Gellert and Randall Green are solving, which is to provide a safe, fun place for kids to find appropriate music online. That’s pretty super to us.
Read their winning complete stories on the winners’ page. And thanks to all of our entrants for your truly amazing efforts on behalf of small businesses everywhere.
Tags: Contests, small business, small business super hero, small business week, winners
We just reviewed all of our Small Business Super Hero entries during our staff meeting and boy were there some good entries! We laughed, we cried…
We’re making a short list and casting our final votes, then hope to notify the winners later today. We’ll be sharing their winning entries on the blog later this week, so please check back!
Tags: Contests, small business, small business super hero, super hero
