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New Tenant - Cleveland Whiskey
I'm pleased to welcome Cleveland Whiskey LLC to the MAGNET Incubator. CW is an innovative technology-focused start-up
with a patent pending process to dramatically accelerate the
natural processes of aging and maturation for distilled spirits. With this technology, the company expects to
sharply reduce the time-to-market associated with the production of premium
whiskey by a factor of 12 to 1.
Currently there is a worldwide whiskey shortage. China alone is a market of over 500 million adults with increasing disposable income and a growing interest in "luxury" western products. In 2007, the global whiskey market was almost $20B, and demand is rising. Supply however, is severely constrained. Even the most basic whiskey can take approximately 6 to 9 years to produce.
Cleveland Whiskey has developed a patent pending
technology to dramatically accelerate the aging and maturation of distilled
spirits. Acceleration is facilitated
through increased frequency of thermal changes and high surface area permeable
membranes within an tightly controlled and cost effective tanking
system. The process provides a
significant competitive advantage by dramatically speeding time to market,
minimizing long-term storage expenditures and eliminating evaporation
losses.
Tom Lix, President of Cleveland Whiskey, has moved out of his kitchen and into the MAGNET Incubator to further refine, test and scale this technology. Access to our engineering staff was a key factor for Tom, as his process involves multiple control systems to be engineered.
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Speaker Series
We kicked off our Speaker Series in February with a presentation from Kipp Krukowski of Confidential Business Sale. Kipp's topic was "Building Your Business With Your Exit In Mind - 50 Strategies To Unlock Value In Your Company." (Yes - Kipp discussed 50 strategies).
The presentation was great and I saw a lot of note-taking. What surprised me a bit was the diversity of attendees at the event. While I had expected mostly entrepreneurs, attendees crossed a wide spectrum from not only entrepreneurs, to financial advisors, small business owners and investors. This made for some great networking prior to and after the presentation and I saw lots of business cards being exchanged.
I'll be sending out the notice for next month's speaker soon and I'd love to see you there.
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NOCHE Internship Workshop
Straight from Brenda over at NOCHE are these preliminary details about an upcoming Internship Workshop targeted at entrepreneurs:
"Through the support
of The Burton D. Morgan Foundation, NOCHE is looking forward to coordinating
the "Engaging College Students with Entrepreneurs" Project in 2010. This
program will create college internships at Northeast Ohio entrepreneurial
companies who work with JumpStart and regional business incubators.
Key aspects of this program will include a workshop for participating
employers to develop their internship program and employer subsidies of
up to 50% of an intern's wages (up to a maximum of $500 per internship) for
a limited number of internship slots"
The workshop will be run right here at MAGNET on March 31st. Get plugged in to the MAGNET Event Calendar or NOCHE for further details as they are released. For more information,
contact Brenda Davis Smith at NOCHE (bdavissmith@noche.org).
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