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Free-lancing turns into big-time marketing: Mom-and-pop ExaroMed now growing fat with large drug and device clients from across the country

Most free-lance writers eke out a living. The most fortunate live comfortable lives. But Mindy Mascaro turned her freelance writing business into a thriving company. Carmel-based ExaroMed LLC is now producing sales and marketing content for the like of Roche Diagnostics, Eli Lilly and Co. and Amgen Inc. It has also served smaller life sciences companies such as Indigo BioSciences Inc. and Cheetah Medical Inc. The company has zoomed from six employees to 20 in the last year. It’s already…

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SMALL BUSINESS PROFILE: MATRIX LABEL SYSTEMS INC.: Label maker manufacturing growth – again Fourth expansion project set to open this summer

SMALL BUSINESS PROFILE MATRIX LABEL SYSTEMS INC. Label maker manufacturing growth – again Fourth expansion project set to open this summer Within a month, Plainfield-based Matrix Label Systems Inc. will break ground on a fourth addition to its central Indiana facility, adding nearly 17,000 square feet of warehouse space and potentially more workers. That’s just the latest growth spurt at the 23-year-old company that started out of a garage and now has 50 employees and $15 million in annual revenue….

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Indiana’s forgotten corridor

Draw a line from Richmond in east-central Indiana toward the Chicago area, and youâ??ll find some of the
most
depressed space in the state.

The stretch includes the once-mighty manufacturing centers of Anderson, Gas City, Muncie, Kokomo and Logansport.
Factories and…

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Ticket to the middle class

Forget outsourcing. A Michigan research group says the larger problem for manufacturing will be finding enough
domestic workers to navigate the complexities of modern factory floors.

The Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor contends in a recent report that while…

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VOICES FROM THE INDUSTRY: New tax break makes Indiana more attractive than ever

Rapid growth in the high-tech fields of biotechnology and life science has made Indiana a shining example of how promoting emerging industries can transform an agricultural and manufacturingbased economy into a national leader in innovation. It has done so by creating an environment in which knowledge-based businesses can thrive. Building on this success, Indiana continues to position itself as a leader in emerging technologies. A new tax law that took effect this year will present another major step toward this…

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Proposals to loosen Indiana’s wine distribution system fail

At IBJ press time, the General Assembly was set to close another session without significant change to the state’s complex alcohol distribution system, ensuring another year of wrangling between wineries and wholesalers. A proposal to raise the direct shipping limit to 10,000 cases failed. So did a broader deregulation bill brought by a new Indiana wine drinker’s group, VinSense.

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Knauf plans state’s first ‘gold-certified’ building

in an uncommon move among Indiana manufacturers typically more preoccupied with foreign competition and deteriorating margins,
Knauf Insulation is rebuilding its research and development facility, destroyed in a fire last year, to make it 30 percent
more energy-efficient than a conventional office building of its size.

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Hoosier Heartland Highway pumps up hope on prairie: Expressway construction starting two years early

LAFAYETTE-For years, they’ve driven on little more than paved-over wagon trails pioneers carved into the hills nestling the Wabash River. Motorists on State Road 25 between Logansport and Lafayette have grown desperate for a replacement: the final, 33-mile western leg of the “Hoosier Heartland Highway.” Today, the Hoosier Heartland expressway ends in Logansport-the western terminus of a newly improved, four-lane U.S. 24 that runs east, to Fort Wayne. But last month Gov. Mitch Daniels surprised highway proponents with word that…

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Toyota trains, Detroit furloughs

If youâ??re looking for another reason Toyota is pushing Detroit carmakers around, notice how their workers
spend their time when vehicle sales soften, spurring production cutbacks.

Detroit companies send their workers home with nearly full compensation.

At its plant in Princeton, Toyota…

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Cheaper Beemers?

BMW said today it will expand its plant in Spartanburg, S.C., to make the X3 and X5 sport-utility vehicles.
Another model destined for the plant is the X6 coupe.

The cost of imports has risen as the value of the…

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Students finding robotics irresistible: Competitions promote interest in technology

On the same day this month when high school boys’ basketball teams compete to advance to the state finals, another event showcasing the talents of Indiana’s youth should be just as climactic. Only this contest emphasizes academics over athletics. The three-day Boilermaker Regional at Purdue University that culminates March 15 will host roughly 40 high school robotics programs, including 26 schools from Indiana. Students will apply their engineering and computer programming skills to design and build task-performing machines. The winning…

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IU follows Purdue lead, overhauls business-development strategy

Indiana University President Michael McRobbie calls it “Innovate Indiana.” His ambition is to corral all of IU’s strengths
under one new branded initiative to boost the Hoosier economy. Purdue University already has leveraged a similar strategy,
promoted with “Go BusinessMakers!” billboards, to national acclaim.

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EYE ON THE PIE: Waiting for evidence of recession

Save the date: March 27. That’s when the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis will release the latest data on Indiana’s economy. At that time, we’ll get the first estimate of personal income for the last three months of 2007, plus revisions of previous quarters. If there is a recession, that’s where we will see the first clear indications. If? Yes, it is still not clear if there is a recession because the data, our photos of economic performance, are not…

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Telamon on the rebound: Diversification puts Carmel technology firm back on fast track, prevents layoffs

In 2003, Carmel-based Telamon Corp. hit rock bottom. So, founder Albert Chen returned to his roots. Taiwanese native Chen, 63, had spent two decades building his firm to serve telecommunications giants. But when the dot-com bubble burst, the telecom industry tanked along with it. Telamon-then Indiana’s largest minority-owned business-saw its annual revenue plummet $300 million, down from $456 million in 2001. Most managers would have chosen to shrink Telamon to reflect its new reality. But Chen doesn’t do mass layoffs….

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VIEWPOINT: Suffering a slow death by technology

Somebody help me! I want to go back to the ’80s! This technology stuff is killing me. A rotary phone and a busy signal, that’s the ticket. Ma Bell: She’s my gal. Simplicity. Doesn’t that sound good? I used to think the advances in electron ic technology were a good thing. The early developments were excellent and, like most people, I rushed out to buy them. The iPod, now, that was a great advance. A complete Beethoven collection in a…

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Former Thomson exec attempts to revive Proscan TVs: U.S. subsidiary sells South Korean flatscreens

In the mid 1990s, Carmel’s then-giant Thomson Consumer Electronics annually sold $300 million worth of high-end televisions under the name Proscan. But by the end of the decade, the company’s French owners had abandoned Proscan in favor of a strategy emphasizing the betterknown RCA brand. Now a former Thomson executive based in Indianapolis is attempting to revive Proscan. Last year, Pat Deighan sold nearly $50 million worth of Proscan high-definition flatscreen LCD televisions in the United States. This year, he…

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Against odds, AlGalCo pursues ‘Holy Grail’ of power cells

A small West Lafayette technology startup has quietly unveiled a product that might, just might, change the world. At the
TechAdvantage Conference and Expo in Anaheim, Calif., on Feb. 20, Kurt Koehler, CEO, co-founder (and, for the moment, sole
employee) of AlGalCo LLC, showed off a pre-production hydrogen-powered emergency generator.

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Uphill battle ahead: State poses tough test for new enviro leader

By the time Jesse Kharbanda earned a Rhodes scholarship to study at Oxford, the University of Chicago student already knew he wanted to advocate environmental policies in the developing world, someday. Eight years later, some might say Kharbanda has landed in the developing world, all right-Indiana, insofar as it’s considered the backwater of environmental stewardship. One might recall the state’s 49thplace ranking in a 2007 review of “greenest” states by Forbes magazine. Only West Virginia-a national leader in illiteracy-scored worse….

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Law firms making green push: Environmental teams provide marketing boost

The next generation of environmental law is coming to a firm near you. Many law firms have existing practices that counsel clients on the complexities of complying with air and water permits or cleaning up contaminated properties. But now that the corporate sector is embracing “green” initiatives quicker than Al Gore accumulates carbon credits, environmental law is becoming as sexy as, say, intellectual property. Two of the city’s largest firms-Ice Miller LLP and Baker & Daniels LLP-recently unveiled so-called “green”…

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EYE ON THE PIE: Readers respond to Indiana stamp

On Jan. 14, I wrote about the new Indiana stamp from the U.S. Postal Service. I objected to the selection of a farm tractor with a cityscape in the distance as being typical of Indiana and invited readers to comment. Below are a few typical remarks: From a reader in Tennessee who grew up in Kokomo: “As I read your column, I was torn between what you were saying and my warm fuzzy memories of my childhood. … Indiana represents…

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