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An update on three women-owned startups: Innovative ideas lead to business expansion

Invoke In addition to the yoga and pilates classes offered at Invoke, owner Amy Peddycord has added clothing from Lululemon, a popular Canadian apparel brand. She also has established a relationship with Santa Monica, Calif.-based Yoga Works, which has 14 studios throughout California and New York. Yoga Works will lead a teacher training program at Invoke in 2008. Peddycord says hiring an office manager in 2006 was the best thing she’s done. “Nicole [Schoville] quickly grew into the role and…

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SPORTS: Star athletes say the craziest things (or do they?)

Ah, another day, and another kick in the teeth for the Indiana Pacers. Back to the oral surgeon. The kind word for the Pacers’ Jermaine O’Neal would be disingenuous. Either that, or it’s a gaggle of reporters whom O’Neal wants us to believe either fictionalized or took several quotes “out of context”-don’t you love that fallback phrase?-last weekend in Los Angeles, where O’Neal said (or didn’t say) he wanted to be traded to the Lakers and was critical of Pacers’…

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PROFILE THERESIA WHITFIELD: Changing direction after life-altering crisis Former CNN producer follows path to healing, new career after overcoming post-traumatic stress

Whitfield, owner of Indianapolis-based Fletcher Communications Inc., was a freelance television news producer working for CNN, Reuters News and the Christian Broadcasting Network’s news division in Washington, D.C., when American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. Four years later, Whitfield crashed emotionally and was hospitalized suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder. The daughter of a retired Army officer, Whitfield, 39, had moved many times as a child before settling in Columbia, S.C. She graduated from high school in 1986, but…

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Fantasy football leagues concern employers

The kickoff of the National Football League season this month has many central Indiana employers fearful that fantasy will
encroach on reality. The fretfulness revolves around the start of the fantasy football season, where fans draft real players
onto make-believe teams and track their individual performances via organized Web sites.

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Fieldhouse must fend off Louisville arena rival

Although the opening of a 22,000-seat arena in Louisville is still three years away, officials here are already bracing for
a raid on Indianapolis and Conseco Fieldhouse events. Several Indianapolis interests will be watching Aug. 20 as the Louisville
Arena Authority unveils designs for the arena along the Ohio River.

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SPORTS: There’s still time to savor a championship season

The Indianapolis Colts are back at it, and with their arrival in Terre Haute (which is French for “terribly hot”) comes the first round of predictions. Will they or won’t they back up their Super Bowl championship? Hey, we’ll all find out in the dead of winter, not the heat of summer … how’s that for not being either bold or profound? But words in the first week of August are just so much blah, blah, blah. So, too, as…

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BEHIND THE NEWS: Tightening credit markets cast shadow over megadeals

Almost overnight, the nation’s lending climate has tightened dramatically, and the timing couldn’t be worse for two Indianapolis companies. A pair of private equity firms are trying to line up billions of dollars in debt financing to complete their $5.6 billion purchase of locally based Allison Transmission from General Motors Corp. Meanwhile, locally based Finish Line Inc. plans to rely on debt to pay nearly the entire cost of its $1.5 billion acquisition of Tennessee-based Genesco Inc. Those deals still…

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One motorcycle race gained, thousands of seats lost: Speedway officials think revenue from MotoGP race will make up for Indy 500 and Brickyard 400 losses

The changes to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s road course to accommodate motorcycle racing means the track’s operators will forfeit around $500,000 annually in ticket revenue for the Indianapolis 500 and Brickyard 400. Due to modifications just south of pit road and directly north of the oval’s first turn, several thousand seats on the inside of the first turn will be removed after this year’s Brickyard 400. Work to prepare the track for next year’s MotoGP motorcycle race-which includes laying 13,300…

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SPORTS: Awaiting a tainted ‘greatest’ moment in sports

Do the words “integrity” and “sports” belong in the same sentence? Worse, does anyone care? By the time you read this, Barry Bonds, a Giant in uniform but hardly a giant of a man, may have become baseball’s alltime home-run king. His inexorable pursuit of Henry Aaron’s magical mark of 755 has been well-documented. So, too, has been the overwhelming evidence implicating Bonds as a user of steroids. Thus, what should be one of baseball’s greatest moments is instead one…

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VIEWPOINT: Indy a home run for College World Series

As I sat last month enjoying my first College World Series week in Omaha, Neb., an evening game between the North Carolina Tarheels and the Rice Owls, it became clear to me that this nationally u n d e r a p p r e c i a t e d event would be perfect for Indianapolis. Or better said; Indianapolis would be perfect for the College World Series. Now, before CWS purists begin to chant “57 years!” “57 years!,”…

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THE TRAVELING LIFE: Start traveling now before it’s too late

On an Ambassadair trip to Athens, Greece, in 1987, one of the tour members suddenly got up from the breakfast table, saying he had to hurry to a class he was teaching that morning. After he left, his wife explained to the puzzled group that he had Alzheimer’s disease, which was diagnosed the year before his retirement in 1986. She said wistfully that they had saved their money so that they could travel after he retired from his job as…

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Strides taken in life sciences, experts say: Industry panel: Thanks to ongoing efforts, Indiana has experienced serious progress as biomedical hotbed during last 5 years

Five leaders of Indiana’s life sciences industry offered their perspectives at the Indiana Convention Center June 26 as part of the Indianapolis Business Journal’s Power Breakfast Series. The panelists: Mike Arpey, managing director of global investment bank Credit Suisse’s Asset Management Division and manager of the $73 million Indiana Future Fund for BioCrossroads, the state’s life sciences economicdevelopment initiative. Ron Ellis, co-founder, president and CEO of Lafayettebased Endocyte Inc., a biotechnology company focused on the treatment of cancer through receptor-targeted…

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SPORTS: A race with half the wheels could be twice as fun

On July 16, I followed a caravan of about 200 motorcyclists from downtown to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. As I climbed out of my car in the IMS parking lot, I heard AC-DC’s “Hell’s Bells” blasting through the loudspeakers. Just another reminder it’s not your father’s Speedway anymore. More to the point, it’s not Tony George’s grandfather’s Speedway anymore. Think about it. No sooner than George and his IMS team bid adieu to Formula One, they said hello to MotoGP,…

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RETURN ON TECHNOLOGY: Chew-and-view eateries do not make a happy meal

Who asked for televisions to be installed in every restaurant in central Indiana? I’ve been to a lot of them, standing in lines, overhearing conversations with wait staff, chatting with the bartender, and never once, not a single time in my whole life, did any customer ever say anything like, “You know, what this joint really needs is a TV!” I can understand places where you’d expect to find TVs, and indeed where you go to watch TV on special…

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Retailer’s growth plan boon for Plainfield facility: Dick’s Sporting Goods’ strategy to expand west will push inventory through local distribution center

Dick’s Sporting Goods’ aggressive nationwide growth plan will mean about 400 new jobs at the retailer’s Plainfield distribution center, industry experts said. Last month, Pittsburgh-based Dick’s rolled out a plan to grow from 309 stores to 800 nationwide within seven years. The plan includes growing from zero to 90 stores in California, two to 60 in Texas, and two to 40 in Florida. “Their expansion plans are so aggressive, they’re eventually going to have to open another distribution center, but…

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SPORTS: Tennis tourney healthy but needs a new home

A significant Indianapolis sporting event with international appeal is preparing to celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2011. The Indianapolis 500? Well, yes, that too. Far less-wellknown and recognized is that the origins of elite-level competitive tennis in Indianapolis also date back to just after the turn of the century … the last century, that is. Records show that the Western Tennis Championships, which led to the U.S. Clay Court Championships, which led to the U.S. Hardcourt Tennis Championships, which led…

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SPORTS: Pan Am Games was ‘coming out’ party for city

Twenty years ago, Indianapolis was preparing to take on the world. Or at least half of it. It was a month before the 10th Pan American Games. In my lifetime, I do not recall many times-if any-when there was such a feeling of collective effort. This wasn’t a city rooting for a team, like the Pacers or the Colts. This was a city rooting for itself to pull off this mammoth undertaking, to show not just the country, but the…

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Commentary: We can learn some things from Turkey

Turkey isn’t high on the list of countries Americans visit. Tell friends you’re going to France and they congratulate you. Tell them you’re going to Turkey, and they ask why. They might follow the why with a reference to the movie “Midnight Express,” a 1978 film about an American’s nightmarish experience in a Turkish prison. Midnight Express had such a negative effect on Americans’ perceptions of Turkey that the man who wrote the book the movie is based upon recently…

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Lilly rescues tennis tournament

A major sponsorship upgrade by local drugmaker Eli Lilly and Co. and a quartet of new corporate partners has helped the Indianapolis
Tennis Championships stem its losses after the departure of its title sponsor.

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