gwendolyn bounds

How to Get Publicity in a New Media World
When it comes to generating goodwill between a company, its customers and prospects -- the very essence of public relations -- it's a buyer's market for small businesses. In the case of Hollywould and many others, the Internet more than anything has altered the dynamic. Much as the Web has enabled entrepreneurs to sell products independent of bricks-and-mortar retailers and their limited shelf space, so too is it letting them engage the public without the mainstream press or the spinners who court it.

How a Small Designer Reached for the Stars on Oscar Night
Los Angeles -- IT WAS FRIDAY afternoon, two days before the Oscars, and Lauren Merkin, a little-known New York handbag designer, waited inside her room at the swank Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel, hoping that the $31,000 she had invested in producing a collection of 65 one-of-a-kind "Red Carpet" bags for Hollywood's biggest evening was about to pay off.
Her dream: that a big-name star or her stylist would breeze through the hotel room and select a bag to carry for the Academy Awards.

Designer's Law: If a Show Can Go Wrong...
NINE YEARS AGO, designer Cynthia Steffe experienced fashion's version of hell while producing her first runway show. Things went wrong: The designer ran out of carmel stretch suede in the final hour, so a jacket was missing a sleeve. There weren't enough shoes backstage. A crying model flung a tuft of her hair at Ms. Steffe after a harried stylist accidentally cut the unruly locks.

The Long Road To Wal-Mart
IT WAS 7:50 A.M. LAST NOVEMBER on one of the most important Wednesdays of Colin Roche's career, and the rain was coming down hard in Bentonville, Ark. As he and his business partner, Bobby Ronsse, navigated the slick two-lane road leading to the headquarters of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Mr. Roche began to sweat as their rental car inched along in traffic. The pair had finally scored a coveted 8 a.m. appointment with a Wal-Mart buyer -- giving them a chance to get their ergonomic pen, the PenAgain, in front of the world's largest retailer. But with only 10 minutes to spare, that chance was slipping away as the entrepreneurs sat, panicked, still a mile and a half away.

Move Over, Rocky Balboa --- Our Reporter Dons Gloves, Lands Jabs, Stays Up; Plus, She's A Girl!
NEW YORK -- In a sweltering warehouse gym beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, I stand clad in shorts and a tank top, plastic mouthpiece clenched between my teeth. It is a languid Friday evening in June, and instead of a glass of wine I clasp two cherry-red boxing gloves, 10 ounces each. A leather mask covers my head, and I am sweating.
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Move Over, Coke
The inside story of how a little-known beverage, Vitaminwater, took shelf space from the big giants.

Amid the Ashes, Baby Carriages, Shoes, Family Photos
NEW YORK -- We are standing at the foot of the stairs leading up to the 10th-floor apartment we share. Kathryn lights a candle, but the darkness is so deep we can't see the walls -- only reach for them, hands outstretched, groping for a landmark.
  Thirty-two hours have elapsed since we fled down these same stairs, carrying only our wallets and the clothes on our backs. In the bright comfort of the blue sky on that Tuesday morning, we never imagined we wouldn't be home for dinner, resuming life as normal with Stoli, our 14-year-old cat. But our next-door neighbor is -- was -- the World Trade Center. And home is now a ghost town.
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A Tiny Scrap Of Fabric Wins A Huge Following -- Hanky Panky's Model 4811 Is a Thong Unto Itself; `It's Like Lace Butter'
For the last decade and a half, a little-known company called Hanky Panky has thrived making a $15 lace thong known simply by its style number, 4811. In the cutthroat world of lingerie sales, that is no small thing.
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Dating Services Try to Woo More Mr. Rights
Think finding a man is tough? So do the folks who make a business out of arranging dates.
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How an Artist Fell Into a Profitable Online Card Business
FOUR YEARS ago at Christmastime, a widowed British artist named Jacquie Lawson had just taught herself to use a computer -- and was still more accustomed to a paintbrush than a mouse -- when she designed an electronic greeting card and e-mailed it to a few friends.
  It was meant to be a private display of her new technological prowess. After hundreds of hours hunched over the monitor -- "I don't like to let a machine beat me," Ms. Lawson says -- she had concocted an intricate, animated card that featured pets frolicking around her snow-covered cottage in the village of Lurgashall in West Sussex, England. Exhausted, Ms. Lawson hit the send button and left for vacation in Australia.
  When she returned, there were 1,600 e-mails waiting in her inbox, nearly all from people she didn't know. The e-card had been forwarded over and over, and each person replying to Ms. Lawson wanted to know the same thing: Got any more cards?
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His Business on Edge, Mr. Wagner Offers Unusual Collateral --- Program Slated for Cut Helps Entrepreneurs in a Bind; A $20,000 Prosthetic Leg
MOUNT VERNON, Ohio -- Two years ago, Torren Wagner found his truckbed-lining business on the brink of disaster. Sales had slowed dramatically in the cold weather, and he'd fallen behind on bills.
  "I was scared to death," says Mr. Wagner, 34 years old. "But if I failed, I lost everything."
  That's because nearly everything he owned was already collateralized for his business, from his 800-square-foot house to the John Deere tractor in his garage. Even his mother was on the line because she had co-signed a previous loan. So one evening, Mr. Wagner, an amputee, scoured his home looking for anything of value to help secure financing. He found the unlikely answer leaning in a corner: his $20,000 prosthetic leg.
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