Cited: NYDailyNews
One struggling businessman found a numbers problem that worried him, which was usually not a challenge for this math whiz Marc Goldberg. After opening Mathnasium of Manhattan, a franchise tutoring business last October on the Upper East Side of New York City, this math whiz and his wife Tammy became worried when their sales continued to fall. At 30, one thing you do not want to worry about is collapsing businesses especially if it is your own.
“We opened at the height of the recession, when everything started crashing down. There were people who told us they would have been able to afford our help a year earlier,” said Marc Goldberg. The Goldbergs invested $100,000 in their business, all of it from their savings.
“We had a rough start but we’re expecting a good-sized growth this year,” said Goldberg, who hopes to have at least 100 kids enrolled in his Mathnasium center.
“Several parents told us their kids asked if they could go after their friends raved about it. It’s hard to say no when your kid wants to go to a math center,” Goldberg said. Tuition is $450 a month for a tutoring program with a student-to-instructor ratio of 3-to-1.
Naomi Suzuki, a former public school teacher who’s taught in the Bronx and Maryland, has applied all her energy to keep her two-year-old tutoring franchise, Kumon Park Slope, afloat.
“There are some sleepless nights,” said Suzuki, 37, who regularly puts in 60 hours a week at her after-school center in Brooklyn, which helps kids with math and reading. Many of Suzuki’s worries started when Bank of America reduced her credit lines unexpectedly.
Examining every cost, Suzuki decided to stop accepting credit cards so she wouldn’t have to pay processing fees. Tuition is $125 a month per subject; she pays about $36 per student in royalties. She also put off plans to move.
“We were hoping to expand to a larger location,” she said. “The center is only 600 square feet, but that will have to wait until we figure out our future.” Business has been tough even for well-established tutoring organizations.
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Learning Leaders, formerly the New York City School Volunteer Program has provided volunteers for more than 50 years. They group now works with more than 230,000 students in more than 800 schools citywide. With the recession came an influx of volunteers, said Mindy Duitz, president of Learning Leaders.
“Between the start of the year and June, we’ve had about a 25% uptick of volunteers, many from the business sector,” she said.
Despite increased interest in the organization, its budget was cut 15% to about $3.6 million this year.
“We need to be smarter about how we can meet demand with fewer resources,” she said.
Educate Inc., the Baltimore-based operator of Sylvan tutoring centers, reported on October 27 an $8.5 million loss in the third quarter, its largest quarterly loss since the company became public two years ago. Educate is considering a buyout proposal to take the company private. Last month, Educate’s top management and others offered $8 a share, or about $344 million. Executives said the process is continuing and made no further comments during a conference call with analysts yesterday. Educate stock dropped 2.5% or 20 cents.
Educate, Inc. (Nasdaq: EEEE) is a leading pre-K-12 education services company delivering supplemental education services to students and their families.
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My Take: The one thing I could see that they can offer is their stick-to-itiveness. Besides that, offering a product or service that consumers need like offering business people a way to purchase used copiers for their office instead of purchasing new ones. Purchasing a new color copy machine can be expensive, however if you and want to save money you would purchase used copy copiers.
This is just simple economics as far as I can see. The same thing could be said about the fashion world. If you sell jeans, sell skinny jeans which are popular right now instead of playing with low-rise jeans. Although, some may argue that sexy jeans are just as popular.
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