Greenville Business Magazine 2010 January issue : Page 46
››emerging companies BY KATRINA DANIEL PHOTO BY OLIVER YU FOTOGRAPHIE A Better Back You’ve heard folks say how they’ve just stumbled into a career? Well, Jennifer Iverstine sat on hers. Iverstine was working as a vendor at the Women’s Show a few months ago and complaining about how badly her back and feet ached after standing on concrete all day. As fate would have it, A Better Back Pillow was in the next booth. Iverstine says “ I noticed how person after person came to the booth next to me, and you could actually hear the people and see the effect of the pillow on their faces. I watched as people stopped at their booth and tried out the pillow. Most of them immediately purchased it.” Iverstine’s friend bought her one and she took it home that night. “ I was so sore from setting up the show all day that I tried the cold pillow, followed by the heated pillow. My back pain and stiffness disappeared. I was a new person,“ she says. 46 GREENVILLEBUSINESSMAG.COM | JANUARY 2010 The pillow is a large 7” x 12” pad that runs hot or cold. Literally. It’s a convenient backpack that straps on your back or shoulders or around your waist or neck. The pillow has a pocket where you insert either the packet that has been heated in the microwave or the pad designed especially for the cold packs. Nuked in a microwave or cooled in the freezer, a Better Back Pillow applies the right amount of heat or ice that’s required to help diminish the pain of aching backs or knees, necks, shoulders and elbows. Iverstine became so convinced of the pillow’s potential; she became the first South Carolina distributor. She intro- duced herself to the pillows developer/ promoter, Claudia Rimoli who, in turn, was interested in Iverstine’s background as a pharmaceutical sales professional, ”I have extensive experience working with pain patients and physicians that treat chronic pain patients. I know the struggles that both patients and physicians have in managing pain. Both are always looking for ways to reduce the amount of pain medication that a patient takes. Hot and cold therapy is almost always recom- mended to alleviate pain,” says Iverstine. She goes on to say,” Patients don’t always follow the doctor’s orders to use the cold therapy because it’s inconvenient. You have to sit still some place with an ice pack that drips. It’s wet and difficult to transport.” Not so with A Better Back pillow. It’s thickly insulated and you can’t easily burn your back or freeze – there are layers of fabric between the heat/cold and your skin. The website price is $79.99. If you contact Jennifer Iverstine, she’ll give you $20 dollars off if you mention this article. Jennifer@abetterback.com
>>emerging companies
Katrina Daniel
››A Better Back
You’ve heard folks say how they’ve just stumbled into a career? Well, Jennifer Iverstine sat on hers.
Iverstine was working as a vendor at the Women’s Show a few months ago and complaining about how badly her back and feet ached after standing on concrete all day. As fate would have it, A Better Back Pillow was in the next booth. Iverstine says “ I noticed how person after person came to the booth next to me, and you could actually hear the people and see the effect of the pillow on their faces. I watched as people stopped at their booth and tried out the pillow. Most of them immediately purchased it.” Iverstine’s friend bought her one and she took it home that night. “ I was so sore from setting up the show all day that I tried the cold pillow, followed by the heated pillow. My back pain and stiffness disappeared. I was a new person,“ she says.
The pillow is a large 7” x 12” pad that runs hot or cold. Literally. It’s a convenient backpack that straps on your back or shoulders or around your waist or neck. The pillow has a pocket where you insert either the packet that has been heated in the microwave or the pad designed especially for the cold packs. Nuked in a microwave or cooled in the freezer, a Better Back Pillow applies the right amount of heat or ice that’s required to help diminish the pain of aching backs or knees, necks, shoulders and elbows.
Iverstine became so convinced of the pillow’s potential; she became the first South Carolina distributor. She introduced herself to the pillows developer/promoter, Claudia Rimoli who, in turn, was interested in Iverstine’s background as a pharmaceutical sales professional, ”I have extensive experience working with pain patients and physicians that treat chronic pain patients. I know the struggles that both patients and physicians have in managing pain. Both are always looking for ways to reduce the amount of pain medication that a patient takes. Hot and cold therapy is almost always recommended to alleviate pain,” says Iverstine.
She goes on to say,” Patients don’t always follow the doctor’s orders to use the cold therapy because it’s inconvenient. You have to sit still some place with an ice pack that drips. It’s wet and difficult to transport.” Not so with A Better Back pillow. It’s thickly insulated and you can’t easily burn your back or freeze – there are layers of fabric between the heat/cold and your skin.
The website price is $79.99. If you contact Jennifer Iverstine, she’ll give you $20 dollars off if you mention this article. Jennifer@abetterback.com
››Entrepreneurial Resources
Let’s say you’re smart, aggressive, and you have a potentially great money- making business proposal but aren’t sure what your next step should be. Or, you’re a mid- sized company, faced with a challenging roller coaster economy and forced to make tough management, strategy and budget decisions. Or, you own a large, successful business but don’t have the management strength necessary to guide your company through the rough waters of a mandatory restructuring.
When it comes to managing businesses in all different stages and entities, Greenville businessman Bob DeGarmo can honestly say he has done it all. De Garmo has more than 25 years of management experience with a diverse array of companies from small to large, whose earnings range from several million in revenue to those earning more than $6 billion in revenue.
DeGarmo is capitalizing on his business experience and his vast array of international professional connections by recently forming Entrepreneurial Resources.“You can’t build a great company without great people. Many middle market companies have difficulty attracting and affording top talent when making difficult transitions. We have the talent and we can provide it in a manner that is affordable and effective,” says DeGarmo. “We also teach entrepreneurs how to reach out to other service providers (bankers, lawyers, IT professionals, CPA’s, marketing professionals) and how to manage these resources for their benefit.”
DeGarmo was part of that legendary, precedent-setting group of Greenville business people who were instrumental in setting the stage for the growth Greenville has experienced in the past twenty years.
That group included Francis Hipp, Rodger Peace, Tommy Wyche, Arthur McGill, Bob Small, Frank Halter, Bill Carpenter and several others.
The de-facto head of the group, Buck Mickel, President of Fluor, asked DeGarmo to come to California and help reposition the company, which was experiencing marketing difficulties when petrochemicals, nuclear power and mineral markets plummeted. DeGarmo did not want to uproot his family, so he and his boss, Mickel, commuted to California from Greenville for eight years.
DeGarmo had the opportunity to form alliances with many other business leaders, and this prompted him to establish and become the managing partner of Entrepreneurial Resources. “We have no junior associates – only experienced CFO’s, CEOs, and COOs. We view this as an important distinction.”
››Hormone Replacement Center
While hormone replacement treatment entities in their various incarnations have long existed in cities like Los Angeles, New York, Miami and Dallas, Greenville would not have been on the short list, a few years ago, of cities in which to locate.
Those days are over. Just a few short months ago, Hormone Replacement Centers opened its doors in the growing area behind Haywood Mall on Halton Road. You’ve seen the ads all over TV and it makes you wonder whether hormones can really do all those things they advertise, like making you feel rejuvenated, energized, happier, and bringing back your sex drive. As it turns out, maybe so.
In fact most doctors agree, we don’t know yet know all there is to know about hormones and their effect on our bodies and minds.
Kris Oakes, manager of the just- opened Greenville HRC says, “We specialize in natural hormone replacement. Our treatment hormones are based on yams and soy oils.”
While you might think that natural hormone replacement therapy would be most needed by menopausal women, it turns out that many people of greatly varying ages may have hormone shortages and fluctuations without knowing exactly what’s causing their symptoms of vague depression, lack of energy, lack of sex drive and so on. “We have clients from 23 years old to 93 years old,” says Oakes.
The program is easy enough, the patient takes a blood test and his hormone levels are checked. There are numerous questionnaires to be filled out and then the supervising doctor and the patient together decide what is needed for the result that patient requires.
Hormone replacement is still controversial. For years, menopausal women have been battered back and forth between the various choices – to replace or not to replace? To endure night sweats, personality changes and memory loss, or to undergo testing to determine whether hormone replacement is advisable.
Oakes goes on to say, “ (Our plant based) hormones have been around since the 1930’s and they are being safely used in Europe and Asia.”
Oakes cites one study in which Australian women were found to have an almost ten percent increase in bone density after they used natural hormone replacement pellet therapy. “This is far better than any prescription medicine traditionally used over the past ten years in the United States. Improvement in erectile dysfunction and sexual performance has been documented routinely.”
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