Got to love the funny little American brand names that serve small product niches. With these brands, the product markets are small, and so is the competition. Little advertising is needed, and is mostly word of mouth. One such niche is the category of brands that solve unique problems; in this case the “problem” is [...]

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NEW YORK – Sapolin was once a great decorative paint brand; like Rustoleum they specialized in unique colors for metals anduses other than walls. Here, a can that’s about 20 years old. It’s main ingredients are listed as xylene and toluene, toxic AND flammable but certainly able to make great gold leaf. Sarah Chiffriller of [...]

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TEMPE, Arizona – One of America’s oldest houseware brands, Jacob Bromwell, is doing it the old-school way. The U.S. company is still making retrograde products such as tin cups, frying pans, chimney flue covers and fireplace popcorn poppers. The products are handcrafted, and made in a historically correct fashion, much like Colonial Williamsburg reproductions. The [...]

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The idea behind a brand is to turn a commodity into a special thing. And what is more commodity than concrete; concrete is cement and sand, right? Such was the genius of Gene Winchester, who created Quikrete brand concrete mix in 1952 in Columbus, Ohio. Now headquartered in Atlanta, the brand is trusted by do-it-yourselfers [...]

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Last weekend, the teens were in the yard getting ready for church camp. They had to get a LOOK together. And what did they decide to do? Head on over to the store (I forgot to ask which one) and buy a bunch of packs of Rit Dye to do tie-dyed shirts. It made us [...]

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There is an old Sesame Street song called “L is Such Pretty Letter.” It is either sung by Grover or Oscar the Grouch. One of the lines is: L, Linoleum, Listen to Me. ‘Cause “L” is such a pretty letter..” The song came back to us when we were reading today about the Congoleum bankruptcy [...]

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