Manufacturers see lucrative market in senior-friendly designs

From the Wall Street Journal:

Manufacturers see sound business reasons for redesigning products to serve baby boomers, with major appliances and plumbing fixtures being retooled to accommodate arthritic hands and forgetful minds. The movement seems to make good business sense, as this generation is “aging in place,” fixing up existing homes rather than moving to assisted living communities.

But marketing these senior-friendly features before they’re needed requires a delicate touch. “The older consumers don’t want to be treated like they’re ready for retirement,” says Mark Delaney, director of the home-industry sector at NPD Group, a market research firm.

There are 78 million U.S. baby boomers, and roughly one-third will be 62 years old or older by 2013, says AARP.

Included is a list of aging-friendly products that could also be helpful for people with other types of disabilities.

Founder of furniture firm has dyslexia

From Fortune Small Business on CNN, a piece by Terri Bowersock. Her Arizona-based company, Terri’s Consign & Design Furnishings, is the largest U.S. resale furniture retailer, with 16 stores and $36 million in annual sales.

Bowersock says she is upfront about her dyslexia and runs her business on her own terms. She does presentations by drawing illustrations in crayon and pencil, and communicates with employees verbally rather than by email.

I also carry a tape recorder with me always. Writing notes takes me too long, so often I’ll just have people speak into the recorder, or I’ll speak into it myself so that I can check my “notes” later. Recorders are also built into my phone.

… People ask if I attribute my success to overcoming dyslexia. I tell them that I haven’t, and never will, overcome dyslexia. Yes, I run a national company, but I’m still using a Franklin Talking Dictionary to try to spell fifth-grade vocabulary words.

At least I’ve shown my grade school teachers that it’s not that I wasn’t trying hard enough.

From the Sacramento [CA] Bee:

As the economy sours, advocates for people with disabilities are expressing concern about that population’s already bleak employment prospects.

A 2004 Cornell University study showed just 37.5 percent of the nation’s working-age people with disabilities were employed, compared with 77.8 percent of those without disabilities.

With the Sacramento region’s unemployment rate at 6.2 percent in February – eight-tenths of a percentage point higher than it was a year ago – some advocates say people with disabilities are taking a particularly hard hit.

“People with disabilities should not be the last hired and the first fired,” said Bryon MacDonald, of the World Institute on Disability, a public policy center in Oakland. (more…)

From National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition:

Four years after a serious car accident, Melody Gardot used the experience as a springboard to musical success she might never have achieved otherwise.

The singer, now 23, was hit by an SUV while riding her bicycle. Her injuries were serious and left her unable to sit up for more than 10 minutes. She suffered short-term memory loss and acute sensitivity to light and sound.

Gardot had played the piano before the accident, and a doctor suggested that she use music as a kind of recovery therapy. Since she couldn’t sit comfortably at the piano, she picked up a guitar. Now, she’s a professional musician, and her debut full-length album is called Worrisome Heart.

The NPR site carries audio of Gardot’s interview with Scott Simon, as well as some of her music.

From the Boston Globe:

It is her album, not her personal story, that could get her the best new artist Grammy next winter.

From the [UK] Times:

… Buy this album because it’s a charming debut by a remarkable talent - or, if you like, just to help out a young woman with her medical bills.

Writing in Entrepreneur.com, Mark Henricks quotes experts as saying that workers with disabilities represent a large, untapped pool of potential workers at a time when many businesses are complaining of a worker shortage. Twenty percent of the population has some sort of disability, and more than 65 percent of them say they are unemployed or underemployed.

The bad things that employers worry about when hiring a disabled worker rarely happen. Many are concerned about having to build wheelchair ramps, modify employee restrooms or make similarly costly modifications.

But the cost of accommodating disabled employees is typically zero, according to a 2007 study reported by Job Accommodation Network, a government agency. The same study reported many benefits for the employer, from improved employee retention to a larger customer base.

From Entrepreneur.com:

Athlete Eric Robinson has helped build a $10 million prosthetic foot company, but he didn’t stop there. He also led College Park Industries of Michigan to found the O&P Extremity Games — referring to orthotics and prosthetics — open to people who have lost a limb or have some sort of limb difference.

Many of College Park’s customers are older people who have diabetes and lose a foot to gangrene, but there are a number of young, athletic people who have lost limbs in accidents. It was that demographic that Robinson and his 55 employees found themselves talking to in recent years about the company’s high-tech product, which costs around $6,000.

“We were always talking to people wearing the product, and they were all telling us how they would participate in sporting events,” says Robinson. “They were skateboarding, skydiving, and they’d tell us that our product enabled them to go out and continue doing extreme events.”

The Extremity Games include such events as rock climbing, surfing and kayaking.

From Forbes:

San Diego-based Sequenom saw its share price rise sharply after the company forecast a strong rise in 2008 revenue and announced plans to launch a noninvasive genetic test for Down syndrome in the first half of 2009. Shares rose 27 cents, or 3.6 percent, to $7.96 in midday trading.

Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Kevin DeGeeter said in a note to investors Thursday that the proposed launch date beat his prior estimate for the second half of 2009. He kept the shares at “Outperform” with a price target of $15.

“Our upbeat outlook for Sequenom is based on the potential launch of new high-margin diagnostics supporting sustained profitability by the second half of 2009,” DeGeeter said.

In addition, several analysts expressed enthusiasm over the company’s plan to increase investment in its prenatal diagnostics research and genetic analysis business.

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