Business after hours

The Rensselaer Chamber of Commerce held one of their periodic Business After Hours events on Thursday afternoon, this time at Big Dog Rentals. It was lightly attended.  Big Dog has three lines of business, a construction company (Steve's Specialized Services), a rental company (Big Dog), and a new auction division (Crossroads Auction and Appraisal Services). The rental company rents construction equipment and also chairs and tents for parties (as well as a floor sander). It is also the part of the business that sells lawnmowers.

I received a tour of the remodeled facilities. Below you can see the room that previously housed the Jazzercise business but  is now the center of the auction business. In the back you can see an old gasoline pump and a John Deere Corn Shucker.

 The strangest antique in the room was this large kettle which was once used by a business in Brook to produce witch hazel.  I had never heard of the business before.

There were three businesses that had displays the the event. From JT Shrimp LLC I learned that shrimp are very sensitive to water conditions and that getting the water right is the key to successfully raising them. I also learned that even though wells may be closed together, they can produce water with very different mineral concentrations.

Yesteryear's, a meat shop in DeMotte, has taken over the food service at Curtis Creek and starting May 1 will be offering a full menu. The restaurant at Curtis Creek shuts down in the winter but is now open and one does not need to be a member of the country club to dine there.

A relatively new business that I had not previously encountered, InsideOut Décor by Pam, was there in the form of Pam. Pam arrived from Canada less than two years ago; her husband is part of the team that manages the egg carton business located near the landfill in Newton County. She relies mostly on word-of-mouth advertising and had this business for quite a while in Canada. She had some interesting tales of the layers of bureaucracy that she and her husband encountered in moving from Canada--I had no idea that it was as complicated as it is.

The Business After Hours are networking events and there are always interesting conversations to be had.

After leaving I swung by the downtown because one of my sources of downtown info had asked me what kind of business was moving into the back of the Horton Building, where Home Sweet Home was until recently. I saw two ladies entering the shop and stopped to briefly talk. They said they wanted to be open in a week and would sell a variety of odds and ends. I said that it seemed that it would be a store selling decorative items and they agreed that was a fair description.

My downtown source also told me that Ardent Photography had moved will be moving from its Van Rensselaer Street location to above Unique Finds.

Big Dog is having an open house today Saturday from 10:00 until 2:00 and is offering special deals on things they sell or rent.