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Yankee Ingenuity Meets A Ban: Effort To Redesign AR-15 Underway

By On April 12, 2013 · 164 Comments

As Mark Malkowski watched Gov. Dannel P. Malloy sign the gun control bill into law on April 4, he sat in his office with three military-style rifles.

Nothing unusual there, since Malkowski’s New Britain company, Stag Arms, makes the AR-15-style guns. But one of the black weapons was a bit different – it had a [...]

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The Award For Best April Fools Prank Goes To…

By On April 2, 2013 · Leave a Comment

Onyx Spirits Co. wins the Haar Report prize for best April Fools prank of 2013.  I missed it yesterday but was told by a friend at work this morning that Onyx had reported on its Facebook page it was being shut down. As commenter Peter Gagnon pointed out, hey, it could happen.

Onyx, billed on [...]

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Edible Arrangements HQ Update: 225 Jobs By End of 2013

By On March 12, 2013 · Leave a Comment

Edible Arrangements updated its Wallingford headquarters headcount on Tuesday and the news is good. The franchiser has added 54 jobs since the start of 2012 and is adding another 75 this year, bringing the total to more than 225.

“The growth is needed to support its rapidly expanding franchise network of more than 1,100 franchise [...]

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Malloy’s Faulty Logic On Military-Style Rifles

By On February 21, 2013 · 41 Comments

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy is pushing a plan to ban military-style rifles outright. Connecticut’s firearms industry executives will say it jeopardizes thousands of jobs and does nothing to improve safety.

Emotion is on Malloy’s side. Tighter registration and sales rules, which he also rolled out Thursday, are in order.

But where equipment bans are concerned, [...]

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Malloy Oversight: Safety Panel Locks Out Gun Industry

By On January 8, 2013 · 63 Comments

There’s someone missing from Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s Sandy Hook Advisory Commission, a 16-member panel he named Tuesday with the charge of coming up with recommendations on school safety, mental health and violence prevention.

Not a single person is on the panel from the firearms industry, which has 2,900 people directly involved in making [...]

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Metcalfe’s Calls It An Era in West Hartford

By On December 24, 2012 · Leave a Comment

There’s not much business news on Christmas eve, but in West Hartford, Monday was the last day for Metcalfe’s Custom Framing, after 50 years at Bishop’s Corner and nearly 30 years in Hartford before that.

My colleague Julie Stagis wrote about Bruce Metcalfe’s retirement, prodded partly by the economy.

In addition to framing, over [...]

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Florists In Newtown: Heavy Heart, Heavy Workload

By On December 19, 2012 · Leave a Comment

The businesses in Newtown have really stepped up their role as the glue of the community, in addition to churches and public agencies. We’ll be writing more about that. For now, a telling look at the florists and nurseries — overwhelmed and working with a heavy heart, but in control and doing their part.

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State Approves Online Betting For Horse Racing, Set To Launch In April

By On December 11, 2012 · 1 Comment

The adage that you can’t control the Internet showed itself again Tuesday as Connecticut approved online horse racing wagering, even as broader Internet gaming is hotly debated.

My story lays out the details.

Quietly, the state Department of Consumer Protection extended the license of the company that operates off-track betting at 15 locations, [...]

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Trumpf Chief Takes High-Profile German-US Role in State

By On December 5, 2012 · Leave a Comment

Rolf Biekert, president and CEO of Trumpf USA Inc. in Farmington, has been named honorary German consul general for Connecticut — a post that’s not just ceremonial.

As an honorary consul general, Biekert can’t perform official diplomatic functions such as issuing visas, but he is, in effect, the Federal Republic of Germany’s representative in [...]

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Wireless Zone Acquired By Canadian Firm; Will Keep Name, Headquarters

By On December 4, 2012 · 1 Comment

Wireless Zone, the Middletown based franchiser of 421 Verizon-licensed cell phone retail locations, has been acquired by a Canadian company for $83.3 million.

The takeover gives Glentel Inc., which is publicly traded, 1,180 stores in Canada, the United States and Australia, under several names.

Wireless Zone, which was founded in Wethersfield in 1988 as The [...]

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