Houston's economic diversity Thread .. (Dallas, Fort Worth: for rent, mortgage, appliances)
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Major tech company with an existing Houston footprint is moving it's headquarters to Houston from San Jose increasing Houston's economic diversity.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise is the latest tech company to leave Silicon Valley, and is moving to Houston
Hewlett Packard Enterprise is the latest tech company to shift its focus away from Silicon Valley, announcing Tuesday that it will relocate its headquarters from San Jose, California, to Houston, Texas.
“HPE’s largest U.S. employment hub, Houston is an attractive market to recruit and retain future diverse talent, and is where the company is currently constructing a state-of-the-art new campus,” the company said in its fourth quarter earnings release. It’s unclear how many employees the move will affect, though the company said no layoffs will be with the move.
HPE will keep the San Jose campus, and will consolidate some of its Bay Area sites there, it said.
This doesn’t compare to the HPE news, but NASA announced to be the 4th tenant of Rice Innovation District. The first three being Chevron, Microsoft, and Greentown Labs. NASA’s focus at rice will be an aerospace innovation center for space craft building.
Ill just say I wouldnt want to be starting an airline right now. Had the pandemic not happened and they started in 2016, it would have probably had a great chance at success. Another thing to consider is that CASM (cost per available seat mile) is going upward as airlines have to factor more things post-pandemic.
This isnt a Houston thing, its a nationwide thing. Texas isnt doing that poorly relative to the coasts. The Mountain West and Florida are preforming the best with Denver, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Orlando, Miami, Tampa, and Fort Myers all carrying capacity over 66% of 2019. Houston, DFW, and Austin are all around 50-55%. NYC is down near 25%. That is for domestic capacity only. International capacity is still in the crapper all the way around.
This isn't the case for XTRA Airways. However, hypothetically, if I were a multi-billionaire with endless amounts of cash and decided to start an airline, this would be the best opportunity would be exactly right now. As mentioned, assets are currently cheaper to obtain, qualified employees are most readily available, and routes are most available all because of the pandemic. As a result, if you get it now and have enough to survive through the first two years where you'll operate at a loss and additionally the couple of years after that where profits still won't be very high, you'll end up with much more value than if you invest once demand is higher. The difference in my story and XTRA's is they don't have billions sitting around, they have up to 125 million. So they'd have to operate much smaller and slowly raise capacity when demand starts returning. I'll agree it's a huge risk, but I certainly don't think it's impossible.
This isn't the case for XTRA Airways. However, hypothetically, if I were a multi-billionaire with endless amounts of cash and decided to start an airline, this would be the best opportunity would be exactly right now. As mentioned, assets are currently cheaper to obtain, qualified employees are most readily available, and routes are most available all because of the pandemic. As a result, if you get it now and have enough to survive through the first two years where you'll operate at a loss and additionally the couple of years after that where profits still won't be very high, you'll end up with much more value than if you invest once demand is higher. The difference in my story and XTRA's is they don't have billions sitting around, they have up to 125 million. So they'd have to operate much smaller and slowly raise capacity when demand starts returning. I'll agree it's a huge risk, but I certainly don't think it's impossible.
Its going to be longer than two years. UA/DL/AA/WN/F9/B6/NK/G4 might be close to recovery in two years but a startup is in a completely different space. Closer to five for a new airline to reach profitability. $125 million wont be enough. But if they can continue to secure funding then its possible.
Ive worked in the airline industry for 15 years as a consultant, trainer, and in sales and in that time Ill tell you that its as boom/bust as the oil industry. In the 2000's it was extremely rare for any airline (except Southwest) to turn a profit. Then they all filed for Chapter 11 and threw out their union contracts and pensions and they became profitable. Then oil crashed and they became more profitable. Then Covid came and they are losing more than $1 billion per quarter.
XTRA wants to serve secondary markets and charters, so they obviously arent going after corporate based travel. They seem to be setting themselves up to be the next Allegiant. To do that, they need super low costs and super high volume. In a super depressed market, they are going to need all the money they can get. I can tell you with certainty $125 million is nowhere near enough, but if they can get more and dont have to worry about shareholders, they could be good.
Houston dressed for success as used clothing capital of the world adding sustainable options in fashion and economic diversity to the Greater Houston economy.
This is Goodfair, which Luciani started here four years ago after moving from Brooklyn with a mission to give “pre-loved” shirts, pants, hoodies, jeans, jackets, hats and shoes new homes. In the process, he hopes to reduce his customers’ reliance on buying new threads, which requires lots of natural resources. And his selection of Houston to launch his company was no accident: The city is the used clothes capital of the world.
As many as 50 companies buy overstock donations and unsold clothes, then export them around the world, tapping into the Houston area’s low costs, ample warehouse space and access to the one of the nation’s largest and busiest ports. Debbie King, executive director of the trade group Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles Association, said Houston has the biggest concentration of “sorters and graders” for used clothing, with other hubs also located in Dallas and El Paso.
Goodfair management team includes Head of Merchandising Lindy Hunt, from left, CEO Topper Luciani, Lead of Merchandising Kirby Wheat and Warehouse Operations Angel Carrion in the Houston warehouse on Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2020.Photo: Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer
Goodfair employs about 40 full-time and contract workers, and has tripled its revenues in each of the past two years, Luciani said. The company also raised $3.6 million in venture capital earlier this year, and is using those funds to expand into new lines of apparel and accessories, including jeans and most recently shoes.
“Every year, 300 million pairs of shoes are thrown away,” he said. “They take a lot more time to decompose in the landfill.”
More tech news was just announced... Amazon is expanding its existing tech hub here, focusing on cloud service. Sysco Foods is opening a tech hub. And NASA is opening an aerospace innovation hub in Rice Innovation District
More tech news was just announced... Amazon is expanding its existing tech hub here, focusing on cloud service. Sysco Foods is opening a tech hub. And NASA is opening an aerospace innovation hub in Rice Innovation District
Posted in both threads
Just to add a little detail concerning Amazon
It’s part of a broader effort by Amazon Web Services, or AWS, to bring cloud-based data center tools to more parts of the U.S. Already, it’s in parts of Los Angeles, and the Dec. 1 announcement added Boston and Miami to the mix, as well. Next year, 12 other U.S. cities are slated to get the new capabilities: Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland and Seattle.
Amazon has massive data centers around the world, but local zones can help make technology services quicker for end users. This is especially needed for certain types of applications such as real-time gaming or live-video streaming. In those cases, AWS customers want the company's gear closer to the actual people playing a new title or watching a movie.
Businesses “no longer need to incur the expense or effort of procuring, operating, and maintaining data centers or co-location facilities in various cities to support ultra-low latency applications,” the company said in the announcement.
The announcement comes as Amazon continues to expand its presence in the Houston area, primarily in distribution of its e-commerce products.
Most recently, Amazon announced it's building an 850,000-square-foot fulfillment center in Richmond. The company also has a 1 million-square-foot fulfillment center that opened in the Katy area in early 2018, an 855,000-square-foot fulfillment center for small sortable items in Pinto Business Park, a new 805,601-square-foot sort center that opened in October in Katy and several smaller facilities.
Asset Living acquires digital marketing firm Poetic Digital combining 2 Houston based firms one a property management firm the other a tech firm and increasing Houston's economic diversity.
Houston-based property management company Asset Living has acquired Poetic Digital, a virtual design and marketing company that is also based in Houston.
Asset Living said in a news release that bringing Poetic Digital’s digital problem-solving capabilities in-house will allow it to offer additional services to the clients whose properties it manages.
Poetic Digital brings with it a book of business that includes such clients as the Greater Houston Partnership, Camden Property Trust (NYSE: CPT), the Houston Zoo and the Houston Food Bank, among others.
Since acquiring Poetic Digital, Asset Living also has had the firm overhaul its website.
Poetic Digital consistently ranks among the fastest-growing companies in Houston, as well. In 2020, the firm ranked No. 72 on HBJ’s Fast 100 List, which ranks companies based on two-year revenue growth as of 2019.
Between 2017 and 2019, Poetic Digital reported its revenue grew from $3.2 million to $5 million, an increase of 56.12%. The company has 32 employees in Houston, according to HBJ research.
A Houston biotech startup which was featured on the cover of Science magazine last spring inks a deal to expand in a East End "Maker Hub" advancing medical science and helping to increase Houston's economic diversity.
HOUSTON, May 7, 2019 – The 3D tissue printing technology invented by Volumetric’s co-founders at Rice University has recently been featured on the cover of leading scientific journal Science (Science 03 May 2019: Vol. 364, Issue 6439, pp. 458-464 DOI: 10.1126/science.aav9750). The study, led by Bagrat Grigoryan, PhD and Professor Jordan Miller of Rice University, showed, for the first time, that projection stereolithography can be utilized with water-based photoactive bio-inks containing live cells to result in intricate perfusable 3D architectures unprecedented within hydrogels. This process unlocks the ability to generate complex biological structures like blood vessels and lung alveoli hundreds of time faster than existing bioprinting technologies, offering more physiologically relevant tissue models for drug screening and a viable path towards replacement organs.
The multi-institution team, comprised of researchers from Rice, the University of Washington at Seattle, Duke University, Rowan University, and design studio Nervous System, further demonstrated that liver tissues built on this platform could be successfully implanted into rats and integrated with the host’s blood supply. Volumetric's Light-Based Bioprinting Platform Featured on the Cover of (volumetricbio.com)
Volumetric expands in East End Maker Hub
The East End Maker Hub, expected to be the largest makerspace in Texas once completed, continues to bring on new tenants.
The roughly 300,000-square-foot facility under construction at 6501 Navigation Blvd. in Houston's East End will house a makerspace for companies in equipment manufacturing, 3D printing, heavy fabrication, hardware innovation and more.
As construction on the East End warehouse continues, the EEMH continues to unveil new tenants prior to the opening of the building's first phase, which is anticipated by the end of the year. One of the latest leases signed in the EEMH comes from Volumetric Inc., a Houston-based startup specializing in 3D bioprinting replacement organs and tissue. Spun out of Rice University by co-founders Bagrat Grigoryan and Jordan Miller in 2018, Volumetric designs and manufactures bioprinters and bioinks for commercialization.
Volumetric has signed a lease for more than 11,000 square feet within the EEMH, which will allow the startup to double its current operations.
Houston area commercial space company that we have posted on before, is commercializing space exploration and helping to diversify the Greater Houston economy.
WEBSTER —The structure of the Bishop Airlock spent three years as a design on paper, then another year in Italy, where it was fashioned from more than 15,000 pounds of aluminum that was eventually whittled down to just over 1,000. Now it’s here in Webster, where the commercial space company NanoRacks will spend the next year installing electronics and preparing for a 2020 launch to the International Space Station.
The Bishop Airlock, which will provide a way for satellites and experiments to exit the orbiting outpost, is a milestone for both NanoRacks, celebrating 10 years in business, and the broader commercial space industry. The airlock will become the first complex commercially developed and privately owned element on the International Space Station.
NanoRacks and its Bishop Airlock are part of a transition in the space industry, long dominated by government agencies and their large aerospace contractors. But NASA is shifting gears, seeking to transition operations in low-Earth orbit, where the space station resides, to the commercial sector as it focuses on reaching the moon, Mars and beyond.
Airlock aloft as NASA uses Nanoracks technology for the Space Station
The Bishop Airlock is finally in its natural habitat: microgravity.
The 2,200-pound airlock was never intended for the comforts of Earth. Its aluminum exterior and electrical components were made for the extreme temperatures and radiation of space, where the airlock will become a door, of sorts, for satellites and experiments exiting the International Space Station.
The Bishop Airlock, designed, owned and operated by Webster-based Nanoracks, traveled into space Sunday on the 21st SpaceX cargo resupply mission. It launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The airlock filled every inch of the Dragon spacecraft’s trunk, the unpressurized part of the vehicle, and was among the roughly 6,500 pounds of cargo carried into space. SpaceX also delivered supplies for the station’s seven-person crew, science and research investigations, and spacewalk equipment.
Nanoracks employees wrap the Bishop Airlock with special plastic before shipping it to Florida, where it will be launched to the International Space Station, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2020, in Webster. The airlock will ultimately increase the number and size of satellites, equipment and experiments that can access space from the station.Photo: Yi-Chin Lee, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer
The Bishop Airlock, however, is notable because it will become the station’s first commercial airlock. In fact, it is the station’s first permanent, complex element to be owned and operated by a commercial company.
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