Content about Human Interest

The Tailgating Industry Association (TIA) welcomes football weekends and the $20 billion estimated to be spent at sports and non-sports events this season.

With prime tailgating season off and running with the commencement of college football games this past weekend, the Tailgating Industry Association, which represents the goals and interests of manufacturers of tailgating products, estimates the annual take for the industry at around $20 billion.

Crime and punishment, redux
The following is a letter in response to “Illinois contractor gets 10-year sentence for asbestos violation.”

Disputes over dumping -- selling products in the U.S. market at prices below the cost of production or for less than what the products are sold in the home market -- are a major thorn in the side of companies wanting to do business internationally. The United States enacted the antidumping law to protect U.S. manufacturing companies from “unfair” imports, but the real impact of the law is to bankrupt legitimate U.S. companies and destroy U.S. jobs.

Pulte Homes has announced the completion of the new 1,956-sq.-ft. home addition to Aimee Copeland’s home, called Aimee's Wing, which took 25 days to complete. Copeland is the young woman who developed a rare bacterial infection called necrotizing fasciitis. She suffered from multiple amputations and is now facing a number of health issues. 

California cities dominate the top-ten Eco-Friendliest Cities list assembled by small business-oriented web site thumbtack.com

San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose rank one, two and three on the list, which measures the per capita prevalence of a representative group of ten types of green services. More details about the data are here.

Here are the top ten eco-friendly cities from the list:

The nation’s leading wholesale distributors of home improvement products and building materials saw an increase of 2.23% in 2011 sales, according to the research that produced the 2012 Home Channel News Top 100 Distributor Scoreboard.

Click here for analysis.

The nation’s leading wholesale distributors of home improvement products and building materials saw an increase of 2.23% in 2011 sales, according to the research that produced the 2012 Home Channel News Top 100 Distributor Scoreboard.

It wasn’t easy.

According to the data culled from surveys, financial reports and estimates, the nation’s top 100 distributors produced a total of $40.263 billion in sales, compared with $39.385 billion in 2010.

Housing economists, reading the tea leaves of recent building permits and home sales, are not yet ready to say, “It’s over.” But certain states are definitely showing a pick-up in business at both the builder and LBM supplier level. They say one of these states, surprisingly, is Florida.

The No. 1 ranked beach house in the United States -- according to a real estate website -- is a modern-style Montauk, N.Y., home with a price tag in excess of $19 million.

The house topped the list put out by TopTenRealEstateDeals.com, which ranked the Top 10 Coolest Beach Homes for 2012.

Bolstered by rising revenues and a successful, ongoing turnaround effort, Boise, Idaho-based BMC has been named the 2012 Pro Dealer of the Year by Home Channel News.

BMC will accept the 2012 Pro Dealer of the Year award during the Oct. 24 to 26 ProDealer Industry Summit in Savannah, Ga. The event is hosted jointly by the National Lumber and Building Material Dealers Association and Home Channel News.

Pulte Homes has signed on as the builder of a new 1,956-sq.-ft. home addition for Aimee Copeland, the young woman who developed a rare bacterial infection called necrotizing fasciitis. She suffered from multiple amputations and is now facing a number of health issues. 

The home builder expects the addition to be completed within 40 days, when Copeland returns home from rehabilitation. 

The Home Channel News 2012 Top 300 Industry Scoreboard is rife with double-digit percent gainers. Here are the top 10 companies, ranked by home channel retail sales gains: