Destination XL Group Inc., the Canton-based haberdasher for large and outsized men, is rolling out a new ad campaign. For the chap who can easily squeeze his racing lines into off-the-rack sizes, shopping for sporty outfits is no big deal. But for the male with the dimensions of a football nose tackle, a trip to the clothing store can be a dreaded foray into No Man’s Land. “No Man’s Land,” in fact, is the title of the company’s new TV and radio ads, which were created with the help of the ad agency Gotham. In contrast to mainstream clothing stores, a Destination XL store is a low-stress comfort zone where a hefty gent can mix-and-match outfits with flair and panache, the ads suggest. New England Coffee, the Malden-based coffee roaster, said it is unveiling Boston Strong Coffee, a product designed to raise money to support the Boston Marathon bombing victims. The company said it will donate 100 percent of the profits with every Boston Strong Coffee purchase to the One Fund Boston through Sept. 2. The one-pound package, which features the Boston Marathon colors of yellow and light blue, is blend of medium-roasted Colombian and Central American beans kicked up with a bit of French Roast, the company said. A one-pound bag of Boston Strong Coffee will have a suggested retail price of $9. New England Coffee packaged coffee is available in supermarkets across the US and brewed at more than 5,000 foodservice locations. Sunstone Hotel Investors Inc., a lodging real estate investment trust that has interests in nearly 30 hotels, has dislosed that it has agreed to buy the 1,053-room Boston Park Plaza Hotel & Towers for a gross purchase price of $250 million. The seller is the Rockpoint Group, a real estate private equity group with primary offices in Boston, Dallas, San Francisco, and London. The hotel will remain unbranded and will continue to be managed by Highgate Hotels, Sunstone said. According to the hotel’s website, hotelier E.M. Statler opened the Boston Hotel in 1927 as “The Statler Hotel.” In 1976, the hotel was bought by the Irving M. Saunders family, and the name was changed to The Boston Park Plaza Hotel & Towers, the website said. A monthly business confidence index of Massachusetts employers ticked up four-tenths of a point in April to post 50.5 reading on an index that uses a 100-point scale. The index is maintained by the Associated Industries of Massachusetts, or AIM, a group that represents the state’s employers. The April reading is just above a neutral reading of 50. In April 2012, the index posted a 57.1 reading. “The economy as a whole, and business confidence in Massachusetts along with it, is basically treading water,” Raymond G. Torto, chair of AIM’s Board of Economic Advisors, said in a statement. “We’re not going under, but we’re not making much forward progress either. At the same time, there continue to be indications that the economy is rebuilding its core strength.” Many people hate to take their medicine --- and that’s become such a problem that it costs the US an estimated $290 billion and 125,000 deaths a year, according to a survey from HealthPrize Technologies. That’s also a potential problem for Massachusetts, a hotbed for developing new medical treatments. What’s the point of commercializing a great new drug if many patients don’t want to take it? One finding: 47 percent of people surveyed indicated they would rather take out the trash than take their prescribed medications. “Taking medication is a daily reminder of your illness and your status as a ‘patient’ so it’s a negative experience that people instinctively want to avoid,” Dr. Katrina Firlik, cofounder and chief medical officer of HealthPrize, said. Dassault Systèmes, a French company with roughly 1,000 employees at a campus in Waltham, said it has acquired Simpoe, a French firm focused on plastic injection molding simulation. The amount of the transaction was not disclosed. The specialty of Dassault Systèmes is computer-aided design, and big clients include Honda, BMW, and Boeing. Simpoe customers include Canon and Panasonic. The acquisition of Simpoe expands Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform and its SIMULIA, CATIA, and SolidWorks applications to create a powerful portfolio of materials-intensive manufacturing simulation solutions, Dassault Systèmes said. Plastics form a crucial part of today’s products, the company noted. They are increasingly complex, both in shape and production. Simplifying the design and manufacturing of plastics is therefore a critical part of many industries’ product creation. In the first major fund-raising run since the Boston Marathon, some 2,000 runners and walkers, including hundreds of actively serving military members, gathered at Fenway Park Saturday to support clinical care, education, and research to help Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and families heal from post traumatic stress and traumatic brain injury. | | |
No comments:
Post a Comment