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V I E W P O I N T S W W W. M A I N E B I Z . B I Z 3 M A R C H 9 , 2 0 1 5 For a daily digest of Maine's top busi- ness news, sign up for the Mainebiz Daily Report at mainebiz.biz/enews Get Maine's business news daily at mainebiz.biz and on Twitter (@Mainebiz). Below is some of the best from our online-only offerings: Featured @ Mainebiz.biz From the Editor M ainers pride themselves on self reliance and this issue provides some worthy examples. One of the more intriguing stories in this issue is writ- ten by Senior Writer Lori Valigra. e Bull Moose name is well known across Maine. e Portland-based retailer has nine stores in Maine and two in New Hampshire. e stores sell vinyl records, CDs, DVDs, video games and the like — items that are easily accessible in their old-school form on Amazon or their digital form on iTunes or other outlets. And yet, Bull Moose continues to record what to me were surprising sales figures, while in turn expanding the number of stores. As Lori discovered, the Bull Moose team is very skilled at figuring out what customers want, when they want it and how much they're willing to pay for a given item. Bull Moose founder and President Brett Wickard got so good at what's called lean retail that he formed a company called FieldStack, which created a retail-track- ing software I'm guessing a lot of companies would like to have working for them. Another company with the drive and willingness to innovate is South Portland-based WEX. As reported by Senior Writer Jim McCarthy, WEX has been around since , when it was known as Wright Express Corp. It is a provider of payment processing and information- management services. One example of its services is fleet cards that trucking companies use both at the pump and to track data. It's already in countries and has annual sales of million in , up from . million the previous year. WEX got a real boost a decade ago when it went public. A leader in the IPO, Melissa Smith, is now CEO. Jim sat down with Melissa and the com- pany's chief information officer, Stephen Crowley, to talk about what's next for WEX. With a market capitalization over billion and a strong cash reserve, the company is poised for more expansion. But it also continues to retool its technology to stay ahead of changes in the market- place and to thwart cyber thieves. Of course, Maine's scrappy self reliance goes beyond technology. Elsewhere in the issue, Laurie Schreiber, a corre- spondent based in the salty town of Bass Harbor, takes a look at the lobster industry's effort to raise its profile. Prices paid to lobstermen are slowly rebounding, though the fishery's stocks remain strong. Under the retooled Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative, there is now a sig- nificant budget for marketing. To that end, the organiza- tion hired a Boston PR firm, Weber Shandwick, to retool the trusty crustacean's brand. "We have a superhero in lobstermen, and a lot of brands don't," Patty Stone of the Boston firm told Laurie. "We have this halo effect from Maine. You don't often walk into clients who have such built-in benefits." We all know lobstermen are out in the worst weather and restaurants in much of the country feature "Maine lobster" on the menu. But the new brand- ing effort hopes to get lobster in front of more chefs and a greater range of markets around the world. As David Cousens, a well-regarded lobsterman, says, "We've got a great story to tell." In a recent issue, I wrote about a conversation I had with Peter Vigue, who heads Maine's largest construction firm, Pittsfield-based Cianbro. He had an interesting anec- dote regarding lobster. He frequently travels to Houston on business. ere, he notes, everyone wants to take you to a steak house and, because it's Texas, everything has to be bigger. He recalls one such visit and the steak house had a big lobster tank featuring, well, big lobsters — ones weigh- ing four and five pounds — prominently labeled "Maine lobster." Naturally, the Maine native knew a lobster of that size could not be legally harvested in Maine, exceeding the size limits. But the story illustrates the power of the Maine brand as it stands today. Peter Van Allen pvanallen@mainebiz.biz In Maine, self reliance comes in many forms Historic sale downtown A historic office and retail building in the heart of Portland's downtown has been purchased by a group led by local developer Drew E. Swenson for $1.4 million. Find out why Swenson's group purchased the building and their future plans at mainebiz.biz/SixCityCenter CONGRATULATIONS ARE IN ORDER. Congratulations to our colleague Michael A. Fagone on being selected as the next United States Bankruptcy Judge for the District of Maine. His selection is a well-deserved honor in an already distinguished legal career. We wish Mike all the best as he ascends to the bench. Portland, ME | Augusta, ME | Manchester, NH 207 774-1200 | bernsteinshur.com Get connected Want to stay connected to the Maine business community? Join Mainebiz at its first On the Road event in Portland on March 19. Find out how to register and find more events at mainebiz.biz/mbevents. Community submitted events can be found at mainebiz.biz/events An inside look Get a digest of the state's largest commercial real estate transactions, industry movers and more in our weekly Real Estate Insider newsletter. Sign up at mainebiz.biz/enews

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