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Williamsport, Pa. — Two businesses have recently opened on Williams Street in Williamsport, and they’re both owned, operated, and geared towards women.
The Waxed storefront at 434 William St.
Waxed
Owner of Waxed Mindy Day.
Waxed opened June 1 and offers a variety of waxing services, as well as eyebrow lamination and eyelash extensions.
Waxed also carries beauty products made by local entrepreneurs.
Owner Mindy Day said she opened Waxed because she saw that there was no other focused waxing bar in the area.
Waxed offers a wide range of waxing services as well as eyebrow lamination and eyelash extensions.
“In every up-and-coming city, wax bars are a known thing,” Day said. “I researched the market and really found there wasn’t anybody doing it and decided ‘OK, we need to do it.’”
“It’s been great,” Day said. “Everything is in one building.”
Day was already a business owner when her and her husband opened Waxed. She had left nursing in 2020 to run her napkin company, My Luvkins, full-time. Day said Luvkins is actually run out of the upstairs of the same Williams Street building.
Day said the reaction from the community has been “absolutely phenomenal.”
“I knew we needed this or else I wouldn’t have done it, but I’m absolutely blown away by just how much we needed this,” Day said. “It’s proven it through the volume and the support. It’s incredible.”
Day said that what sets them apart from salons that provide waxing services is their ability to perform multiple “intimate waxing services in a day.”
“[Our employees] have taken specialized courses and training that we’ve done through here on those waxing services,” Day said. “Not only have they learned a really successful technique but they’re doing it over and over and over several times a day.”
Day said they had a trainer come in from New York for these classes and all employees are licensed cosmetologists.
Waxed also sells other local entrepreneurs’ beauty products for a small commission.
Waxed is open Tuesday through Saturday with service prices ranging between $10 and $150. Those interested in booking an appointment can do so here.
Skeleton Key Boutique’s second location at 442 William St
Skeleton Key Boutique
Owner of the Skeleton Key Boutique Ashley Foltz.
The other recently-opened business on Williams Street is the second location for the Lock Haven-based clothing retailer Skeleton Key Boutique.
Owner Ashley Foltz said the reason she chose Williamsport as the location for her second storefront is the number of her regulars that would come from Williamsport to Lock Haven.
The Skeleton Key in Williamsport offers a large selection of casual and comfortable styles.
“We had tons of requests to get here,” Foltz said. “Also, with the mall closing, there’s just not a lot of shopping options here.”
The Williamsport location opened at the end of August and Foltz said they’ve had a “great response” and a “lot of support from local businesses.”
Dressing rooms at the Skeleton Key’s Williamsport location.
The clothing is mostly sourced from LA and Atlanta, where she makes trips every few months to selected items for the store. Items are then shipped weekly to the store.
Complimentary bar inside an old vault at the Skeleton Key’s Williamsport location.
“What’s great about us and what makes us unique is we get in about 60-80 new styles every single week,” Foltz said. “We have our two locations and online, so we’re constantly getting fresh inventory in.”
Foltz said they bring in a max of 12 for any given item, and once that’s gone, they’ll “bring something else in.”
The overall style that the store goes for is “trendy, comfortable, and casual,” according to Foltz.
“Things you can easily wear to work but can transition into evenings and weekends,” Foltz said.
The store does carry a few dressier pieces, but that’s not their focus, Foltz explained.
It’s important to keep prices affordable, Foltz said, and noted the store offers sizes from extra small through 3X.
Foltz also said that they have a very wide age range for their customers saying that “daughters, mothers, and grandmothers” will all come in and shop together.
The dressing area features a couch and space for people to “hangout” and try things on, said Foltz.
The Williamsport location also features a unique aspect by offering a complimentary, self-serve bar inside an old vault left behind from one of the building’s prior uses. The bar features beer and whiskey, as well as coffee for those not interested in the hard stuff.
Prior to Skeleton Key moving in, it was a law office and still had all the old cubicles and carpeting inside. Foltz said they had to remove eight layers of flooring to reveal the original weathered wood floors.
“We tried to keep everything original, so these are the original wood floors,” Foltz said. “We tried to keep as much of the cool history of the building as we could.”
Foltz said they completed all the renovations in two weeks.
The business got its name “Skeleton Key Boutique,” not from a master key, but because the first gift her husband gave her was a skeleton key necklace, Foltz explained.
The Williamsport location is open Tuesday through Saturday and hours are 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday-Friday and Saturday 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Those interested in shopping online can do so through the store’s website.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s comments about inflation and remote work show poor judgment
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink claimed in a new job interview with Fox that “we have to get our staff members back again in the office” and that undertaking so will final result in “rising productivity that will offset some of the inflationary pressures.”
Fink did not supply any facts in the kind of data, surveys, or scientific tests to support his promises. He basically insisted, without having evidence, that in-business office function would reduce inflation. So, what does the info say?
A broadly cited July 2022 research from the very revered Countrywide Bureau of Financial Investigate (NBER) found robust evidence that remote operate decreased inflation. Specifically, due to the fact staff members have a sturdy preference for mainly or entire-time distant do the job, they are ready to settle for reduced wages to work remotely.
As a outcome, the scientists observed that remote get the job done reduced wage development by 2{6b977529af4b490fe19a3f85472c6203ccfa467a56646e317a890c6580e8b827} around the last two years. Notably, the reduce in progress happened precisely in the generally higher-paid, white-collar positions that could be finished remotely, foremost to wage compression that lessened wage inequality among blue-collar and white-collar do the job. Offered that larger wages result in additional consumer spending that potential customers to inflation, the examine concluded that remote operate lessens inflation.
A great deal of other evidence backs up the acquiring that remote function cuts down wage expansion, these as a June 2022 study by the Modern society for Human Methods. It experiences that 48{6b977529af4b490fe19a3f85472c6203ccfa467a56646e317a890c6580e8b827} of study respondents will “definitely” appear for a whole-time do the job-from-household work in their next look for. To get them to continue to be at a entire-time career with a 30-minute commute, they would need to have a 20{6b977529af4b490fe19a3f85472c6203ccfa467a56646e317a890c6580e8b827} spend increase. For a hybrid position with the very same commute, they would need a pay increase of 10{6b977529af4b490fe19a3f85472c6203ccfa467a56646e317a890c6580e8b827}. A unique survey of 3,000 workers at leading companies these types of as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft located that 64{6b977529af4b490fe19a3f85472c6203ccfa467a56646e317a890c6580e8b827} would prefer long lasting WFH arrangement about a $30,000 pay increase. Indeed, organizations that give distant perform options are significantly employing in reduce-value-of-dwelling regions of the U.S.–and even outside the house the U.S.–to get the very best value for talent. That’s a key rationale why a single of my customers, a late-stage computer software-as-a-service startup, determined to offer some all-remote positions.
This knowledge exhibits that distant operate decreases fees of labor and so decreases inflation. What about Fink’s promises about efficiency?
Surveys have prolonged observed that employees report being far more productive performing remotely, but we might feel some skepticism for self-described solutions. It is more durable to really feel skeptical of evidence from worker checking application firm Prodoscore. Its President David Powell said that “after evaluating more than 105 million data factors from 30,000 U.S.-primarily based Prodoscore users, we found out a 5{6b977529af4b490fe19a3f85472c6203ccfa467a56646e317a890c6580e8b827} maximize in productivity in the course of the pandemic do the job from home time period.”
And we have develop into greater at performing remotely above time. A Stanford College examine observed that distant personnel were being 5{6b977529af4b490fe19a3f85472c6203ccfa467a56646e317a890c6580e8b827} a lot more effective than in-business workers in the summer season of 2020. By the spring of 2022, distant employees turned 9{6b977529af4b490fe19a3f85472c6203ccfa467a56646e317a890c6580e8b827} more effective, since firms discovered how to do distant work greater and invested in more distant-helpful know-how.
A July 2022 review noted in yet another NBER paper identified that productivity progress in enterprises widely relying on distant get the job done like I.T. and finance grew from 1.1{6b977529af4b490fe19a3f85472c6203ccfa467a56646e317a890c6580e8b827} involving 2010 and 2019 to 3.3{6b977529af4b490fe19a3f85472c6203ccfa467a56646e317a890c6580e8b827} due to the fact the commence of the pandemic. Examine that to industries relying on in-individual contact, these kinds of as transportation, dining, and hospitality. They went from a productiveness growth of .6{6b977529af4b490fe19a3f85472c6203ccfa467a56646e317a890c6580e8b827} among 2010 and 2019 to a lessen of 2.6{6b977529af4b490fe19a3f85472c6203ccfa467a56646e317a890c6580e8b827} given that the start of the pandemic.
Circumstance analyze evidence backs up these broader trends, as reported in another NBER paper about a study at a genuine-planet enterprise, Vacation.com, a single of the biggest travel businesses in the environment. It randomly assigned some engineers, marketing workers, and finance employees to do the job some of their time remotely and others in the similar roles to full-time in-business work. Guess what? People who labored on a hybrid program experienced 35{6b977529af4b490fe19a3f85472c6203ccfa467a56646e317a890c6580e8b827} superior retention, and the engineers wrote 8{6b977529af4b490fe19a3f85472c6203ccfa467a56646e317a890c6580e8b827} more code. Creating code is a standardized and incredibly challenging evaluate of efficiency and offers strong proof of better productiveness in remote work.
The proof demonstrates that distant labor both fees a lot less and is a lot more successful, lessening inflation at both of those ends. What about ancillary costs?
Employees can preserve a large amount of income, up to $12,000 for entire-time distant function according to a Flexjobs examination. That entails price savings on transportation, these kinds of as gasoline, car routine maintenance, and parking, or public transportation. Workers also really do not have to invest in high-priced place of work attire or try to eat out at overpriced downtown dining establishments. Employees do require to pay back fairly more for cooking at residence and greater utilities. Nevertheless these prices are much smaller than the charges of coming to the business office.
Corporations help you save a whole lot of money on authentic estate, utilities, workplace home furnishings, cleaning providers, and similar fees. An normal office environment room for each staff can be up to $18,000 for every calendar year, which means cost savings can include up fast. No wonder business office occupancy is down and organizations are chopping their genuine estate footprint. For case in point, Amazon–which will allow comprehensive-time and component-time remote work–not too long ago paused its development of five towers in Bellevue, Washington, due to remote operate.
Organizations are investing additional into assist for perform from property these as I.T. and cybersecurity. The more forward-seeking types are furnishing distant operate support for residence places of work. For occasion, Twitter, Fb, and Google delivered a flat stipend of $1,000 for household places of work. As one more substitute, a person of my clientele, the University of Southern California’s Info Sciences Institute, researched the best possibilities for household workplaces and supplies a standardized and vast array of property office environment technological innovation and furnishings to its employees. It’s a smart extensive-term investment decision that increases productivity and charges a great deal a lot less than owning staff in the place of work.
As a result, in addition to decrease labor prices and better productivity, both workforce and companies pay a great deal significantly less to have staff perform remotely. All the proof demonstrates that remote work decreases inflation.
These kinds of details is conveniently available–and Fink could have assigned a summer time intern at BlackRock to locate the evidence. He selected not to do so, instead earning statements that are patently versus the info. By executing so, he shows bad judgment, probable owing to a combination of cognitive biases.
One is referred to as the belief bias, where by our perception in the desirability of an outcome–such as Fink’s desire for workers to return to the office–causes us to misinterpret the proof supporting this consequence. A different is confirmation bias, in which we seem for proof that confirms our beliefs, and ignore proof that does not.
By failing to examine the considerable proof properly, Fink is undermining belief in BlackRock extra broadly. His poor judgment must be a lesson to all enterprise leaders to count on the facts–rather than wishful thinking–in their community conversation and determination-creating.
Gleb Tsipursky, Ph.D., is a cognitive scientist and the CEO of the long term-proofing consultancy Catastrophe Avoidance Specialists. He is the very best-promoting creator of Main Hybrid and Remote Groups: A Manual on Benchmarking to Very best Tactics for Aggressive Benefit.
The thoughts expressed in Fortune.com commentary parts are exclusively the sights of their authors and do not mirror the viewpoints and beliefs of Fortune.
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