Ciao Bella—in Your Grocer's Dairy Case

How friendly media attention helped a Little Italy gelato shop move from being a restaurant supplier to a premium supermarket brand

BusinessWeek, June 9, 2008 — Ciao Bella was once content to produce generic desserts. The maker of premium gelato and sorbet sold its wares mostly in bulk to restaurants that served them as unbranded "home-made" ice cream. Retail was just 10% of the company's business in 2000 and the least profitable part. The last thing Ciao Bella wanted to deal with was the logistics of shipping pints of frozen ice cream to far-flung stores. "We fought the growth of retail," says Deborah Holt, the company's vice-president for marketing.

But today Ciao Bella sells through 4,000 retailers accounting for half of its business.

Can't Get Enough Oprah? Wait a Few Years†

Winfrey, Discovery to Launch New Network in Her Likeness, But Without Her TV Show

Wall Street Journal, January 16, 2008 — Americans love "The Oprah Winfrey Show," but are they ready for the Oprah Winfrey Network? Ms. Winfrey and Discovery Communications announced yesterday plans to launch a new channel — which will go by the acronym, OWN — in the second half of 2009. Ms. Winfrey will be the creative force behind the channel, developing programming on topics familiar to her viewers, such as dealing with bullying and recovering from divorce.