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E-COMMERCE
• Jane, a Lehi-based e-commerce destination offering women’s fashion, accessories, home decor, children’s clothing and more, has hired Megan Marshall as vice president of creative and brand, LeAnne Tice as vice president of program management, and Kathleen Shaffer as director of communication and public relations. Marshall will spearhead the development of branded content and visual experiences for Jane customers. She has over 20 years of experience in strategic marketing and brand building, most recently serving as vice president of marketing at Kate Quinn. She also has held brand leadership positions at Zulily and within several top creative advertising agencies. Tice will support the coordination and delivery of large strategic initiatives from conception through execution. She has expertise in helping maintain the execution of strategic initiatives for the Walmart Pharmacy line of business. Previously, she served in multiple positions across Walmart and Sam’s Club. Shaffer will be responsible for storytelling, corporate communications including media relations, internal communications, executive thought leadership, seller communications, and philanthropic strategy. She has more than 15 years of experience in the retail, e-commerce, food and beverage, QSR, franchising and tourism industries. Prior to joining Jane, she was senior director of communications for Fat Brands, QSR Division (formerly Global Franchise Group) and served as vice president and public relations account director for MGH. The company is transforming from a three-day flash deal business model to an evergreen e-commerce marketplace where sellers offer products indefinitely.
ECONOMIC INDICATORS
• Millard County leads all Utah counties on a list of places were residents receive the most value for what they pay in property taxes, a list compiled by SmartAsset. The study measured the effective property tax paid in each county to determine the relative property tax burden. The study then assesses data on local school quality and home values to determine where residents are receiving the most bang for their buck. Millard County was followed, in order, by Sanpete, Cache, Juab, Utah, Iron, Davis, Washington, Kane and Morgan counties. Details are at https://smartasset.com/taxes/utah-property-tax-calculator#utah.
• Utah is No. 48 on a list of “2022’s Best States for Fishing,” compiled by Lawn Love. It compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia based on community interest, access to gear and bait shops, license affordability, and proximity to water sources among 22 total metrics. Utah was ranked No. 40 for number of bass fishing clubs, No. 42 for number of fish species, No. 41 for number of free fishing days, and No. 37 for the number of bait and tackle shops per 100,000 residents. The top-ranked state is Florida. The worst-ranked location in the District of Columbia. Details are at https://lawnlove.com/blog/best-worst-states-for-fishing/.
• Utah is ranked No. 16 on a list of “2022’s Best States to Visit This Fall,” compiled by LawnStarter. It compared the 50 states based on 20 indicators. Utah was ranked No. 1 for projected number of weeks with fall foliage, No. 2 for number of national parks, No. 26 for apple orchards per 100,000 residents, and No. 37 for wildfire risk. The top-ranked state overall is California. The bottom-ranked state is Hawaii. Details are at https://www.lawnstarter.com/blog/studies/best-worst-states-to-visit-in-fall/.
EDUCATION/TRAINING
• Instructure, a Salt Lake City-based education technology company, has entered into an agreement with partner Google to help educational institutions keep course data and rosters synchronized between their student information systems and Google Classroom. This means that educators no longer must set up their courses manually or have students use a join code. Teachers can now simply click “Accept” when their course is automatically created. Instructure’s Elevate Data Sync will create classes with all the right students ahead of the first day of school and keep them updated if a student changes classes.
ENVIRONMENT
• Dominion Energy Utah’s “CarbonRight” program had enrolled its 1,000th participant in less than six months since program inception. The company says that for every 1,000 participants, carbon offsets are equivalent to removing around 900 cars from the road or planting 7,000 new trees. CarbonRight provides customers a way to significantly reduce their carbon footprint by offsetting carbon emissions from natural gas use in their home or business. The program sources verified carbon offsets from landfill and reforestation projects, including locally in Utah. The offsets are independently certified through a rigorous and transparent process. CarbonRight participation is voluntary and available to all Dominion Energy Utah and Idaho customers. For just $5 a month, a typical residential customer can offset their entire carbon footprint from their natural gas usage.
• Smith’s Food & Drug Stores, a division of The Kroger Co., has announced its latest milestones and results for Zero Hunger/Zero Waste, the company’s vision to end hunger in the communities it serves and eliminate waste across the company by 2025. Kroger announced the initiative in September 2017. Smith’s notable year-to-date 2022 milestones include donating more than 1.9 million meals to communities across the Intermountain West; rescuing more than 2.3 million pounds of safe nutritious food that could no longer be sold in its retail stores, or shipped from its distribution centers and manufacturing plants, for Feeding America food banks; diverting 38,000 tons from landfills across its seven-state footprint; increasing year-over-year food waste diversion by 24; achieving zero waste operations in both of their manufacturing plants in Layton and in Henderson, Nevada; and diverting 682 tons of plastic film and 22,300 tons of cardboard.
• Route, a Lehi-based e-commerce platform that connects merchants and consumers, has announced a carbon-neutral shipping initiative called Green Package Protection. It aims to neutralize emissions caused by the shipping industry. By introducing Green Package Protection, Route is covering the cost to help neutralize shipments with participating brand partners, at zero cost to merchants and consumers. Each order with Green Package Protection directly supports Route’s first project, an agroforestation initiative in Brazil, which was selected in partnership with climate action platform Patch and has already helped neutralize the emissions from more than 1 million packages since its beta launch.
FINANCE
• Affiliates of Cantor Fitzgerald LP, a global financial services firm and real assets investment company, and Silverstein Properties, a global full-service real estate development, investment and management firm, have announced the latest closing of construction financing for an investment by Cantor Silverstein Opportunity Zone Trust Inc. Cantor and Silverstein, along with partner Kensington Investment Co. Inc., secured the $176.2 million construction loan from Mack Real Estate Credit Strategies LP for the development of Astra Tower, a 40-story, 377-unit residential project in downtown Salt Lake City. Excavation and foundation work began in the spring, with project completion expected in late 2024.
FOOD
• Vin 7000, a Park City-based boutique wine brokerage, is offering six wine clubs. It is partnering with small, independent, family-owned wineries in some of the most renowned wine regions in the world. Customers’ regular shipments are delivered for free to the Utah State Liquor Store of their choice. Details are at https://www.vin7000.com/clubs.
HEALTHCARE
• Back at Work Physical Therapy has opened an outpatient clinic at 472 N. 2000 W., No. 225, Pleasant Grove. The clinic offers outpatient and telehealth orthopedic physical therapy, including pre- and post-operative rehabilitation, manual therapy, sports rehabilitation and injury prevention. The clinic director is Bradley Handwerger, who is certified in dry needling and vestibular therapy and has experience with surgical rehabilitation and treating low back, cervical, shoulder, hip and knee pain. Back at Work, part of the Upstream Rehabilitation family of clinical care, also has clinics in Clearfield, Logan (two), Pleasant View, Provo and Tremonton.
INSURANCE
• Utah Business Insurance Co., a workers’ compensation insurance company, has hired Paola Stauffer as vice president of claims. Stauffer has 29 years of experience in the workers’ compensation insurance industry, having served in various leadership roles, including vice president of claims administration and vice president of claims operations at WCF.
INVESTMENTS
• Zartico, a Salt Lake City-based company that uses data intelligence, analytics and visualizations to help destination tourism organizations, has secured $20 million in Series A funding. The funding was led by Arthur Ventures, with participation from Peterson Partners. Zartico has raised a total of $24.5 million to date and, since its March 2020 launch, has booked over $10 million in business across more than 180 customers. Zartico said the new financing will be used to grow its engineering and product teams; expand its machine learning, AI and predictive capabilities; and expand into new markets such as sports venues, airports and municipalities. Zartico, which has 61 remote employees is hiring and anticipates a 70 percent jump in headcount in the next six months.
• Oops, a Salt Lake City-based startup offering doorstep return pickups for in-store and online purchases across the Wasatch Range, has raised $5 million in a seed round led by Peterson Partners, with contributions from Epic Ventures, Maverick Ventures, Pelion Venture Partners, Village Global and angel investors. The company launched in June. Its founders are Jonathan Crawley and Joseph Hatch.
• Savvos Health, an American Fork-based startup offering a marketplace of cash prices for shoppable medical care, including outpatient surgeries, imaging, labs and more, has raised over $1 million. The funding came from Lance Evenson, We Funder, Assure Syndicates, Jared Lynch, Stuart Schantz and Dr. Daniel Harris. The funds will be used to further develop the Savvos platform and software, work on business development, and pursue additional provider relationships across the country.
• PassiveLogic, a Salt Lake City-based maker of a building controls platform, has secured new investment funding from NVentures, NVIDIA’s venture investment arm. The amount was not disclosed. To date, the company has raised more than $80 million. PassiveLogic plans to collaborate with NVIDIA on digital twins, GPUs and compiler technology.
• Solo LLC, a Lehi-based provider of solar sales, proposal and design software, has announced that it has received a minority investment from Bregal Sagemount, a growth-focused private equity firm. The amount was not disclosed. Solo said the investment will be used to fuel further growth for Solo within the solar industry and enable the advancement of new technology, adding and attracting talent and enabling the company’s milestones in clean energy adoption. Sagemount’s investment was led by Pavan Tripathi, Sandeep Swaminathan, Gerald Castaldo and Harrison Boyajian. Goodwin Procter served as legal counsel to Sagemount, and Mayer Brown served as legal counsel to Solo.
NONPROFITS
• Sutherland Institute, a Salt Lake City-based nonpartisan policy and educational think tank, has added Howard M. Headlee to its board of directors. Headlee is president and CEO of the Utah Bankers Association, where he has served for over 25 years. In addition to his work in the banking industry, Headlee has founded one of the largest charter public schools in Utah, and in 2012 he was appointed by Gov. Gary Herbert to serve on the Utah State Charter School Board, where he served as chairman until he retired in 2016. He now serves on the advisory board for the Center for the School of the Future. Headlee also has served in various community roles throughout the years.
PARTNERSHIPS
• The Any Hour Group, an Orem-based provider of home services in the Mountain West, has partnered with Grapids Heating & Cooling; Precision Plumbing, Heating, Cooling & Electrical; Chandler Air; and All Hours Air to further expand its operations in the region and in new markets. Financial terms of the transactions were not disclosed. Through the addition of Precision and All Hours, Any Hour has broadened its footprint into Colorado and Nevada. The addition of Chandler further bolsters Any Hour’s strength in Arizona, expanding the company’s presence in the Greater Phoenix Area. Any Hour’s partnership with Grapids marks Any Hour’s first expansion into the Midwest. Each business will retain its respective brand, headquarters and management team.
• Accuracy, a Paris-based advisory firm, and Causality Link, a Sandy-based financial information technology provider, have announced a partnership agreement to enrich certain areas of Accuracy’s strategic advisory services with the information produced by Causality Link’s platform. Causality Link’s AI-powered platform analyzes more than 120 million texts globally in real time to identify explicit cause-and-effect statements.
PHILANTHROPY
• Rizepoint, a Salt Lake City-based company offering software focused on food safety, quality management and compliance, has donated 200 bags of food to Willow Canyon Elementary School to support their new “Principal Pantry” initiative, which sends home weekend food bags for children that are food-insecure. RizePoint purchased and assembled bags of healthy, non-perishable foods. The school needs 20 bags of food per week to feed needy students. RizePoint’s donation of 200 bags will feed those children for the next 10 weeks. RizePoint also donated small toys in these bags. Willow Canyon is part of the Canyons School District, which RizePoint has supported since 2016.
• Members from the Policy Project/Utah Period Project and Aunt Flow recently hosted Utah’s first “Period Party” to pack nearly 3,000 period packs of menstrual products to distribute to students in lower-income areas and nonprofit organizations that support youth in need. The event at Twenty & Creek in Sandy gathered more than 250 of the organization’s student ambassadors to celebrate the success of free, quality period products in public schools. The period kits are to be donated to schools and also to nonprofits throughout the state to distribute to those in need.
RECOGNITIONS
• PCF Insurance Services, a Lehi-based national insurance brokerage, has been named a top 20 insurance broker on Business Insurance’s “2022 Top 100 Brokers of U.S. Business” list. The list, which ranks companies by their 2021 brokerage revenue generated by U.S.-based clients, identifies the highest-grossing companies in the insurance industry. The company also placed within the top 15 on Insurance Journal’s “2022 Top 100 Property/Casualty Agencies” list, which ranks companies by total property and casualty agency revenue. With 2021 revenue of $590 million, PCF Insurance increased its Business Insurance ranking from No. 27 last year to No. 20 in 2022. The PCF Insurance ranking was No. 20 last year and No. 13 in 2022.
• MX Technologies Inc., a Lehi-based company focused on open finance, has announced the recipients of the 2022 MX Innovator Awards. The annual awards honor financial institutions and fintechs using financial data to deliver innovative digital and mobile money experiences to consumers. Winners include for Connectivity, Everyware; Data, Achieve (formerly Freedom Financial Network); Experience, First Hawaii Bank; and Valued Partner, NCR. MX earlier had announced that USAA Federal Savings Bank earned Open Finance Partner of the Year.
SERVICES
• Dwellify, a new digital-first kitchen and bathroom home remodeling service, has announced that its service is now available in Utah. Dwellify’s one-stop-shop process combines features such as a free, AI-powered design quiz; an HD room visualizer tool; and a mobile app to guide homeowners through a step-by-step process for remodeling.