Today in Small Business: Made in the U.S.A.

What’s affecting me, my clients and other small-business owners today.

Start-Up

• Women are opening businesses in Detroit at a higher rate than in any other large American city.
• With a new app, strangers will deliver your messages verbally.

Manufacturing

• A study from the Boston Consulting Group finds that some low-cost manufacturing locations are no longer low cost — and America is a “rising star.”
• What exactly does “Made in the U.S.A.” mean?
• American manufacturing accelerated in August.
• The largest manufacturing workforce in the country can be found in the Los Angeles, Long Beach and Santa Ana metropolitan area.

Employees

• More workers are claiming wage theft.
• Fast-food workers seeing a $15-an-hour minimum are planning civil disobedience.
• A study finds that a leafy office is a happier office.

Family Business

• There are some advantages to being employed by your adult children.
• As chain restaurants move in, a Bronx cafe fights to survive.
• A dad makes instructional videos so his kids can do basic tasks around the house.

Management

• Mark Cuban explains why companies die.
• The owner of a bagel business is constantly looking for ways to keep it fresh.

Finance

• An entrepreneur explains how he leveraged his business credit to get into Autozone and Walmart.
• Here’s how to make a crowdfunding video that sells itself.

Opportunities

• Profits from flipping homes are starting to slip.

Marketing

• Ad agency interest in digital video has jumped 45 percent from a year ago, according to a survey.

Entrepreneurship

• An entrepreneur orchestrates a turnaround after his wedding is called off.

Health Care

• High-deductible health plans are starting to weigh on employees.
• A financial planner says the promise of the Affordable Care Act’s small-business initiative is falling flat.

Around the Country

• California passes a ban on plastic bags.
• Irish companies are making it big in Silicon Valley
• A Chicago business owner offers to help the family of a homeless Little League player.
• Here’s how New York City’s bedbug start-ups are doing.

Around the World

• Uber has been banned across Germany.
• In Canada, employees are getting paid in Bitcoin.

Online

• Here are six things e-commerce businesses should include in their return policies.
• Here’s how to build your audience on YouTube.

Technology

• Here are the economics of Amazon’s latest purchase, Twitch.
• Dairy Queen investigates a possible data breach.
• Be wary of these Ice Bucket Challenge scams.
• Attackers have rigged the website of an industrial software firm with a sophisticated reconnaissance tool.
• A hole in a popular mobile app may be the cause cause of recent hacking into the private photos of celebrities.
• The Better Business Bureau is warning small businesses of a Caller ID spoof.

Obituary

• Yves Carcelle turned Louis Vuitton into the world’s largest and most valuable luxury brand.

Gene Marks owns the Marks Group, a Bala Cynwyd, Pa., consulting firm that helps clients with customer relationship management. You can follow him on Twitter.