March 21, 2023
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Southeast Florida Roundup
A Florida market for crafts from India
Mike Vogel | 4/26/2019
INNOVATION
Crafting a Business
Boca Raton-based Mela Artisans uses a proprietary sourcing platform to obtain handmade goods from craftsmen in India and then sells them through, among others, TJ Maxx and Home Goods and online platforms such as Popsugar, plus the company’s own melaartisans.com.
Mela’s goods are in approximately 5,000 stores in America, says founder and CEO Navroze Mehta. He won’t disclose sales volume. The company presented earlier this year at the Florida Venture Capital Conference to raise capital. Mehta says he’s following up with a few funds. The handicraft sector is India’s second-largest.
TRANSPORTATION
- Port Everglades Director Steve Cernak died March 16 of cancer at age 63. He joined the port in 2012. Glenn Wiltshire, deputy port director since 2006, was named acting port director.
RETAIL
- The city of Fort Lauderdale approved SeaQuest Aquarium’s plan to build an exhibit of 1,200 marine creatures, birds and reptiles at the Galleria mall on the site of a former Lord & Taylor store.
RESEARCH
- Scientists from Nova Southeastern University’s Save Our Seas Foundation and Guy Harvey Research Institute, the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine and Monterey Bay Aquarium completed mapping the great white shark genome. One finding: Sequence changes — unique to the sharks — tied to DNA repair, damage response and damage tolerance, as opposed to the genome instability that predisposes humans to certain diseases.
HOSPITALITY
- The Breakers Palm Beach promoted Tricia Taylor, senior vice president and general manager, to executive vice president and general manager, and Denise Bober, vice president for human resources, to senior vice president for human resources.
