Business Briefs

New Chair for Central Coast Campuses Advisory Board
Margaret Haseltine has been appointed to Chair the Central Coast Campuses Advisory Board succeeding The Hon. Michael Lee who chaired the Board for seven years. Ms Haseltine is well respected in the business world on the Central Coast from her time as General Manager at Mars Australia (Masterfoods).

The role of the Board is to ensure ongoing community engagement and campus profiling and to ensure that the needs of the Central Coast Campuses as well as local community and businesses are well represented to the University of Newcastle and TAFE NSW - Hunter Institute, as the major educational partners.

With the population growth on the Central Coast, and the significant expansion and opportunities in the education and training sectors, chairing the Board includes a region-wide ambassador role as well as representing the special needs and challenges of the Central Coast to the Ourimbah Campus partners.

Student numbers at the Campus have grown from 89 students in 1989 to over 7,000 in 2009. This highlights the ongoing success of the partnership at the Ourimbah Campus, which this year is celebrating its 20th anniversary.

Frasers open third restaurant
Bec and Ray Fraser have opened their third restaurant, this time at Murrays Beach, Lake Macquarie.

The Lakehouse Café is located at 11 Shoreside Row, overlooking the Lake. Gabby Clouten has been appointed Café Supervisor.

The Frasers’ have owned the award-winning Terrigal restaurant, The Cowrie, for the past thirty-four years and last month celebrated their fifth year at Onda Restaurant. They also own the highly acclaimed catering company, The Cowrie Exclusive and Corporate Catering Central Coast, which they established twelve years ago. At the 2008 Restaurant and Caterers Association’s Awards they won Best Offsite Wedding Caterer, Best Offsite Corporate Caterer and topped it off with Caterer of the Year.

The Lakehouse Café is fully licensed and is open 7 days a week, 9am till 5pm for breakfast and lunch, as well as dinner on Friday and Saturday nights.

National award for local business
Sharp Document Solutions Central Coast was presented with a National Dealer of the Year award in San Francisco in April.
Directors, Nathan Walker and Nigel Neubauer said, “This award comes as a very pleasant surprise and justifies our move to a direct Central Coast operation which has seen our customer base increase by twenty-five percent. We have found that local businesses prefer to deal with local suppliers so that any concerns are looked after immediately rather than going through different levels of management hierarchy.”

To accommodate for the increase in business, Sharp Document Solutions Central Coast have employed additional technical staff and have relocated to larger premises at 10 Stockyard Close, West Gosford.

Home staging business to increase sale price of homes
Central Coast business woman Donna Ross has launched Great Impressions Home Staging, a personal styling service to showcase homes for sale at their very best to ensure top market price.

Unlike redecorating, home staging uses items already in the home or small pieces bought for the purpose, but the difference in buyer's perceived value of the property is amazing. “Home staging doesn't involve a huge investment, but can amount to thousands of dollars added to the house's selling price, Ms Ross said.

Home staging also leads to quicker sale times, as the home stands out from others in the same price bracket.
Great Impressions Home Staging personally styles homes for sale in the Central Coast, Lake Macquarie and Newcastle region and nationally via a phone and email service.
 

New creative design studio
David Challinor has established Sunset Creative, a new creative design studio aimed at removing the barriers separating branding, corporate ID and creative conceptual design.

Mr Challinor said, “We might be a brand new company, but we’ve been operating in professional design and working on some of the biggest brands around for over a decade.”

Mr Challinor has worked as an in-house designer at a number of well known brands including AMP, GIO, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Belkin. He was Senior Designer and Studio Manager at PurpleSDM before they ceased trading in January of this year.

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