About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 9, 2018)
BUSINESS Submit items for Sunday’s Newsmakers in Business to community@gainesvilletimes.com. ®h t kitties gainesvilletimes.com Sunday, December 9, 2018 CHRIS CARLSON I Associated Press Celene Navarette poses for a picture at La Libreria book store in Los Angeles. The market for Spanish books is growing but the traditional publishing industry has addressed demand in fits and starts. Three small companies have stepped in to fill the void, launched by three different pairs of Hispanic mothers frustrated by the dearth of Spanish- language books to reach to their children. Filling the void A search for Spanish books led three mothers to build their own businesses BY ALEXANDRA OLSON Associated Press NEW YORK - You might have heard of the three blind mice or the itsy-bitsy spider who went up the water spout. But have you ever heard of the little cold and hungry chicks? If you grew up speaking Span ish, the answer is probably yes. But Susie Jaramillo wants every one to know “Los Pollitos,” a bedtime song about a hen taking care of her hatchlings that’s as familiar in the Spanish-speaking world as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Lit tle Star” is to English speakers. The song is the heart of Canticos, a series of bilingual books, companion apps and singalong videos that the Vene- zuelan-American mother of two dreamed up after she couldn’t find enough Spanish-language books to read to her children. The brand, which debuted in 2016, had its biggest break through this year when Nickel odeon adapted it to develop a series for toddlers on its digital ALEXANDRA OLSON I Associated Press Susie Jaramillo, chief creative officer of Encantos Media Studios, reads her book “Los Pollitos” to children Sept. 23 at an event to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan in New York. platforms. Canticos capitalized on a growing market for Spanish books in the United States, which the traditional publishing industry has addressed in fits and starts. Small companies are stepping in to fill the void, lever aging social media and strategic retail partnerships to target key ‘We were doing it for love. If 100 kids picked up our books, we would have been happy.’ Patty Rodriguez Lil’ Libros co-founder customer bases, often ones they themselves belong to. “When I had my first child, I went online and thought: Where are all the board books of these songs that I grew up with” said Jaramillo, a former co-founder of a Latino-focused New York advertising agency. “We’re always singing the American songs in Spanish, and our songs are great. Why aren’t people singing them in English?” Jaramillo teamed up with fel low mother Nuria Santamaria Wolfe, a former head of multi cultural strategy at Twitter, to launch Encantos Media Studios, an entertainment company that released Canticos as the first of its planned bilingual brands. Two other mothers, Patty Rodriguez and Ariana Stein, founded their own publishing company in 2014 when Rodri guez couldn’t sell mainstream publishers on her concept of a bilingual board book series fea turing Latino icons and tradi tions. The company, LiT Libros, landed a partnership with Tar get just five months after pub lishing its first book, “Counting with Frida,” now the best-seller on Amazon among children’s counting books. The books are now sold at 1,300 stores nationwide. “We didn’t expect this reac tion. We were doing it for love. If 100 kids picked up our books, we would have been happy,” said Rodriguez, a senior producer for the radio show “On Air With Ryan Seacrest.” ■ Please see BOOKS, 4D For Tribune News Service Walmart is attempting to bring town-center amenities to a few locations. Walmart trying out ‘Town Center’ concept BY BENJAMIN ROMANO Tribune News Service Big-box retail giant Walmart, long despised by Main Street small busi nesses for luring their customers to the superstore on the edge of town, is now attempting to bring town-center amenities to its sprawling parking lots in two Washington locations and elsewhere. On a website devoted to its “Town Center” retail concept, Walmart lists four projects underway, including at stores in the Washington cities of Shelton and Tumwater, and others in Texas and Colorado. Walmart real-estate executive L.B. Johnson unveiled the concept at a shopping-center industry confer ence in October. “We want to provide community space — areas for the community to dwell,” he said. “We want to provide pedestrian connec tivity from our box to the experien tial zones that are planned on our footprint.” Community-development officials in Shelton and Tumwater said the company has had preliminary meet ings with city planners but has not yet taken steps to obtain permits to rede velop the expansive parking lots sur rounding its stores. The Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer did not respond to a request for comment. On its website, Walmart depicts a mix of amenities it may add around its stores, including dining, fitness and sports activities (a golf driving range and skate park are pictured), services, transportation and curated retail — all things designed to make Walmart stores into “destinations.” That’s a big trend for physical retailers looking to give people a rea son to actually get out and go some where to shop in an era of convenient online shopping and home delivery. Walmart has significantly ramped up its online shopping options to compete with rival Amazon. Whether Walmart will make good on the Town Center idea in Washing ton remains to be seen. Its Shelton store is on the edge of the burg, far from the actual town center. Company representatives met with city staff in late February to discuss a concept similar to what’s depicted on its website — a small park-like area next to a drive-through restaurant at the edge of the parking lot — but Walmart has not submitted a formal application, said Shelton community- development director Mark Ziegler. Microsoft calls for regulations on facial-recognition tech TED S. WARREN I Associated Press Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks during the annual Microsoft Corp. shareholders meeting Nov. 28 in Bellevue, Wash. BY RACHEL LERMAN Tribune News Service Microsoft President Brad Smith paints an Orwellian pic ture of the future in his latest call for government regulation of facial-recognition technology. Smart camera systems could follow us anywhere, tracking our whereabouts and activities for companies and governments to scrutinize. “It could follow anyone any where, or for that matter, every one everywhere,” Smith wrote in a blog post Thursday. Smith also pointed out the benefits of facial-recognition technology, which has received praise for helping police find missing children and identify criminals. But without regulation, he added, “this use of facial-recog nition technology could unleash mass surveillance on an unprec edented scale.” It’s not too late to put safe guards on the technology before that hap pens in the U.S., he argues. “We must ensure that the year 2024 doesn’t look like a page from the novel ‘1984,’” he wrote, refer ring to George Orwell’s dysto pian novel. Smith out lined the company’s rec ommendations for government regulation and tech-company policies, which Microsoft has been developing since announcing this summer that it would support regulation of facial technology. The proposals include a law that would inform consumers when facial-recognition tech nology is being used in a public place. The technology, which uses cameras and advanced machine learning systems to analyze and identify faces, is becoming increasingly common in the country as the technology gets more accurate, and is being used as a security measure in schools and at retail stores to observe consum ers’ shopping patterns. Microsoft also recom mended laws that require people to review results from the artificial intel ligence systems before they’re automatically used to make decisions about people’s actions, especially where there could be legal or other important con sequences. This could help cut down on instances of bias and discrimination, Smith wrote, an issue that developers of facial- recognition technology have struggled with and come under fire for, especially when related to use of the technology by law enforcement. Studies have found that sev eral facial-recognition systems make more errors when iden tifying women and people of color rather than white men. Microsoft and others have vowed to work on the problem, and Microsoft notes that its own Face API system has become more accurate at identifying people. In his blog post Thursday, Smith also recommended tech companies be required to pub lish documents that clearly explain their technology’s capa bilities and limitations, allow third-party groups to indepen dently test the systems, and require governments to obtain court orders in many cases before persistently monitoring people with facial- recognition technology. Smith also outlined measures Microsoft would implement internally at the beginning of next year, including barring customers from using the tech nology to illegally discriminate, and pledging not to allow its technology to be used in law- enforcement situations that encroach on people’s demo cratic freedoms. The proposals include a law that would inform consumers when facial-recognition technology is being used in a public place.
