Marketing agency BrandCraft opens Spokane office
A Tri-Cities growth marketing agency is expanding to the region with a new office in downtown Spokane.
BrandCraft announced Tuesday it opened an office at 821 W. Second Ave., Suite 201, to assist clients with marketing and design services “to help them achieve their growth goals,” according to a company release.
“BrandCraft is at the very beginning of a targeted growth phase. We believe strongly that the economy has pent up demand for many products and services that struggled during the pandemic,” Torey Azure, Brandcraft’s CEO, said in a statement.
BrandCraft’s expansion brings the addition of two new employees, Mark Sandall and Kayla Rott, both of Spokane. Sandall and Rott joined the company’s creative and digital marketing divisions.
“Despite the impacts of COVID-19, in 2020 we invested in people, in processes and in greater capability,” Azure said.
“We are bullish on our prospects moving into 2021 and currently eyeing new physical locations in Boise and Phoenix.”
Azure founded BrandCraft in 2012 as a design company, which added a digital marketing division in 2018.
National housing sales dip with weather, low inventory
WASHINGTON – Sales of new homes plunged 18.2% in February as severe winter weather in many parts of the country and a lack of supply took a toll on the housing industry.
Sales of single-family homes dropped to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 775,000 last month, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday, the slowest sales pace since May .
Every region of the country experienced a drop-off in sales.
The median price of a new home sold in February was $349,400, up 5.3% from a year ago.
The same weather disruption was evident in the existing homes market, for which the U.S. released data Monday. Those sales declined 6.5% last month.
The report Tuesday marked the first decline in sales of new homes in two months.
Housing continues to be one of the few bright spots during the coronavirus pandemic.
New home sales last year advanced to levels not seen since the housing boom of the mid-2000s.
Despite the hiccup, economists don’t believe skyrocketing prices will cool the U.S. housing market even with high lumber costs and rising mortgage rates, which remain near record lows. along with few properties available for sale, are pushing home ownership out of range for many.
“Home sales are still higher than a year earlier, and given the increased pace of building, new home sales should boom again this spring,” said Robert Frick, corporate economist at Navy Federal Credit Union.
For February, sales fell in every part of the country, led by a 37.5% drop in the Midwest and a 16.4% fall in the West. Sales declines 14.7% in the South and were down 11.6% in the Northeast.
Feds call for stricter air tour, hot air balloon rules
Federal safety officials are making another push for stricter oversight of air tour operators and hot-air balloon rides after several deadly crashes in recent years.
The National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday asked the Federal Aviation Administration to raise safety requirements for the passenger-carrying operations, which fall under less restrictive regulations than airlines do for things such as pilot training and maintenance.
“When people step on board an aircraft as paying passengers, they have the right to trust that the flight will be operated as safely as possible,” NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said at the end of a board hearing on the matter.
Some airplane and helicopter tours operate under rules for “general aviation,” a category that mostly covers private planes not used to carry paying passengers.
Safety board members said some of the operators exploit loopholes in FAA regulations to avoid stricter oversight.
The FAA said in a statement that it “has a number of initiatives under way to improve the safety” of passenger-carrying general aviation operations, including requiring air tour operators to have safety-management programs and requiring balloon pilots to pass medical exams.
From staff and wire reports