Word: spiff
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Education Secretary Arne Duncan has cited Mastery Charter Schools as a shining example of how to right a capsized ship. So far, Mastery has used the same approach at each of the three schools it has taken over from the School District of Philadelphia since 2006: retain the students, spiff up the place, and bring in new teachers and administrators. (See the top 10 magazine covers...
From Dark Victory to Patch Adams, Hollywood never found a cancer ward it couldn't spiff up, a death sentence that didn't have emotional uplift. In another new movie, The Savages, the issue ostensibly addressed is that of middle-aged siblings saddled with a cranky dad suffering from Alzheimer's ("Al What's-his-name's Disease," as a character says in the Tom Stoppard play Rock 'n' Roll). But that ordeal turns out to be the work of but a month, not decades - just long enough for the brother and sister to learn the cleansing importance of family...
...look and a bulked up $125 million national ad campaign ("America runs on Dunkin'") are part of a carefully orchestrated plan to spiff up the brand with an eye toward taking the company public. A year from now, "we'll sit down and say, Is the company at this point geared for a reasonable IPO?," says Carlyle Group co-founder Dan D'Aniello. Carlyle, together with Bain Capital and Thomas H. Lee Partners, bought Dunkin' Brands from the French beverage giant Pernod Ricard for $2.4 billion in March 2006. To make that investment pay off, Dunkin' will have to fend...
...everyone is building a home from scratch. Some would rather spiff up an existing residence. Karen Spiker, 58, a Louisville, Ky., art-gallery consultant, undertook a renovation in a home she plans to stay in for a while. Even though her two children, ages 34 and 23, are out of the house, she had a pent-up desire for a spacious home. She and husband Phillip, 56, a pilot, had moved eight times over their 26-year marriage, while he served in the U.S. Air Force. That meant living in military housing or renting or owning small homes nearby. After...
Juan Valdez, the fictitious coffee grower created in 1959 to help put Colombian coffee on the map, is trying to spiff up his image. In the face of dirt-cheap international wholesale prices and consumers' increasingly gourmet taste, the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia is hoping to cash in on the Starbucks phenomenon with a five-year, $75 million marketing campaign to reposition its coffee as an upscale brand. While still supplying such supermarket stalwarts as Maxwell House and Folgers, the Colombian coffee industry is struggling to make itself relevant to younger generations of consumers who pooh-pooh...