Tag: corporate-america

This Entry Has An Eyeball Surcharge of 2c per Eyeball

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Today’s Los Angeles Times has an article about how fuel surcharges are driving up the effective price of a ticket. They cite examples of a round-trip Tokyo where the fare is $400… but the fuel surcharge is almost $300! As I read the article I got more and more upset. Hence… this post.

To me, this reflects the growing “fee”-ification of society. You buy a ticket on Goldstar… and the ticket is $17 + 4.50 in fees. You buy it on Ticketmaster, and the fees are sometimes more than the ticket itself. We have fuel charges, we have all sorts of fees and stuff on our phone bills. Nowadays, no price is complete without its set of fees.

When I learned business, I was taught that the price for doing a service should reflect your cost for the service, plus profit. Fees that are resentative of the cost for the service provider should be part of the fee (I’ll make an exception for government imposed charges). Anything else is just an artifice for advertising purposes that permits you to promote your price as lower than what the consumer sees out the door.

So what do you think? Do you think this “fee”-ification of society is getting ridiculous?

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Building Healthy Bodies Twelve Ways

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Today’s Los Angeles Times brings a report of how Interstate Bakeries Corp. is closing the operations of Wonder Bread in Southern California. On October 29th, IBC will close all four of its Southland bread bakeries (in Glendale, Pomona, San Diego and in Los Angeles southeast of USC), as well as 17 distribution centers and 16 outlet stores. The spongy white bread will disappear from our grocery shelves. The article didn’t state if that would affect other local IBC bread brands such as Home Pride, Sun-Maid Bread, and Roman Meal. This will be a loss of around 1,300 jobs, and will cost IBC (which is in Chapter 11) about $29 million. The last bread deliveries will be on Oct. 20. IBC will continue to operate two Los Angeles bakeries that produce the company’s Hostess and Dolly Madison lines of snack cakes and doughnuts, which include Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Snowballs. Those plants employ around 840 workers.

According to the article, Wonder Bread was first marketed more than 80 years ago and has been sold in Southern California since at least the 1940s. IBC acquired the brand when it bought Continental Baking Co. from Ralston Purina Co. in 1995 for $461 million in stock and cash. I have strong memories of Wonder Bread (not that I liked it), as I recall going on tours of their downtown bakery when I was a child. It joins a whole load of other brands that have disappeared from Los Angeles shelves, such as Foremost (still around, but not big in LA), Helms Bakeries, and Adohr Farms.

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Today In The News

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Some news items that caught my eye, for various reasons:

  • From the “If You Build It, They Will Come” Department: The international developer Hines (no, he’s not named Duncan) has just bought some property in Santa Monica to build an office project, according to the LA Times. Now, normally this wouldn’t be news to most folks, but it caught my eye because of the location. You see, this project is going to be on a 7-acre site at the northeast corner of Olympic and 26th Street. Hines plans to remove the three industrial buildings on the site and build two- to four-story office buildings totaling about 300,000 square feet for entertainment use.

    Here’s where it gets interesting to me. The land is the site of the former Paper Mate plant, and is across the street from the Water Gardens. The seller was a family trust that had held the land since the 1950s, specifically, the estate of John M. Stahl. Why is this of interest? The “Water Gardens” land, according to the article, was “developed into an industrial park for use by Rand Corp.” In 1958, it was actually spun off into a little company called System Development Corporation, where I used to work.

    SDC has seen its former buildings wiped off the map. The Colorado Blvd site held one of the first SAGE computers, as well as the Q7A. 3000 Olympic is gone. 5151 Camino Ruiz has been subdivided (although I think the building is still there). Ah, memories.

  • From the “And Then There Were Two” Department: I remember many years ago when I bought my first computer. There were all these companies building and selling their computer. You never went with the name brands, because you could get so much more with the small shops. I remember working with Advanced Computer Center in Pasadena (now gone) buying my first Sager 8200 laptop. I mention this because today’s news reports that Acer Computers is in the process of buying Gateway computers, of the formerly cow-decorated boxes. Just like HP has done with Compaq, Acer will be targeted as the consumer line, and Gateway as the higher-end corporate line. Of course, Gateway owns emachines, and is in negotiations to buy Packard Bell. More and more consolidation in the business. I’m not sure this is a good thing.
  • From the “Perhaps Stan Freberg Was Right” Department: Advertising is everywhere these days. According to the New York Times, it is in the air, as planes replace their livery with ads, put ads on the tray tables, have advertisements on napkins and on the overhead bins. It is on cars, as people wrap their SUVs, and Chevy has even introduced the HHR Panel, which is easily wrapped (just like the Scion xB was). You can’t escape it. So what’s the funniest place you’ve seen an ad?
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Learning Life’s Lessons

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Some observations while perusing the papers at lunch:

  • From the “Don’t Try This At Home” Department: The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting about rookie cop who accidentally shot himself to death while displaying for a female friend how officers are taught to avoid having their guns used against them. According to those familiar with the incident, the 23 year-old officer (James Gustafson Jr.) was showing his Police Department-issued semiautomatic pistol after removing the clip that stores the rounds. He explained that there are ways an officer can disable a weapon in close proximity to keep it from being fired. Gustafson pointed the weapon at his neck and pulled the trigger. However, there was still a bullet in the chamber… and the result was easily predictable.

    Life Lesson #1: Guns don’t kill people. Bullets kill people.

  • From the “They Don’t Call It Whole Paycheck for Nuttin’” Department: The Nashville Tenessean (via AP) is reporting that federal regulators let out a little more information than they thought when they released some Acrobat documents on the Whole Paycheck/Wild Oats merger. The documents revealed that Whole Foods plans to close 30 or more Wild Oats stores, a move that may nearly double revenue for some Whole Foods stores. Whole Foods also negotiates with suppliers to drive up costs for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Makes one pine for the days of Mrs. Gooch’s. By the way, the corporate secrets were revealed because federal regulators redacted the words by just electronically shading them black. We all know how well that works The words could be still be searched, copied, pasted and read in versions downloaded from court computer servers. They’ve corrected this by uploading scans, so you can’t search them at all.

    Life Lesson #2: Just because you cover it in black doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

    Life Lesson #3: What’s good for you isn’t necessarily good for the neighborhood.

  • From the “Third Time’s The Charm” Department: The Daily Breeze is reporting that the Queen Mary luxury liner, docked for years and years in Long Beach, has a new owner, Save the Queen. This investor group plans to make the site a theme resort, not unlike Universal City Walk in Los Angeles. Of course, those of us familiar with the story know that there have been many, many plans for the Queen (including some from Disney), but they’ve never been super successful. Will this one succeed? I’m not sure a CityWalk in a port town works. Perhaps they just need to bring back the Pike… and turn the Queen Mary into a clone of a successful Queen Mary.

    Life Lesson #4: Those who do not learn from history are doomed to lose their investment.

  • From the “Celebrities Under Surveillance” Department: The Daily Breeze is also reporting that Reggie the Alligator, a former resident of the San Pedro area, keeps escaping his exhibit space at the LA Zoo. But not to worry. Zoo officials have placed Reggie under 24-hour surveillance. We’ve all seen how effective surveillance is for Lindsey and Britney.

    Life Lesson #5: There’s a difference between observing stupidity and stopping stupidity.

See, who needs a teacher in space when you have me, your teacher in cyberspace?

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Wanna Go Shopping?

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

[As I’ll soon be tied up in an all day meeting, an observation on the news whilst the tea cools…]

Do you know where one of Southern California’s largest shopping centers will soon be? If you guessed the San Fernando Valley, you’re right!

The Daily News is reporting how Westfield of Borg has announced their plans to unite the Westfield Prominade and the Westfield Topanga malls with a $750 million outdoor retail complex called The Village in Warner Center. The village, which will be build on land currently containing a dead theatre, dead restaurants, a dead miniature golf course, and soon to be dead businesses, will include a 300-room, four-star hotel, 150 condominiums and apartments, offices, and 550,000 square feet of shops and restaurants. At 3.8 million ft2, the three-mall complex will be larger than South Coast Plaza in Orange County and Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance. Construction is expected to start in two years. When finished, The Village could draw 10 million visitors a year – in addition to the 15 million who visit Topanga each year and the 9 million who stop by the Promenade. Officials believe the new mall will create 2,500 temporary construction jobs and 7,500 permanent jobs, plus $6 million in sales tax revenue.

The article includes some conceptual drawings as well as a locator map.

I predict parking in that area will be a mess, however, even though the new project will include 4,100 parking spaces above and below ground. It is still unknown how the two malls will be connected, transit-wise. I’ll note there’s also another “big box” complex not that far away.

Who will be in this mall? Westfield has indicated that there will be no department stores; tenants will include restaurants and national chains that don’t depend on department stores for consumer traffic. It will be one of the few outdoor malls in the valley… and it will be in Woodland Hills, one of the hottest parts of the valley.

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News Chum

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

I’ve finally gotten around to reading the news, so here are some tidbits for you…

  • From the Let’s Find a New Market Department: The LA Times reported yesterday that Disney is planning their first hand-animated movie since 2004’s Home on the Range (it seems so long ago). This new movie, to be released in 2009, is titled “The Frog Princess”. It is set in New Orleans with songs composed by Randy Newman. The central figure, Maddy, will become the first African American “Disney” Princess. The movie will be written and directed by John Musker and Ron Clements, who co-directed “The Little Mermaid”. This bodes well.

    Those less cynical out there will applaud Disney’s return to classic animation, and the recognition that girls come in all colors (they haven’t quite figured out the shapes yet, other than Lilo, who isn’t considered a princess, or religions (have you seen a Disney Jewish Princess — oh, right — scratch that, it’s stereotypical)). The more cynical among us see it as recognition of a new market: now Disney can sell black princess dolls. Of course, I’m sure Maddie will be promoted as much as the other heavily promoted ethnic princesses: Pocahontas (Native American), Jasmine (middle-eastern), Mulan (Asian), Esmeralda (Gypsy), and Conchita (Hispanic) [OK, I made up that last one].
    [Thanks for kuni_izumi for reminding me to write about this.]

  • From the “I Dare You” Department: The Los Angeles Times has also reported on Hualapai Indian tribe completed installation of a massive glass-bottomed walkway to a “Grand Canyon Skywalk” that extends about 70 feet over the rim and about 4,000 feet over the canyon floor. How it was installed was fascinating: Underneath, hydraulic “shoes” lifted the Skywalk above a cement track, rolled it across a bed of metal rods, and set it onto four steel anchors that were drilled deep into the canyon rock. Workers then welded the walkway to the anchors. While it was pushed out, the walkway was not anchored to the canyon wall. To keep it from tipping over the side, engineers loaded the back end with a half-million pounds of steel cubes as counterweight. The bridge’s deck is tempered glass several inches thick and features five-foot glass railings on each side. The floor of the structure is comprised of 41 pieces of layered curved glass, with its top layer replaceable in case of scratches that affect visibility. Each piece of glass is be held together by glass connectors specifically designed by Saint Gobain for the bridge. Grand Canyon West plans to issue shoe covers to each guest — in order to avoid scratches and slipping — which will be numbered and given to the visitors who have walked the bridge.

    This skywalks opens in a few months, and will supposedly cost $25 a visit. The tribe sees this as a way to generate income. But would you go on it? I don’t think I would; my mind would just rebel.

  • From “The March of Time” Department: As we all know, tomorrow the world comes to an end. No, actually Daylight Saving (no “s”) Time starts 3 weeks earlier. Many of our devices have been patched, and many don’t care, but many will still break. NPR had a wonderful piece on DST that illustrated the real force behind DST. No, it isn’t to save daylight: we have exactly the same number of hours of daylight we had under standard time. No, it really isn’t to save energy: although there is some savings in power, it is offset by more folks driving in the daylight afternoon hours. Ask yourself where they are going, and you have the real answer. Yup, to buy Black Disney Princesses. No, seriously, to buy. There are estimates of millions of dollars of additional sales of items such as golf equipment and BBQs briquets from later evening daylight hours. Hence, one of the key proponents is: Chambers of Commerce.

Perhaps Stan Freberg had it right: it’s all about the marketing…

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Seeing Satanism Everywhere

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Some folks out there may remember the controversy that periodically surfaces about the old Proctor and Gamble Logo. This logo, which featured a man-in-the-moon and 13 stars, was the subject of an urban legend claiming the company supported the “Church of Satan”. Of course, the logo had no such basis… but still, the furor led P&G to drop the symbol from its products and move to a new logo.

Fast forward to today. According to US Today, the new Belgian carrier Brussels Airlines is having to repaint all of its aircraft. Why? The corporate logo on the aircraft consisted of 13-balls shaped into a stylized “b”. Immediately after the November announcement that the successor airline to the merged SN Brussels and Virgin Express would come into operation March 25 with the 13-ball “b” logo, the company was flooded with disapproving emails and calls that indicates superstitious consumers in the US and Italy were not pleased with an aircraft with a logo with 13 balls because they thought it would bring them bad luck. As a result, Brussels Airlines is repainting all of its airships to add a 14th dot to the logo. Of course, this would create problems for flying to China, where “14” is considered bad-luck because one-four, in Mandarin, sounds like the phrase “to want to die.”

Think about this the next time you book a room on the 13th floor. Oh, right. Never mind.

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And The Organic Chicken Heart Grew…

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Just a quick note: According to la_biz_observed (post), Whole Paycheck Market is acquiring Wild Oats Markets (which also includes Henry’s Farmers Markets, in some areas) for about $565 Million. According to the LA Times, some Wild Oats/Henry’s stores will be closed or relocated in areas where they overlap with Whole Foods outlets. The remaining Wild Oats stores will eventually be renamed Whole Foods. My, how what was once Mrs. Gooch’s has grown…but then, Whole Paycheck has a history of acquisitions!

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