The Cost of a Dream
What’s happened to the American dream at Bank of America? As part of the giant bank’s cost-cutting last year, the company canceled 5,000 subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal, which bills itself as the “daily diary of the American dream.”
“It’s not that we don’t want employees to read the Journal,” said one bank executive. “It’s just that we think they should be paying for it themselves.”
Even figuring a volume discount on the $119 annual subscription, the move saves the bank in the neighborhood of half a million dollars a year.
The Perfect Tan Is Hot
Aging baby boomers may fear collagen meltdown, but obviously that hasn’t stopped the quest for the perfect tan. How else would you explain the fact that Yellow Page listings for tanning salons across the nation jumped a whopping 55% in 1987?
Tanning salons top the list of the nation’s fastest growing business categories in the latest report from the Yellow Page Research Group of Omaha.
Other businesses in the top 10 for 1987: novelty and toy stores, video rentals, video sales, computer system designers and consultants, computer software sales, video production, video recorder service, video recorder rentals and clothing alterations.
The fastest declining business were solar energy equipment wholesalers, antennas, microwave ovens, dishwasher dealers, oil field services, wood-burning stove dealers, windows, data processing equipment wholesalers, cable television and data processing services.
The group says its yearly counts of Yellow Page listings provide the most accurate statistics of business start-ups and failures because they capture business creations and demises that corporation filings and bankruptcy reports miss.
Talking Pictures II
First came talking dolls, then talking teddy bears. Why not talking photographs?
Actually, it’s the picture frame that produces the sound, explains Santa Monica entrepreneur L. J. Scamahorn. He developed Talking Pictures shortly after the birth of his first child a year and a half ago. The frame has a mechanism that allows you to record a brief message. The message plays repeatedly when you pick up the frame.
Scamahorn invented Talking Pictures because he wanted something special for the grandparents who could not be on hand for the birth of Heather Nicole. So the Scamahorns sent a picture with a frame that said: “Here’s the newest addition to the family. Who do you think she looks like?” Scamahorn is currently promoting the frame for Mother’s Day, but it is also popular, he said, with newlyweds who enjoy hearing themselves say “I do.”
Call It Vitamin Sea
For those who crave Vitamin C, your ship came in--to the Port of Long Beach. A tanker laden with semi-frozen orange juice concentrate was one of the 3,066 cargo ships that called at the port during 1987. The port said a record 60.6 million metric tons--the highest amount ever reported by a West Coast port--crossed the piers last year.
Most of the cargo consisted of petroleum, electric machinery and plastic products. But there were some other interesting items, including circus animals and subway cars bound for New York, port officials say.
