Lead Not Into Temptation
It’s nearly noon on Saturday, the grocery cart is filled and you’re finally in line at the checkout counter. The kids--who have been up since 5:30 a.m.--are ready to snap, and you’re bracing for an unpleasant scene when they come face to face with their favorite treats.
But instead of chocolate, candy and gum, some are finding crayons, flash cards, books and magazines.
Shoppers at a handful of Lucky stores in San Diego and Orange counties have recently been given the option of exiting through a sugar-free checkout lane. The concept will spread to other stores later this year, according to Brian Carter, Lucky vice president.
“We’ve all witnessed the parents with children in the cart,” Carter said. “Now, if they choose, the temptation won’t be there.”
Sorry, No Double Coupons
Want to buy stocks for nothing?
On Thursday, Los Angeles-based brokerage Bateman Eichler, Hill Richards is offering a one-day promotion allowing investors to buy, free of commission, any of 23 stocks on its recommended list.
The offer is among several marketing efforts by Bateman Eichler under Chief Executive Richard J. Capalbo, who went to the firm last year after serving as a marketing executive at Drexel Burnham Lambert.
The offer is good only during market hours Thursday and applies only to purchases of the 23 stocks, which include Boeing, Walt Disney, Bank of America and Pacific Telesis.
Bateman, of course, is offering no guarantees that those stocks will do well. And the free commissions apply only to purchases, not sales. “We’re recommending you invest in these; that’s why the offer is only on the buy side,” Bateman executive Gene Meeker said.
Lashing Out at Torture
Bob Stein has seen the wave of the future, and it’s on an eyelash.
The trouble with the common eyelash curler, says the former Hollywood makeup man, is that it hurts. It looks, and works, more like a medieval torture device than an instrument of beauty.
“After years of suffering with that old steel tool that pinched the eyelids and broke eyelashes, I thought there must be another way,” he said.
Stein’s answer: “Lady Wink,” a white, spring-loaded plastic device that fits in the palm of your hand. He says he’s sold 3,800 from his Venice business, mostly through beauty supply stores and salons, at $15 each. But space-age beauty will require an education. Lady Wink is packed with a 16-page instruction booklet.
FO Sugar-free lane at Lucky store.
