Sounding Off at Gridlock
Used to be that Southern Californians took pride in not honking their horns, even at the worst driver on the crummiest freeway on the smoggiest day. Not so any more. It’s not the streets of New York yet, but it’s getting noisy out there, folks. And sweet music it is to Anes Electronics of Marina Del Rey, the largest supplier of musical, diesel and the dreaded air horns. Sales are up more than 25% this year, with summer, the big horn season, ahead.
In part, says Anes’ marketing director Lisa Kirshner, drivers are choosing the more solid sounds of add-on horns to replace the squeaky little tooters standard to Asian imports. And some just are expressing individuality by choosing a musical horn with 22 pre-programmed songs--ranging from “La Cucaracha” to a Mozart sonata--and options to program more.
Kirshner thinks the specialty horn’s swing in popularity here is just another sign of increasing frustration with traffic congestion--a way to “blow off steam.” Ooga-ooga. Bring back the bumper sticker.
If You Don’t Ask . . .
The recent Vons Cos. annual meeting had a healthy dose of elderly shareholders who stood up to laud the company. One Vons retiree ended a rambling but congenial monologue with an unexpected rebuke directed at Chairman Roger E. Stangeland (whom she addressed as Mr. Strange-land) and his board of directors.
“All of you directors are men,” said Mabel Harris, a former Vons home economist who lives in Los Angeles. “It seems to me you ought to have a woman director.”
Without hesitating, she added: “And I’m available.”
No Slump for Real Wine
The Wine Investor, a newsletter little inclined to view the wine business through rose -colored glasses, called 1988 “a disastrous year for wine-marketers” in this country. Except, adds Los Angeles publisher Paul Gillette, for California’s “conventional table wines,” which exclude the fast-shrinking category of wine coolers.
“Granted, the gain is not of the dimensions of those in many previous years,” notes Wine Investor’s annual compilation, The U.S. Market for Table Wines, “but it does represent about 1 million cases of wine. To achieve that growth (to 121.2 million cases) after the substantial gains of earlier years is no small accomplishment.”
Wine Investor’s conclusion: “The most important market for Calif. vintners--the market of steady, year-in year-out wine lovers, as opposed to the trendies and other seekers of novelty--is continuing to expand. . . . Apparently the market for what most of us think of as real wine is indeed alive and well, tho growth might not be as brisk as many of us would like it to be.”
Now It Can Give Advice
Three years ago, the idea would have drawn groans. Two years ago, the reaction would have been incredulity. And even a year ago, most people would have laughed at the idea that Bank of America would be telling anybody how to run a bank.
But in another sign of the public rehabilitation of the San Francisco giant, a business book scheduled for publication this fall will be based on banking according to B of A principles and was written for the bank by an outside author.
What Happened to Exports?
Call it The Mystery of the Fading Exports: New government data shows that California exports dropped in recent months when exports rose overall nationally. “The thermometer in the patient’s mouth tends to tell us he’s running a fever,” said Jock O’Connell, an international trade consultant in Sacramento. “Now we’ve got to figure out why.”
The U.S. Census Bureau figures don’t provide the answer, because they have not yet been broken down to show the performance of particular industries. But overall exports of California goods dropped slightly to $9.2 billion in the first three months of this year from $9.3 billion in the last three months of 1988.
“We really don’t expect California exports to go down at the same time that U.S. export figures are going up,” O’Connell continued. “It’s a curious anomaly.”
