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New L’Unique Shop: Like Cartier, a few other businesses are confident enough to be expanding during a recession.

L’Unique Gift Co. in Irvine is opening a new store at Fashion Island in Newport Beach, which will be called the L’Unique Gourmet Co. The store will specialize in gourmet foods and kitchen items when it opens next month near I. Magnin, said Marsha Uri, a co-owner along with Eleanor Genuardi and Suzanne Skinner.

L’Unique handles the mundane along with the weird: As a gift for an outdoorsman, L’Unique filled a 6-foot-long rubber raft with food, survival gear and a beach towel.

It was enough to want to make one want to float around the back-yard pool and forget the whole trip.

The Orange County Stock Watch listing was unavailable Thursday because of computer problems at Newport Securities Inc. The brokerage normally provides a daily report of the biggest percentage stock gains and losses.