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Coffee Talk
+ Credit Union keeps on growing
Six months ago, Sarasota Coastal Credit Union president and CEO Tom Randle told the Review his institution was like a gnat when compared to the Gulf Coast's community and regional banks.
Make that more of a growing swarm of gnats.
In December, the credit union, with six branches in three Gulf Counties, was in the beginning of a marketing push to recruit new members, both individuals and small businesses with annual revenues $2 million and under. Randle said he wasn't going to up the credit union's $500,000 marketing budget, only spend it differently. (See 12/14/06 Review.)
With half-a-year to look at things, Randle says the campaign, which includes newspaper, radio and tv ads, is working: New members are up 363% this year, from 220 in January to 750 in March to 960 in April.
Randle says a good month for the credit union in terms of market share used to be picking up about 400 new members. The CEO adds that for a relatively small facility like Sarasota Coastal, with $250 million in assets, growing in market share is as important as return on equity, to give it more heft in the marketplace.
What's more, the credit union's average share balance has increased significantly in the past year. In April 2006, Randle tells Coffee Talk, the average balance was about $10,500. As of this past April, it was $19,000. "We've been a lot louder," Randle says. "We've been everywhere."
The volume might be turned up even more over the next year. Randle says he doesn't want to lose the gains or momentum, so he's likely to double the advertising budget soon.
+ Manufacturer makes more than windows
It turns out PGT, the recently turned public Venice-based manufacturer, makes more than impact-resistant windows and doors.
It also produces MBAs. It's latest output was 13 employees, all of whom graduated earlier this month from the MBA program at the Sarasota/Manatee campus of Webster University. The new grads join five other employees who have earned their MBAs at the school through the company's tuition reimbursement program.
The program is one of the company's most popular perks. It paid out $245,000 in tuition reimbursement last year and is on pace for more this year, as 70 students have already taken MBA or undergraduate courses.
Now PGT can look to their new masters of business folks to boost the company's shares. PGT, traded on the Nasdaq exchange under the symbol PGTI, has struggled in some regards in its first 10 months as a publicly traded company. Shares are under $12, about three dollars off its high and its opening price. What's more, the housing slump led to a 24.6% drop in first quarter revenues, from $96.4 million in 2006 to $72.7 million this year.
+ New Tampa Bay editor joins the Review
Ever improving and expanding our coverage, the Gulf Coast Business Review has hired Dave Szymanksi as Tampa Bay Editor. The name should be familiar to the Tampa Bay business community.
Szymanski, 46, has worked as a newspaper reporter and editor and in the communications field for several newspapers for 24 years. He was editor of The Tampa Bay Business Journal and was acting business editor of The Tampa Tribune - where, in the small world category, he was the boss of Jean Gruss, the Review's Lee/Collier editor. He also worked for the Detroit News.
Dave was manager of corporate communications for Tampa Electric and founded the corporate magazine, Insight, and a new website for business customers. In 2001, he founded The Right Word Inc., a Tampa company that helps people with communications. In 1999, Dave helped found AccessLife.com, a website for people with disabilities and chronic illness.
Dave has been involved with more than journalism in Tampa Bay. He is past president of the Rotary Club of Tampa Bay, is a graduate of Leadership Tampa and Leadership Tampa Bay, coached Police Athletic League Football and little league baseball and is the proud father of three children.
A native of Buffalo, N.Y., Dave earned a bachelor's degree in mass communication from St. Bonaventure University in 1983 and a master's degree in journalism from Michigan State University in 1986.
Dave's first stories appear in this issue.
- Editor
+ WCI yields to Icahn, postpones annual meeting
WCI Communities, the Bonita Springs-based homebuilder, postponed its annual meeting after corporate raider Carl Icahn urged fellow shareholders to stay away. The annual meeting that was scheduled for June 15 will now take place Aug. 30.
Icahn, who owns nearly 15% of the Bonita Springs-based homebuilder and is now WCI's largest single shareholder, urged fellow shareholders not to show up at the annual meeting or vote on a slate of directors until a sale of the company is completed.
A majority of shareholders apparently agreed, forcing the company to postpone the meeting.
Icahn has proposed his own slate of directors and accused the current board of using the sales process as an excuse to pressure shareholders to reelect them for another year. WCI has not revealed who the potential buyers might be or how many there are.
+ Large WCI Communities shareholders sell
One institutional shareholder that probably won't show at the rescheduled annual meeting of WCI Communities in August is Neuberger Berman, a money management subsidiary of Lehman Bros. The firm was among the WCI's biggest shareholders earlier this year, but filings show it recently sold a substantial portion of its shares.
Securities filings showed Neuberger Berman owned 6.74% of WCI in the spring. But a filing on June 8 showed the firm reduced its stake to just 1.63%. Meanwhile, Marvin Schwartz, Neuberger Berman's managing director, still owns 5.32% of WCI, filings show.
Officials at Neuberger Berman couldn't be reached.
Neuberger Berman is the second large institutional shareholder to sell its WCI stake. Hotchkis & Wiley, the value-oriented money management firm based in Los Angeles, reduced its WCI holdings from nearly 16% in January to 6.6% recently. Hotchkis & Wiley has a policy of not discussing individual holdings.
+ Less hiring of finance, no change in IT professionals
Although CFOs in the Tampa/St. Petersburg area predict a decrease in the hiring of accounting and finance professionals in the third quarter of 2007, hiring in the market is the same as the national average according to survey results released by Robert Half International. The 3% net increase is down four points from last quarter's forecast, but equal to the national average.
Nine percent of chief information officers in the Tampa Bay area expect to hire information technology professionals in the third quarter, according to the Robert Half Technology IT Hiring Index and Skills Report. Fifteen percent of executives plan to add staff during the quarter and 6% anticipate reductions in personnel. The majority of respondents, 75%, foresee no change in third-quarter hiring.
The local results reflect a two-quarter rolling average based on the responses of 200 CIOs from a random sample of companies in the Tampa Bay area with 100 or more employees.
Additionally, Inc.com recently ranked Tampa/St. Petersburg as one of the top 20 large cities in the nation for doing business. Tampa/St. Petersburg came in 11th place before other markets like Washington and Nashville.
+ College student racks up sales
Katie Rickert is carving up the old axiom that teenagers and college students are lazy, lackadaisical and longing for direction. And she's doing it one knife at a time.
Rickert, 19, sells knives door to door for Vector Marketing Corp., the firm responsible for hawking CUTCO Cutlery - the company famous for selling its knifes and kitchen tools only through its 40,000-plus door to door sales force. CUTCO is one of the largest cutlery manufacturers in the U.S., with more then $175 million in sales last year.
A small portion of those sales - $32,000 worth - came from Rickert, a soon-to-be sophomore at the University of South Florida majoring in nursing. Rickert's sales in 2006, her first year working for Vector, were good enough for 7th best in the company, a feat which earned her a $500 scholarship to be used toward books and tuition.
While those funds won't last long in today's pricey higher education universe, Rickert, a Land O' Lakes resident, does seem to have picked up a potential calling in sales - long a difficult task for many entrepreneurs. She started selling the knives last summer, soon after graduating high school, and she went from $6,000 in summer closings to $14,000 in the fall.
So what can Rickert, who described herself as a "very shy kid" who had never sold anything before Vector, offer in way of advice to Coffee Talk readers looking to improve their sales results?
Start with the basics: Honesty, stay simple and look the potential customer in the eyes. "It was just about selling the product," says Rickert, "and not up-selling them."
And to build a client lead list, stick with what, and who, you know. For Rickert, than meant friend's parents and then getting a glimpse into the address book of her best friend, who she says was her high school's social butterfly. "There's so many sales techniques out there," Rickert says, "but I was just honest and myself."
Florida's cities are still vital
The Sunshine State has topped yet another list of good places to do business. Not to be a party pooper, but Coffee Talk wonders how much better Florida could do on these lists and in the real world if the Legislature actually does right by businesses - and residents - in its attempts to fix property tax and insurance problems.
The latest list Florida scored well on is the Business Vitality Index, researched by Moody's Economy.com and published in the Wall Street Journal June 11. The list looks at the overall economic vitality of a metro area by looking at a combination of factors, including household income growth, labor availability and regional cost of living.
2. Fort Walton Beach
5. Fort Lauderdale
7. Orlando
11. Jacksonville
15. Tampa
28. Naples
35. Tallahassee
36. Panama City
40. Cape Coral
44. West Palm Beach
46. Port St. Lucie
50. Ocala
+ Magazine distributor banks on savings
When Source Interlink announced last month it was jumping into the publishing business, the Bonita Springs-based magazine distributor had a hard time justifying the acquisition of Enthusiast Media for $1.2 billion.
Investors pushed the stock down 15% the day after the acquisition was announced. Under the deal to be funded by Citigroup Global Markets, Source will acquire 70 magazines and 90 Web sites of publications such as Motor Trend Magazine, Hot Rod Magazine and Soap Opera Digest.
In a conference call June 11 to discuss the first quarter's earnings, executives didn't reveal many more specifics, but promised $18 million in savings annually over the next three years resulting in large part from the fact that Enthusiast publication won't have to pay a distributor anymore.
However, executives declined to discuss the specifics of the financing, including how much debt or bond issuance will take place and at what rates. The deal is scheduled to close by the end of the second quarter.
The stock continued to decline (symbol SORC). It closed at $5.31 on June 12, the day after the earnings announcement, down 22% from the price on the day before the announcement of the acquisition one month ago.
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