Consumer Goods

A protracted work stoppage at West Coast ports could lead to trouble in paradise--or at least to a shortage of toilet paper. Life in Hawaii has not been dramatically altered by the closure of West Coast ports. But a prolonged shutdown could affect the economy of the island chain, which imports about 80% of the goods its residents consume, most of which come via container ships across the Pacific.

An increasingly bitter fight is building along the pet food aisle, as some of the best-known consumer goods companies scramble for increased share in the $30-billion worldwide market for pet food. The ongoing consolidation is reshaping how and where pet supplies are sold and leading to a widening array of pet foods, supplements, treats and accessories--not to mention a rising level of rivalry. Procter & Gamble Co. entered the fray in 1999 with the $2.

Noriko Kanbayashi and her husband tried to buy a condominium in the early 1990s only to lose out repeatedly to other buyers. Finally in 1993, a small three-bedroom opened up and they grabbed it, even though its $415,000 price tag severely stretched their budget and locked them into a 30-year mortgage.

The U.S. trade deficit showed little change in January and the levels of exports and imports suggested a cooling economy, government data showed Tuesday. Increased imports of consumer goods and a record volume of imports of petroleum products helped widen the trade gap to $33.3 billion in January from $33.2 billion a month earlier, the Commerce Department said. The rise in imports was the first in four months.

Dial Corp., maker of its namesake soap and Purex laundry detergent, might sell its Armour canned-meat unit, whose lagging results have hurt the company's shares, analysts and investors said. Armour, the top-selling U.S. brand of Vienna sausages, had an estimated $250 million in sales last year. Dial warned in March that first-half earnings will fall in part because of declining Armour sales. The food business generated 17% of Dial's U.S.

Any bricks-and-mortar retailer that believes the Internet can solve all its problems would be sadly mistaken. Ask Egghead.com Inc. Egghead.com started in the 1980s as a retail chain that sold personal-computer software and related items, and 22 of its outlets were in Southern California. But the growth of "big-box" electronics chains such as Best Buy Co. and CompUSA Inc. forced Egghead.com to shutter its 156 stores in 1997-98 and move to the World Wide Web.

New Year's usually doesn't capture the attention of shoppers until the week after Christmas, and even then its retail punch is confined mostly to party goods, beverages and food. But to say this year is different would be an understatement. Fueled by media and marketing hype, conventional wisdom has anointed this coming Jan.

Asia's export juggernaut continued to steam through Southern California in August, pushing levels of inbound cargo at the Port of Los Angeles to a record high for the second straight month. And, in a potentially positive sign for the nation's gaping trade imbalance, export levels at the nation's second-busiest port were higher for the fourth straight month. In August, the port took in 12% more cargo containers than a year ago. Most inbound cargo is finished consumer goods.

Companies don't come much more complicated than Unilever. The food and household-products titan sells $5.5 million of Ragu pasta sauce, Aim toothpaste, Lipton tea, Wisk detergent, Lawry's seasonings and hundreds of other products every hour worldwide, or $48 billion a year. It has two parent companies, one British and one Dutch. It has two stocks trading on U.S. exchanges alone and two co-chairmen of the board. But Unilever knows that to get shelf space in stores today, complexity won't cut it.

CB Richard Ellis Services Inc., one of the world's largest real estate services companies, is starting a business that offers its clients discounts on everything from office furniture to computers. The move is an attempt by the Los Angeles-based company to capture a bigger market share amid a wave of consolidation in the property brokerage and management industry. CB Richard Ellis has formed alliances with more than 20 major companies, including Staples Inc., Dell Computer Corp. and Xerox Corp.