Retail Stores

Having survived an earthquake that took the second story, a riot in which buildings all around were burned and four decades of declining neighborhood fortunes, Bill Greenberg said he can't find a good reason to leave. Strolling outside his South-Central Los Angeles hardware store, Greenberg said that when the gangs mar his building with graffiti, he paints it over. When the hookers who work out of a nearby building crowd around, he just says no.

Los Angeles retailer Charles Gallay has a knack for launching new stores on the winds of fashion change. He opened his Azzedine Alaia boutique on Rodeo Drive in 1983, just moments before the workout craze caught hold and women began to feel fit enough to wear Alaia's steamy, skintight clothing. In 1987 came the Gallay shop on Sunset Boulevard, a monument to modern minimalist clothing housed in a store built to match.

The buses full of Chinese tourists started moving through Southern California last weekend, heading to Disneyland and outlet malls in convoys of as many as 100 at a time. For the next month, they'll keep coming — carrying wave after wave of men and women with money to spend in a mass visit estimated to bring in $10 million for the local economy. Behind this economic boon is the direct-selling company Amway, which has a sales force of 3 million people in 80 countries and territories around the world.

Jennifer Lopez: actress, singer, dancer, fashion designer, and now, mobile phone mogul. The entertainer announced Wednesday that she had teamed up with Verizon Wireless to launch a new mobile brand, including retail stores, aimed at the fast-growing Latino population. Viva Movil by Jennifer Lopez has already begun to sell smartphones, tablets and Verizon wireless plans on its own website. More than a dozen stores in cities with large Latino populations including Los Angeles and Miami are expected to be announced in the next few weeks, with the first to open June 15 in New York.

Although the airline industry remains in a deep slump, airport commissioners on Monday approved $1.13 billion in construction contracts to revitalize the primary entry and departure point for overseas travelers at Los Angeles International Airport. In one of the most visible signs that the modernization of LAX is underway, the Los Angeles Board of Airport Commissioners awarded two contracts to the Walsh Austin Joint Venture, which will handle the reconfiguration of the Tom Bradley International Terminal.

The dining room at Old Tony's is a testament to its status as a survivor. Its aging green carpets and tan leather booths have overlooked Redondo Beach Pier for more than 60 years. Inside, not much has changed. The tiki bar and musty-gray fishing nets hanging from the ceiling are the kitsch of decades past, and some of the waitresses have been around since the Nixon administration. In its heyday, throngs of visitors packed the pier, even on weekdays, catching movies at the stately Fox theater or fishing off the horseshoe-shaped pier.

Samsung announced this week it'll be launching more than 1,000 small retail shops inside Best Buy stores across the U.S. starting this month. In a move that's no doubt intended to help Samsung compete with rival Apple and its retail stores, the South Korean tech giant said it will have shops in as many as 900 Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile specialty stores by May and will open even more stores in the early part of summer. At the stores, which will be called Samsung Experience Shops, the company will feature its smartphones, tablets, laptops and other products.

Lu Miao speaks very little English. He's never traveled outside of Asia. He's not a software engineer. But in a few short months, he became the founder of a successful software company selling apps in the United States and Europe. In less than half a year, Rye Studio has sold 1 million downloads of apps with traditional Chinese children's stories at 99 cents each for Apple Inc.'s iPad and iPhone. Lu bought a courtyard home in the city's tech hub, the Haidian district, and converted it into a playful office with a giant replica of a Michelangelo painting and a bamboo garden.

It's been a rough day on Wall Street so far for Apple, which has seen shares fall as much as 2.7% in morning trading. Wednesday is the first day of trading since Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook announced a management shakeup that included the departures of John Browett, the head of retail operations, and Scott Forstall, who oversaw the company's widely panned Siri and Maps app products. Shares fell as low as $587.70. At 11:45 a.m. Pacific time, they were at $600.95, down $3.05 or 0.5%.

WASHINGTON - The nation kept up its moderate pace of job growth in May, a reassuring sign that the American economy is moving forward despite federal spending cuts and little help from a lackluster global economy. Employers in the U.S. last month added 175,000 net new jobs, although many of them were at lower-paying businesses such as restaurants and retail stores. Manufacturing payrolls dropped for the third-straight month. The overall monthly job gains were slightly above analysts' expectations.