The Cincinnati Enquirer from Cincinnati, Ohio • Page 135

I Handbags made from seat belts. J3 COMING MONDAY: Sakrete Inc. has roots cemented in Cincinnati. Editor: Brian Schwaner, bschwaneienquirer.com, (513) 768-8385 SUNDAY, JULY 24, 2005 I Nominee argued diverse cases oberts attracted business Look Who's Talking DAN AND DONNA ROUSTER Blueberry seeds of growth preme Court nominee is someone who gets it-Roberts has a sparse record on the bench he only moved from his advocacy role to the federal appeals court in Washington two years ago. As a result, lawmakers, interest groups and journalists were combing his broader record as an appellate litigator to gain insights into the way he might approach cases if he is confirmed to become the next associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. ing Chrysler and Toyota, as well as representing the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the National Mining Association. Early in his career, he helped to write a brief on behalf of the National Beer Wholesalers Association. "He's been in a lot of corporate boardrooms, talked to a lot of corporate counsel," said Roy Englert, who attended Harvard Law School with Roberts and is a partner at Robbins, Russell, Englert, Or-seck Untereiner in Washington. "From the business community's standpoint he's a great nominee, but not because he's always going to be pro-business, but rather because the best one can ask for in a Su By Stephen Labaton and Jonathan D. Glater The New York Times WASHINGTON As one of Washington's most sought-after advocates before federal appellate courts, John G. Roberts represented clients as diverse as the state prosecutors in their antitrust case against the Microsoft Corp. and NBC in its effort to strike down media ownership regulations that had restricted it from growing larger and buying more stations. Roberts, President Bush's nominee for the Supreme Court, also worked for some of the world's biggest automakers, includ -j' See ROBERTS, Page 12 Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Apple's IPod is among the best recent consumer-product innovations. imm Wh thought up famous brands? Baseball's challenge different with Reds How much do you love baseball? Do you love it enough to camp outside through a cold overnight rain to buy Opening Day tickets? More to the point, do you love it enough to sit through nine dreary innings and watch the Chicago Cubs hammer home runs into the Great American Ball Park bleachers? If you meet all of those conditions, apparently you're not alone because Major League Baseball is more marketable than ever. So say a couple of MLB marketing executives who visited Cincinnati last week. They say the 73 UC prof researches such stuff, passes it on million tickets sold last year was the highest ever, and televi- I 1 mk As mm s' was at its high Cliff est levels since 1998. Not only is the game popu- Peale The Enquirer Sarah Conard Dan and Donna Rouster of Rouster's Apple House. Their 180-acre farm has benefited from increasing demand for blueberries. ust after dawn on July 2, the first peo-U pie started lining up outside a Milford boutique farm. It was opening day for wr U-pick blueberries at Rouster's Apple House. By the time 3,000 people the biggest crowd ever had finished plucking every ripe berry from 5 acres of bushes at noon, Donna Rouster was exhausted. And hap- py- The growing crowds pushed us to expand," explains Rouster, 53, who owns the 180-acre family farm, at 1986 Ohio 131, with husband Dan, 58. The United States produces more than half of the world's cultivated blueberries million pounds last year, up 21 percent from 2003, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. As the Rousters have seen, demand for blueberries worldwide has been rising steadily for decades. Packed with vitamin potassium and fiber, blueberries also contain chemicals that may help prevent some cancers and improve memory, research shows. HOW DID YOU expand? Last year we dug a 2 million-gallon pond and connected it into the irrigation system for blueberries and blackberries. We planted 3 more acres of blueberries this spring (making 8 total) This is our first planting since 1984. We used to be open six days a week (for blueberry picking), but now the crowds are so big it's once a week (through early August). The unripe berries turn blue quickly, but they need some time to sugar. WHAT PERCENTAGE OF your business is blueberries? Almost all of our income is made in the last quarter of the year (from 20 acres of apples sold retail and pressed for cider -antiques and food products sold at Rouster's Apple House store). We have the blueberries, blackberries and several varieties of peaches. One nice thing about the berries is that we now have a cash flow in summer. (She declines to give specific figures.) HOW DID ROUSTER's evolve as a farm? Dan's parents, Merrill and Henrietta, starting planting orchards here. Merrill packed up his apples and delivered them to grocery stores on the east side of Cincinnati, as well as going door to door in Milford, Terrace Park and Blanchester. Dan also raised Angus cows. Then peaches we replanted peach orchards three times but stone fruit do not do well here. Once you get to 10 below zero, you lose that crop and have tree damage. We tore out 5 acres of peaches for blueberries in 1980-81. They just keep chugging along. WHATS THAT NOISE? We have a couple of propane cannons to drive off the birds. They go off one to three times a minute. Probably much too often for our neighbors' liking. We also use photoelectric cells on speakers that emit bird distress calls. The Mylar strips (hanging on poles in the fields) reflect the sun. It all works to some degree. Maybe that's why we planted more blueberries so there's enough to go around for everyone. Annie-Laurie Blair The EnquirerSarah Conard Craig Vogel, director of the Center for Research and Innovation at UC, came here from Carnegie Mellon. He has a collection of products in his office, such as Coca-Cola and ketchup bottles and toasters that demonstrate design evolution. lar, but also it's an audience that advertisers should love, with an average household income of $57,424, or 15 percent above average. "Every metric you could use to evaluate our brand right now is at an all-time high," says Jacqueline Parks, MLB's senior vice president of advertising and marketing. Parks and her colleagues are trying to "eventize" the game. That means heavy promotion around the All-Star Game and the World Series. The Reds know all about eventizing. Because of the hoopla here on Opening Day, they open every season at home. "You-all pretty much have it down on Opening Day," Parks says. "We'd like to copy that in all the other markets." The newest MLB marketing blitz was born three years ago with a simple market research study. It's the kind of market research that MBA types at Procter Gamble Co. do about 25 million times a day. Look at your customer, look Innovation primer Online: Go to Cincinnati. Com to see the winning designs from the 2005 Industrial Design Excellence Awards. Keyword: Innovation By Annie-Laurie Blair Enquirer contributor aise your right hand if you've Ml stopped at Starbucks, bought their coffee beans or loaded your own swill into a Star-II bucks mug this month. Raise your left if you've Swiffered your floor recently. Now put them together in a round of applause if you have an iPod tucked in your gym bag or briefcase. Starbucks, Swiffer, iPod these are among the finest in recent consumer-product innovations. While the end products are highly useful, of eye-catching design, heavily branded and profitable, what you don't see immediately is how they got there. Who came up with these ideas? What company executives recognized their value? What team put the manufacturing wheels in motion, and who developed the patent, marketing A 2002 product-innovation book by Craig M. Vogel and a then-Camegie Mellon colleague made waves at Procter Gamble, which distributed cases of the book to employees, one executive says. Vogel now has rewritten that book, with engineer Jonathan Cagan and marketing expert Peter Boatwright, in a more consumer-friendly tone targeted at a wide business audience. "The Design of Things to Come: How Ordinary People Create Extraordinary Products," released in June by Wharton School Publishing, uses case studies from New Balance, Whirlpool, Cleveland's Lubrizol and others to show how even small companies can change their business practices to be more innovative. The themes: Understanding the customer, building creative teams, identifying good ideas and branding the product. Chapter 10 is a case study on Swiffer, the dustingmopping system, and how the Cincinnati consumer giant wielded intellectual product-management tactics to protect it. Annie-Laurie Blair and branding processes? Welcome to Craig Vogel's world. Since the internationally known product-design expert arrived at University of Cincinnati in 2004, he has been quietly building a research empire in the College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning. It is an empire that already has helped win a $1.88 million grant from Ohio's Third Frontier high-tech jobs initiative, forged unique research collaboration among UC departments and elevated Cincinnati's profile as one of the top product design and branding cities in the country. at your product and find a match. Then market it The findings? MLB's cus tomers are families. See BASEBALL, Page J4 See VOGEL, Page J5 Queen City 7 ewmd KENTUCKY CONNECTION Delta Air Lines lost $382 million in the second quarter. But that may be good news, since Delta the loss by 80 percent from the $1.9 billion loss for the same period last year. It's a big deal to the 8,000 Delta and Comair workers at CincinnatiNorthern Kentucky International Airport. Should Covington allow an Italian restaurant and a brewpub in MainStrasse? Some neighbors oppose the idea, saying they have enough watering holes. Others like it. It's a big decision for this neighborhood, one of the real regional destinations for local bar-hoppers. The week in business news in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky Comments, suggestions? E-mail us at: rewindenquirer.com HEADLINERS An account managed by Fifth Third Bank has lost almost $11 million for the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation since 2001. It's the newest local angle on the Coingate scandal unfolding in Columbus, and auditors are scrambling to ensure the bureau's billions in investment dollars are accounted for. Overall, the program's troubles barely touch Cincinnati, where it sprinkled about $134 million, less than 1 percent of its total assets. NuTone Inc. locked out about 450 hourly employees last weekend in a contract dispute. Union members had rejected an offer in June. As usual, wages, health-care costs and severance pay are at issue. How hot is E.W. Scripps The media giant got $1 million in revenue from its newly acquired Shopzilla in the first three days. It put famed chef Emeril Lagasse on its Shop at Home television channel, to great effect. It added up to second-quarter profits of $97.6 million on sales of $627.3 million, both healthy increases compared to last year. The Tall Stacks Music, Arts and Heritage Festival will be back in 2006 with more boats and a higher cost for tickets. The event wound up $311,000 in debt last time. QUOTE OF THE WEEK That's what gets me excited about this place. Let's get the creative vibe back in here." This from Jeremy Thompson, the new owner of Kaldi's Coffeehouse in Over-the-Rhine. Thompson and his wife, Collette, plan to reopen Kaldi's this month after it closed unexpectedly in April. Enquirer file Emmylou Harris at Tall Stacks 2003. The festival will return next year. SO 'i An edition of The Cincinnati Enquirer hA-J. v- h. A rS ilKn ittrn ft jhmA fcl fc fc fc fcl 4" I itf 1 A 1 1 fcl fc fc 1 fc fc fc